Sometimes the Magic Works (11 page)

 

Publishers are supportive of the artistic side of writers, as well, wanting their books to be critically well received, but mostly they want them to sell lots
and lots of copies. Publishing is, after all, a business.

 

T
HE
W
ORD AND
T
HE
V
OID

IN THE WINTER of 1993, an extraordinary opportunity came knocking at my door. My publisher, Del Rey Books, offered me a lot of money to write a new fantasy series, one not connected to either
Shannara
or
Magic Kingdom
. I could write on any subject (so long as it was fantasy related) and break the series up into separate, stand-alone books or keep them as a trilogy. Because I was in the middle of fulfilling obligations for books on another contract, I didn't have to write these new books until I had finished the old, which would give me several years to think about what I wanted to do.

Let me stop here and explain something to you about the way publishers view writers. Publishers view writers as investments. They spend time, money, and effort promoting their books, hoping in the end for a decent return. They are supportive of the artistic side of writers, as well, wanting their books to be critically well received, but mostly they want them to sell lots and lots of copies. Publishing is, after all, a business.

Mostly, it takes more than one book to “break a writer out” (a favorite publishing term for increasing sales dramatically) so that the books the publisher has been nurturing and supporting for all these years finally begin to pay off. When one book sells, usually the others start to do better, as well, and the publisher can anticipate the possibility of recouping its outlay and seeing a profit—so long as it can persuade the writer to remain in-house and not decide to take his newfound success elsewhere. When a writer produces a book that makes the jump from obscurity to midlist or midlist to best-seller, what the publisher wants the writer to do is to repeat the success. The writer can do this best, in the publisher's experience, by writing another book just like the last one.

You see where I am going with this.

When the writer decides to do something different, maybe only a little different, maybe altogether different, the publisher is usually not overjoyed. After all, it took time and money to break the writer out and build an audience for his or her work, and it was done, almost always, with a particular kind of book or series. Only a few contemporary fiction writers regularly write a different kind of book each time out, and even then they tend to stick with the same themes and types of characters. Yes, a handful of writers are so successful that no matter what they write, they are going to sell a lot of books. Tom Clancy, Stephen King, John Grisham, Danielle Steel, and Michael Crichton come to mind. They might not sell the same numbers as they would if they were writing what they usually write, but they will do well enough that the publisher can afford to indulge them. (Indeed, given the amount of money their books earn, a publisher had
better
indulge them.) But there aren't many of these, and all the rest of us made our names by writing a particular kind of book in a definable category of fiction.

So when one of us who isn't King, Steel, Grisham, et al., decides to move away from the type of fiction that the publisher has spent all this time and money promoting, a concerted effort is made by all those concerned with the business end to get the writer to reconsider. This is not to say they will flat out tell the writer not to do it. That would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull—especially where you are talking about a writer's art. You don't hear anyone trying to tell painters what to paint or composers what to compose, do you? It's no different with writers. Nevertheless, those with a vested interest in the writer will try to make clear the possible consequences of abandoning established ground for new country.

In all fairness, the publisher has a valid point. Attempts by established authors with established audiences to try a new kind of fiction usually don't succeed. What happens is that a sizable chunk of the audience drops away to wait for the next book because they read the writer for the kind of book that won them over in the first place, not this new stuff. Even front-rank authors have to accept that not writing the sort of book they are known for is likely to decrease their sales for at least one outing.

The reason for this digression on how publishers view authors is to demonstrate that Del Rey was showing a certain amount of confidence by agreeing to allow me to write anything I wanted, even if the agreement stipulated it must be fantasy. Fantasy, after all, is a big tent. A lot of strange animals tend to wander inside.

I am not sure to this day what Del Rey expected me to come up with, but I do know that I was quite certain from day one what it was that I wanted to write. When the offer reached me I already had something very specific in mind and it wasn't like anything I had ever done before. I wanted to write a dark, contemporary fantasy, one set in our world that would address current social issues and incorporate a framework of magic that would fit seamlessly with what we know to be true about ourselves. I wanted to set the story in a fictional town in the Midwest that would be modeled after the town I grew up in. I wanted to talk about growing up—about how when we are children we believe in a sort of magic, the kind that lets us accept for a short time that anything is possible. I wanted the main characters to be a fourteen-year-old girl who could do magic and was struggling with her identity and a raft of family secrets, and a drifter who had been sent to find her because she might be the key to either triggering or aborting the Apocalypse.

