Before the interview questions begin, I like to include an interview/article so give me some background information on you like when you began writing, why you like to write, target audience, inspiration comes from what author(s).
The best way to get to know me is to go to http://bobswriting.com/bobrich.html You see, I am a conservationist from way back, and like to recycle. This web page is the introduction to my short story collection Through Other Eyes, and I might as well use it as many times as I can. Besides, people have found it amusing.
Since I wrote that, though, I have stopped thinking of myself as a writer, at least of fiction. I am still a writer of non-fiction, but when it comes to imaginary stuff, I am merely a channel. I create some people, then they do and say what they want to, not what I have in mind. What's more, they often say things I'd never dream of in a thousand years. I've learned a lot of wisdom from some of my characters. For example, a Nepalese boy in one of my stories said, "Beauty is a tree. Inner beauty is the timber that makes a tree a tree. Outer beauty is merely the bark, of no use whatever."
One of the three books I am currently working on started as a way of keeping sane. I was doing therapy with an old blind gentleman. He and his guide dog had both been beaten up by some teenagers. I started a story with an entirely different person -- a 78-year-old lady -- and an entirely different crime, but the same sense of outrage. By displacing the emotion, I could continue to work with my client without joining him in his problem. What did I want the story to do? Vengeance! What did dear old Sylvia do? Gave the criminal guidance, inspiration and eventually love.
Another thing about me is that I am an editor because I was never taught grammar. I went to elementary school in Hungary, then got transported to Australia for the term of my natural life (and you thought the convict era was long over?) and in Australia I got put into a class with kids who'd been exposed to learning English for six years already. So, I never learned the rules, only how to apply them. Clearly that makes me highly qualified to correct other people's writing.
And the final thing I am going to disclose is that actually I am not human. I am a visitor from a distant galaxy. My profession is historian of horror, and let me tell you, this planet is the best place to study in all the universe. Nowhere else will you find an organized game in which sentient, supposedly moral beings kill each other in great numbers. Nowhere else do you find the raising of the young of the species done in such a way that they are damaged in the process, so they get to think of themselves as "never good enough." And best of all, this is the only species I know that deliberately destroys its own life support system. I ask you: how delicious is that for a student of horror?
LEA: I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be my guest today.
I'm only doing it as an excuse to get out of some nasty administrative work. So, you're doing me a favor.
LEA: Can you tell us any major hurdles you've encountered as a writer and how you overcame them?
Well, the first one was learning the language. When I arrived in Australia, I couldn't even read street signs. Even years later, a conversation was all right, as long as only one person spoke. I climbed over this hurdle by reading. By the time I was 17, I'd read every book in both the school and the public libraries. And then my English teacher forced me to go on the debating team. I was the whip, and we came second in all of New South Wales.
The second hurdle was that I became a scientist. Everybody knows that scientists can't do things like creative writing, unless they are named Asimov of course. So, I wrote lecture series, and papers for learned journals, and eventually theses for higher degrees, but that's not writing. I overcame this hurdle by training to be a nurse. The nursing school was quite distant from where I live, so I spent five days a week in a nurses' home. This place was full of sexy 18-year-old girls. So, I had a choice: either chase them and make a fool of myself or find something to fill my off-duty hours. I started writing short stories.
LEA: What have been some of the family and friend reactions to your decision to become a writer? Also, is your family supportive of your writing and writing time?
I tend not to worry about the reactions of other people. I've always marched to my own song. Also, my writing is just me. People can accept me the way I am, including my absolute lack of sense of humor as you can see, or they can jump into the lake. But yes, my wife is highly creative in many ways and as long as I put up with her wonderfully created meals and cakes and cookies, and wear her hand-spun and knitted jumpers, and put up with her beautiful artwork, in exchange she will accept my writing. As for my kids, they are among my very useful critics.
LEA: As writers we know how time consuming researching for our stories and actually juggling outside commitments is with our own writing. Do you have a particular schedule for yourself to make sure you write each day?
Research is something I find enjoyable and relatively easy, especially with the endless resources of the internet. After all, as I said, I used to be a scientist when I was little. Also, what does "time consuming" mean? You know, you can't save time, only spend it one way instead of another. So, I can have fun reading about Assyria in 700 BC, or I can have fun digging in the garden, or I can have fun creating a nice young man who travels in that Assyria I researched. One is not better or worse than the other.
No, I don't have a schedule, and unfortunately, I don't write every day. I work as a counselling psychologist three days a week at the moment. Sometimes, that has meant nine one-hour sessions in a day, because I refuse to have a waiting list. Then, there is my editing. In a good week, I can work my way through two full-length books, but that doesn't leave much time for writing. Also, I am on various committees and volunteer organizations, and somehow, whatever I get involved in shoves me into positions like secretary or treasurer or something. For example, I was recently elected to the Board of Directors of my professional association, and that's like an additional job. So far, I've retired three times. After this election in October 2009, I now have four retirements to go.
