14/06/2016
To beginning writers: think big, paint your dream to the last detail, and then work out how to get from here to there. It's a step-by-step process that is, at its heart, one of self-discovery. When the writing gets hard, don't evade: make fists and wade in, because somewhere at the core of that difficult passage lies honesty. You may not like what it reveals, but you'll know it to be real. It's my feeling that honesty is the most important thing a writer must reach towards: intellectual honesty, emotional honesty, spiritual honesty. It's not easy, since it dismantles your own assumptions (about how people think, how the world works, how you think, how you work, and so on) and can at times reduce you to a quivering wreck. But it's also addictive, and relentless, and ruthless. Writers who write to evade; writers who take short-cuts, intellectually and creatively, constitute the run-of the-mill crowd. You want to stand apart, as best you can, and not let go of your ambition, or settle for second best. Imagine a world out there filled with honest writers, and then set off to join that crowd.
People can like my stuff or hate it, and some will call it arrogant of me when I say I can look in the mirror and know that what I did in these novels, I did as honestly as I could. So, all you beginning writers: trust me when I tell you it's a good feeling, that sense of having done the best that was possible in you, and then leaving it out there (even to see it vilified) without apology. Could I have done better with the series, novel by novel? Possibly now, but not at the time I wrote each one.
Don't talk yourself out of writing if that's what you want to do. When I first started up, I was left slack-jawed by a certain trilogy called The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but rather than giving up in the face of that, I took it as inspiration. I wanted to do what Donaldson had done; and what Herbert had done with Dune. But I also wanted the wry elegance of Zelazny's Amber series, and then the cranky edge of Glen Cook. In other words, take what you like that's out there and make your way, word by word, sentence by sentence, to stand beside them. Don't ever worry about picking up someone else's style: that's temporary and part of the learning curve for beginning writers. Before too long your own voice and your own style will shake out: it will contain bits of every writer you ever liked, and that's how it should be.
Steven Erikson
A group of creative writers based in Los Baños, Laguna focusing on speculative fiction. Yep.
