Interview With Ferrett Steinmetz

Prelude:

Hey everyone Josiah here! Due to the way the world works I was able to get in contact with an author and he answered a couple (a lot) of questions I had which was and will forever be greatly appreciated. Ferrett's written many acclaimed titles and is an excellent writer so being able to communicate with him was a blast. He even has one coming out in May so you can check it out here. Any how, I'm sure you all want to see his answers so here you go!

Questions:

1) What serves as your inspiration for writing, also, what made you decide to become an author? People rarely believe me when I say "The icy chill of death," but honestly, yeah, that's it.  I've only got so much time left on this planet to tell stories, and on those days I am seized by the DON'T WANNA DO IT monster, I frequently look at my calendar and go, "Oh, my, time's running out."  

It is not a method I would suggest for everyone. Or even me.  

As for when I decided to become an author, it's probably when I wrote bad eenaged poetry for my seventh-grade Sociology teacher (it included the phrase "the spider of hunger in their bellies," which still haunts me as What Not To Do In Poetry), and she complimented me on it.  I have chased that dragon of unwarranted compliments ever since. 2) What's the best way to hone your skills as a writer? First off: There is no best way.  Every writer has their own personal way of unlocking their muse, and the biggest way novice writers can waste their time is by strictly following someone else's rules.  The best you can (and should) do is to experiment to find out what works for you - are you a plotter or a pantser?  Do you need to write every day, or in grand spurts that consume your life?  Do you need several editing passes to make a story sing, or just a single light redrafting?  

Every "rule" someone gives you is like the Pirate's Code - it's more what you'd call "guidelines," really.

But if you want to ask me what was the most helpful thing, it was reading slush at short story magazines.  It's usually an unpaid positions, but find a couple of magazines you like and follow them on Twitter - every few months, one of them puts out a call for slush readers to serve as the first line of rejection.  It's a volunteer position, but what you get out of it is seeing how quickly stories can lose you when you read a lot of them - and you get to see the errors you make made by other people, without your ego in the way.

Within a few months you'll start writing an opening sentence and go, "Oh, that's one of those opening sentences that starts with all action and no interest" - knowledge you'll have gained by reading roughly 400 short stories.  It's invaluable.  

3) How is writing XXXXfor booksXXXX professionally different from writing on your free time? It's a lot more stressful.  There's this weird capitalist funk permeating America that you have to monetize everything or it's not worth shit, so people denigrate writing free fanfic and dorking around with little stories.  

Do NOT buy into that.  If you're made happy just writing, you don't have to go big league.

If you do, then you basically have to be okay being rejected all the damn time.  Even big authors get their tossbacks.  And you can't take it personally, because sometimes someone rejects your story for wild reasons - they bought a faerie story last month, your story won't fit in the stories they bought this month, it's good but not this magazine's tone.

The rule of thumb is that you can't complain about your short story rejections until you've acquired 200 of them.  I'm not kidding.  Get going.  

4) What is your work schedule like (daily or weekly)? I am a creature of chaos.  I usually write in the evenings, but I have no set schedule.  I just write when the itch scratches (for me, not having written at the end of the day feels kind of like "not having brushed my teeth"), and for as long as I need to.

Also see: find your own methods of what works for you.   5) What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books? That people would pay money for them.  That took a while.  Seven novels, in fact.   6) Do you ever get fan feedback? If so, what do they say? I am lucky enough to get it, yes.  Generally, they're kind, but as a rule of thumb people write to you in private to say nice, heartfelt things and toss the brutal stuff up on the Internet.  

If you're a fan: reverse that, if you can.  Authors need reviews.  Kind ones, if you can be honest about it.  

7) What's your most memorable fan interaction? I've got a lot to choose from, but today I'm gonna go with the Great San Diego Donut War.  https://www.theferrett.com/2016/10/17/the-great-san-diego-donut-war/

8) What do you think makes a great story? I wish I could tell you.  It's different for each person, really.  For me, what I love about stories are characters I empathize (if not sympathize) with, making unexpected choices that spring deeply from the unique well of who these people are.  

The quickest culturally-known example is, of course, Han Solo.  "I love you."  "I know."  I mean, name another character who'd say that in that circumstance.  But it's honest, and it's organic, and it's true.  

9) What are common traps for aspiring writers? I've already listed two - treating other writers' successful habits as iron-clad rules to be followed, and forcing yourself to go pro when you'd rather just enjoy yourself - but here's a freebie third:

Writing lazy.  

If you're good enough, you can float by amusement on your friends on the strength of "good dialogue" or "fancy prose."  But writing is not a single skill; it is a hundred different skills, character and plotting and description and pacing and philosophy, and when you're starting out you're going to be failing in a hundred different ways you don't even know about.  

Your only hope to survive is to hone every talent you see.  Never think, "Eh, that's good enough" - if you read slush, you'll see how many unpublished manuscripts are good enough.  No, you have to file every word to the best of your ability, and then stop and hand it to a publisher when you honestly have no idea how to make it better.  

(With luck, it'll be good enough.  Or the publisher may give you a rejection with some feedback.)

Remember, don't write until it's perfect - just until you have no idea how to improve it.  And when that's done, get it out the door.  For that icy hand of death will come down to destroy everything you love; you have no time, only survival.  

10) Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Recently, yes.  But my day job is programming, so I was reading a lot of technical documentation and didn't have the spare cycles at the end of the day to do fiction.  Its gotten better.  

11) If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be? "You're secretly terrified that you're not as hot-shit as you think you are.  Which is why you're not actually submitting to magazines; by avoiding rejection, you're avoiding finding out whether you're good enough.  But you can be good enough, if only you work at it."  

12) How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Six of my pre-FLEX manuscripts remain unpublished.  (Flex is my debut novel, featuring streams of bureaucromancy, videogame magic, burned children, and a riotous amount of donuts.)  I've had three books collapse under me since I became a quote-unquote "professional."  It's the danger of writing on the fly, and not plotting in advance; sometimes you get so far in, and realize it's not working. 13) How do you select the names of your characters? At random.  I have friends who spend hours choosing the perfect name.  I usually just comb social media, find a good first name, and go with it.  

14) Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones? I have been told not to, but I do.  Then again, I'm usually pretty good at ignoring the feedback.  It's usually just ego-surfing, and if someone hates a book of mine, I generally don't take it personally.  After all, there's lots of books I don't like, and that doesn't mean they're bad books - it just means that book didn't connect with me.

Shakespeare was the greatest writer of all time, and he has entire classrooms hating him on a regular basis.  If the Bard can't avoid criticism, what chance do I have?  

15) What is the most difficult part of your writing process? Since I don't plot in advance, I have a constant habit of writing myself into a corner where there's absolutely no way the characters can get out of this... and then I have to find a way to get them out of this.  Which makes my novels very exciting and unpredictable, because even I don't know what'll happen next, but it does involve a lot of pacing my basement, muttering ideas.  

Oh, and sometimes I'll realize that I took the wrong path and have to trash 20,000 words to find the real heart to this novel. I'm used to that happening by now.  But it really sucks.  

16) Do you ever learn things about yourself when writing? Not really.  

17) Do you have a theme or message across your novels that you try to spread? I don't try to spread a given message, but the trick with being a writer is that you will be drawn to certain themes, and they will pop up again and again if you write long enough.  It's unavoidable, really.  For me, my novels features characters who fuck up a lot - both the heroes and the villains.  And the thing that separates them is that my protagonists are willing to take responsibility for their errors and try to use that to reforge themselves into better people, while the villains are usually just trying to hide, justify, and/or ignore their cruelty.  

Also, I like donuts.  

18) Who are your books mostly dedicated to? Me.  I am what is known in the business as a "quirky" writer, which is to say that my novels are hell to market because they're all distinct and different - one is about an insurance clerk who's become a paperwork wizard thanks to the power of obsession, one's about a five-star restaurant in space and about how food tells a lost boy when he's home, one is about a former-drone-pilot-turned-cyborg who's worried his automated targeting routines will get someone killed, and one is about the digitized dead becoming so popular it's become unfashionable to be alive.  

(If any of those seem good to you, well, I'll direct you to my author page: https://amzn.to/37Ow2WW )

Those are all wild concepts because, well, if there was a book about those things, I would have read it and been content. I'm lazy that way.  As it is, I have to write the books I wanna see in this world.  

19) How do you see writing? As a hobby or a passion? Yes.  

20) How did you celebrate the publishing of your first book? Donuts.  So many donuts.  

21) If you had the chance to adopt any of your books into a film or series would you? If so, which novel or series? I absolutely would, because Hollywood is soul-killing but that's where the money is.  (You don't really make the bucks in novels until those movie executives come a-callin'.  Neil Gaiman once told me the only reason to get a movie made was the money, because you had little control over the final product - and though things are probably different for him since he's started producing his own TV series, I suspect I wouldn't get that choice.)

But if I had to choose one, I'd go with The Sol Majestic - the book closest to my heart. It's basically Willy Wonka in space with fine cuisine at its beating heart, a restaurant bound by passion and love, and I would adore seeing it on the screen.