LEA: Have you ever received a rejection? If so, how did that first rejection affect you? Positively or negatively and please explain.
When I was involved in athletics, I had a friend who was a hurdler. He said, "You haven't done hurdling if you've never knocked a hurdle over." Well, if you haven't received a rejection, then you are not yet a writer. I got my share like everyone else. Just last week I sent an excellent short story to a magazine, and they knocked it back. No big deal.
My first rejection was for my second book. The first book was such a success that it's still in print, after 23 years. It's the Earth Garden Building Book: Design and build your own house. You might describe it as an inspirational instruction manual. So, I wrote a woodworking book to follow it. Only, this was the time I started to experiment with creative writing, and made it a series of short stories, some from my own life, with each story teaching a woodworking lesson. Since my building book was with Penguin, I submitted the new one. And they rejected it because it was too different from any other instructional book. It did get published years later when a small publisher actually approached me for a woodworking book, and it sold maybe 60,000 copies between 1994 and 1999. Recently I reissued it as an electronic book, and it won the EPPIE Award for nonfiction in 2007. You can have a look at this book, Woodworking for Idiots Like Me, at http://mudsmith.net/woodcont.html.
Fiction is of course harder to get published than non-fiction, and there is more of the author's soul and personality invested in it. When I was a beginning writer I thought I was better at it than I actually was. So, I did get rejections, and they hurt. My response was to hire a freelance editor. I did this three times, for three different books, and each time I learned lots.
LEA: What are some of the 'high's' and 'low's' you have experienced as a writer while establishing your career?
Lea! No apostrophe in the above thank you.
The highs were the success of my non-fiction writing, particularly the building book, and my nearly 30 years of regular contributions to the magazine Earth Garden; and the prizes various of my books have won. I do have a brag list at http://bobswriting.com.
A low can be if I reread some of my earlier writing. It makes me wince. But then, I remind myself, this demonstrates how much I have learned since then. Doing this has induced me to revise my award-winning novel Sleeper, Awake, because one of its major themes is climate change, which is all too topical nowadays. I've been told that if this book didn't have some hot sex scenes in it, it would be good as compulsory reading for high school students.
LEA: Besides the fame and money, what else are you seeking as a writer?
Lea, you are concing to jumplusions. I am not that keen on money, and fame is an illusion that doesn't attract me all that much. You know, there is only one thing you will take with you when you die: the lessons you have learned. Nothing else is important. And if you think I am crazy for not liking money, read http://bobswriting.com/essay.html
I don't know that I seek anything as a writer, any more than I seek anything as an eater. I eat because it keeps me alive, because it is a pleasant activity and because it's part of life. Guess what -- writing is the same. Basically I write for myself. It's great that other people like it too, but that's a bonus.
LEA: Can you give us a sneak peek: from where you get your inspiration/ideas, to the time it takes you to finish a novel.
There were stages in my life when I could find the time to write up to 5000 words a day, in among other activities. So, with research and thinking and constant revisions, I could do a book in about three months. My biography Anikó: The stranger who loved me took me over two years, because it was a very painful, challenging task to start on. But once I got into the writing, I finished it from go to whoa between the start of August 2004 and the end of September.
I don't think I get ideas. They get me, with great frequency and severity. I have to fight them off. I have more ideas than years to write them up in. Where do they come from? From life of course. I have an unpublished science fiction book that's an expansion of a long short story that appeared on the excellent web site Eternal Night http://www.eternalnight.co.uk/ The hero of this book is a little green person with three arms and three legs, but he comes from every bullied little boy with a big heart you've ever met. He is the uncrushable spirit of the downtrodden, who uses intelligence and daring to defeat the powerful. [This novella is now the lead story in Bizarre Bipeds.]
LEA: Have you ever experienced writer's block? If so, how did you cure yourself?
The worst case was when writing my trilogy The Travels of First Horse. I got my little hero out of Egypt by committing and ingenious crime. I knew he had to get to the mysterious city of Meluhha, which my research indicated was in the desert of the Indus Valley. I knew the locations he had to pass through in between, but I just couldn't get into writing about them. So, after a lot of false starts I gave up, and wrote the chapters set in Meluhha. And once I had that destination out of the way, I could fill in the gaps. So, now I often write the end of a book first, or at least get a very clear idea of what it will be.
One of my antibodies against writer's block is to refuse to tell my characters how they should behave. For many writers the muse dries up when they try to force a person in their story to act out of character. The plot should not be a prison. If it doesn't suit the people in the story, it should be changed. As I've said, I don't write my fiction books. My characters do.
Nowadays, I do have a problem. