Fantastic Metropolis

Robert Freeman Wexler: Do you feel particularly drawn to writing either novels or stories? Early in your career you wrote stories exclusively (or at least published stories only); now you are doing more novels. What are you working on now?

Carol Emshwiller: I’ve enjoyed writing novels since I, more or less, learned how. You don’t have to keep getting new ideas and new characters all the time. But for a novel I do need ideas that have a lot to them. I need to want to say a lot of things. As in The Mount... At first I thought that was a short story and then I thought Charley (the point of view character) was interesting because he wanted to be a good mount, and I began to see I could use Charley to say a lot of things. I started to say that I needed to be madly in love with my characters in a novel, but that’s also true with my short stories. When I first started writing I’d go with most any idea that seemed like a good story, but now I don’t write anything I’m not deeply involved with.

I’m not working on a novel now though I’ve thought a bit about it. I’ve liked writing all these recent short stories because you don’t have to wait for years to see if they’ll sell. One of my recent novels, Mr. Boots, hasn’t sold yet and if it wasn’t for Small Beer Press, The Mount wouldn’t be sold either. We worked hard trying to sell The Mount but no luck until Kelly Link and Gavin Grant came along. I’m not sure about doing more novels. It’s a big investment maybe for nothing. Right now I’m doing a series of war (anti-war!) stories. I don’t know how long I’ll want to do that.

Robert Freeman Wexler: In your essay “Writing Rules I Like to Break,” you say that you used to write “structured but much looser stories.” How would you describe your current style?

Carol Emshwiller: I think my earlier stories were structured in a different way. Maybe a more musical way. Themes and variations sort of things. Or, as they said about some of the new music back then, composed in series. Now all that seems old fashioned to me. Now I write more or less standard plots. I find it much more fun, and much more exciting, and much harder work to use more standard techniques (foreshadowing, timing, rhythms—as pulling back after an exciting section,... ) There’s so much more to know and use. Dozens of different skills. That’s what I love to see in other’s writing. That’s what gives me a big thrill.

I like the idea of plot strings to pull the reader along in a novel or story.

I often get bored in stories where the writing is gorgeous but there’s no direction. (Anybody ever read Ronald Firbank? Great surface.)

If I go for plot and yet don’t plot ahead of time, (which I don’t) I get myself if terrible messes. I always wonder if I’ll ever solve the story in a reasonable way. I like writing on the brink.

I started learning to write by learning to plot. Then, when I decided I wanted to experiment with other structures, I had to unlearn plotting one little bit at a time. To me, most of the writers of non-plot structures now, seem to have jumped right in without learning how to plot first. I think the sense of forward motion is important and can only be learned by knowing something about plots. But I want to say again, I don’t plot ahead of time.

I feel I now have plotting in the tips of my fingers. I know at every turn in a story to take the worst for my characters. Or at least not to be very nice to them.