It would be the kind of story that I knew would never work in either a
Shannara
or
Magic Kingdom
setting.

It would also be exactly the kind of story that would violate the rule I have just described about sticking to what your readers and the publisher expect of you.

I knew this going in. I also knew the probable consequences. I had experienced them once already when I did
Magic Kingdom for Sale
some ten years earlier. Even then, my audience overwhelmingly preferred
Shannara
books—epic fantasies in the Tolkien tradition. I had seduced my readers with those books, and they had come to expect, rightly, that this was the kind of book I would deliver each time out. When I wrote
Magic Kingdom for Sale
, they were accepting, but not altogether pleased. They liked the story well enough, but the most frequent comment I heard was, When are you going to write another
Shannara
? When, instead of doing that, I wrote two more
Magic Kingdom
books, it did not endear me. The consequences were these: fewer sales by as much as two-thirds, publisher and reader dissatisfaction in the change, and author disappointment that the books hadn't caught on.

Eventually, they did. They found an audience, and they gained acceptance from both the publisher and the readers. Now I am regularly asked, When are you going to write another
Magic Kingdom
? But it took some time and effort to get there.

And it did not involve the kind of money that this new series did, which I knew would color everything.

But here's the whole point of this chapter. Sometimes, when you are a professional writer, when you have successfully published and no longer have to worry about breaking down doors, you still have to make the occasional hard choice, and one of the hardest is choosing between writing what compels you and writing what makes money. The choice isn't always clear, and the one doesn't necessarily exclude the other, but in many cases you have a pretty good idea of which is which. I didn't understand this when I wrote
Magic Kingdom for Sale
, because I had never done anything but
Shannara
books and was still naÏve enough to think my audience would follow me anywhere. But by the time I got to the book that would become
Running with the Demon
, I knew better.

Still, writing is an art, and artistic expression requires that the artist follow his heart. This was true to some extent with
Magic Kingdom for Sale
, but in the case of
Running with the Demon
, it was everything. I was passionate about this story, so much so that I told myself it didn't matter if it didn't sell the way everyone hoped it would. Not that I believed for a minute that this would happen, because I am as capable of self-delusion as the next guy. In fact, I thought this book would do even better than the
Shannara
books. I was so invested in it, so enamored of it, that I was convinced everyone else would be, too—even though I should have known better.

Well, you can guess the rest. I wrote what I believed then and now to be a really wonderful book—maybe the best book I have ever written. Hopes were high, fanfare was great, promotion was strong, and the book went right onto the
New York Times
Best-Seller List on the very first week of publication.

And then it promptly sank like a stone. Oh, it did pretty well, don't get me wrong. It just didn't do nearly as well as everyone, myself included, had hoped. It sold about as well as a
Magic Kingdom
book, but nowhere near as well as a
Shannara
. It got on all the best-seller lists, but it made only a cameo appearance. It was well placed in all bookselling venues, but only for about a month before everyone could see the handwriting on the wall.

As my contract provided, I wrote two more books in what would become
The Word and The Void
series, and neither of these books did any better than the first. But slowly an audience began to build, just as it had with
Magic Kingdom
. Readers quit wondering when I was going to do another
Shannara
book and started asking about the new series. Now I am as likely as not to hear from readers, When will you do another
Word and Void
?

Still, commercially, they disappointed.

So what is the lesson I took away from all this? It has to do with learning to live with unrealized expectations. Sometimes art and commerce collide in a way that diminishes one or the other. A writer has to realize and accept this truth. You can always write the book you choose, but you can't always make the readers love it the same way you do. I wish that weren't so, because I always think readers should love my books in equal measure. But they don't, and no writer can control that. No more so than a writer can control the sales a book generates. Readers will make the choices that please them, and that determines who sells and how much. When I hear someone gripe about how this or that writer sells so many books and they shouldn't because they really aren't very good writers, I want to say—Hey, the readers are the ones who decide! It's a democracy!

A writer can revel in unexpected successes, but must learn to live with crushed dreams, as well. If you are a professional, you accept both results with equanimity and move on. Another chance for either lies just down the road.

For me, maybe that chance will come in the form of another shot at
The Word and The Void
. I would like to do three more books in that series. I think the audience is out there waiting for them. I think the new books will be wonderful and will sell like hotcakes. The front money won't be the same, but that's a trade-off I'm willing to accept. I'll earn it back on sales.

On the other hand, those first three books will earn out their advances about the time I turn seventy-five.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll wait and talk to the publisher about it then.

 

Eyes shining, a huge grin on his face, he turned
to me as I huffed up to him, and said,
“Look, Papa! You can see the whole world!”

 

T
HE
W
ORLD
A
CCORDING
TO
H
UNTER
, P
ART
T
WO

IN THE FALL of the same year that I was exposed to Hunter's assessment of my view of the animal world, Judine and I decided to take him with us over the mountains to Spokane where I was scheduled to make an appearance with my latest tome at Auntie's Bookstore. This wasn't a journey I particularly wanted to make, because I was in the process of trying to finish the next book and I was behind schedule and struggling. All distractions at this point were major annoyances, and I felt I could ill afford them. Stress is us. But the commitment had been made, so there was no help for it.

The event was scheduled for a Friday night at the end of the third week of September, and I had also agreed to sign at another store on the way back on Saturday afternoon. The drive would be five hours over and five hours back through some pretty extraordinary country, and Judine thought it would be fun to share the experience with our boy.

She always thinks these things, and I always think about the five hours I will spend cooped up with Jack and Annie. Jack and Annie are perfectly reasonable characters in the Mary Pope Osborne
Magic Tree House
series, a brother and sister who discover a tree house that can travel through time if its occupants simply wish to be somewhere else. Jack and Annie find a book that will allow them to do this and off they go, traveling back in time to visit dinosaurs, pirates, mummies, knights in armor, and others of the same ilk. Hunter loves the
Magic Tree House
books. Since he doesn't read, he listens to the audios. Since the audios play throughout the interior of the car, I must listen to them, as well.

Now, I know that Mary Pope Osborne, if she reads this, will understand what I am saying. It isn't that the audios aren't well done or interesting—for the first dozen times or so. But after, say, fifty times, I would do anything to make Jack and Annie take their adventures and fly right out of my life.

Hunter, however, cannot get enough of them. And in my house, Hunter rules.

So we packed up and headed out on a beautiful September morning, Jack and Annie at the ready. To my surprise, Hunter opted out of a
Magic Tree House
experience in favor of Godzilla. Besides listening to the Jack and Annie tapes and assuming the guise of pirates in various forms, playing Godzilla is Hunter's favorite pastime. It goes like this. We get in the car and start driving, and from the backseat Hunter tells me that Godzilla is chasing us. This is my cue to turn on the navigation system I purchased two years back to save my marriage, so that we can see Godzilla appear on the map as a flashing red dot. Hunter will then tell me that Godzilla is getting closer and I must drive faster. I will tell him I am going as fast as I can. Instead, I try various James Bond devices to throw Godzilla off. Oil spread across the road, for example. Nails. Rockets. Changing the color of the car. Turning invisible. Like that. But nothing ever works for very long, and Hunter always says, “He's still coming, Papa!”

Well, this is one way to pass the time on a car ride, and on this day we played the Godzilla game until I was ready to return to the
Tree House
tapes, which is saying something about the extent of my desperation. Eventually, however, Hunter fell asleep, which resulted in a modicum of peace and tranquillity as we crossed over the Cascades.

When we reached the Columbia River across from Vantage, we caught sight of a metal sculpture of a herd of wild horses set at the top of a plateau above a parking lot on the other side. Judine, who would drive miles out of the way to view the world's second-largest ball of twine, immediately suggested we stop and have a look. I pulled into the parking lot and we climbed out, looking up the bluff face to where the copper-colored sculpture was outlined against a clear blue sky. A few people had climbed up a switchback trail for a closer look and were in the process of coming back down. Hunter instantly charged toward them, yelling for us to follow him.

So we did. Remember, in our house, Hunter rules. We climbed this twisting, gravel-strewn, dusty trail that at times was so steep I had to resort to leaning forward on my hands for support. The day had grown hot and dry, and I was thirsty and sweating right off the bat. The climb was much longer than it looked, and much harder. I was wondering all too quickly why I was doing this. After all, I could see the sculpture already. I could see what it looked like quite clearly. I knew when I got up there that all I was going to see was more of the same, if a bit more ragged and rusted, from a slightly closer position.

But I soldiered on, because that is what you do when your grandson is calling to you to hurry up. We passed a boy and his mother coming down. They looked relieved to be descending. At least, she did. She gave me a tight, pitying smile as we passed on the trail. She knew what I was going through.

Ahead, Hunter was carrying on a conversation with some imaginary person, juking left and right like a running back, playing at something or other. I glanced back at Judine in disgust, and she gave me one of those dazzling smiles that made me want to marry her in the first place.

Near the top, with Hunter still a dozen yards ahead, a rattlesnake slithered across the trail. I yelled at Hunter, who stopped and watched as the snake disappeared beneath a cluster of rocks, and then charged ahead once more. Now I was genuinely worried, picturing an entire family of rattlesnakes lying in wait somewhere just ahead.

I put on a burst of speed—not easy at this point—to catch up with Hunter just as he reached the summit of the climb. He stood in front of the sculpture, which from close up looks huge, and stared not at the metal horses, but out across the Columbia River to the sweep of the land beyond.

Eyes shining, a huge grin on his face, he turned to me as I huffed up to him, and said, “Look, Papa! You can see the whole world!”

It was such a magical moment that I forgot all about the snakes and the climb and saw only the look on his five-year-old face, shining with excitement and joy.

Later, I thought about that moment. It seemed to me there was an important lesson to be learned from it, but I couldn't decide at first what it was. Of course, I always think Hunter has important lessons to offer. Hunter is a kid, after all, and kids are always teaching adults something about life, even if they don't realize or even intend it. (Now that Robert Fulghum doesn't appear to be imparting any further wisdom on how everything he needed to know he learned in kindergarten, I'm thinking about writing a book on how everything I needed to know I learned from my grandson.)

In any case, after returning home to face anew the specter of my still unfinished tome, it occurred to me that writing a book was like climbing that hill to the wild horse sculpture. When you start out, you sort of know where you are going and what you will find at the end, but not exactly what the journey will entail. Certainly, there are long, dusty stretches in which you think you will never get to the top. Certainly, there are places along the way where you can trip and fall on your face if you are not paying attention. Rattlesnakes represent writer's block and various other forms of interruption that can throw you off your rhythm or bring you to a complete halt. But both tasks, if you persevere, are likely to culminate in euphoria when you finally arrive at your destination and are able to shout, “Look! I can see the whole world!”

I liked the analogy, but I didn't think that was what I was looking for. The real lesson lay somewhere else.

It came to me when I started to think about Hunter's reliance on and use of imagination when making that climb.

I watched him charge on ahead of me. He wasn't just making a climb up a hill, trying to get from the bottom to the top so he could see that sculpture. No, indeed. Hunter was on an adventure. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, he is always on an adventure. I can hear it in those imaginary conversations and see it in the look on his face. He is living outside the moment. Like all kids, he is experimenting with life's possibilities, pretending at what might be happening beyond what really is. He is on a journey of discovery, and to the extent that he can manage it, he is making it up as he goes.

When I write a book, I do the same thing. I make it up as I go, a journey of discovery, an adventure in progress. The difference is that I have made the journey so many times before that I tend to be jaded about what I will find. I know all the zigs and zags I will encounter along the way. I know about the hot, dusty stretches and the rattlesnakes. I even know what I will find at the end, because as a professional writer I am supposed to be in control of my material so that I don't end up with a raggedy mess of unresolved plotlines.

What I tend to forget—what Hunter had reminded me of, even without realizing it—is that a large portion of what makes writing so wonderful comes from encountering the unexpected. To fall back on an old cliché, it isn't the destination that matters, it is the journey. It is what I discover along the way that I wasn't looking for. Sometimes a character will become more important than I envisioned. Sometimes a plot segment I hadn't even thought about will surface midway through. Sometimes the subtext of what seems an ordinary tale will reveal itself in such a way that I will be stunned and elated. The point is, even if I think I know the route, having traveled it so often before, there always exists the possibility of being surprised by something new. The joy of writing comes from that possibility, and the joy of writing is what keeps me making that same journey over and over without ever becoming bored by it.

A child doesn't need to remember such things. Or even to understand them. A jaded writer of fifty-odd years does. All adults do. A child's imagination, a willingness to look for the possibilities, is what makes life worthwhile.

At least, that was what Hunter taught me.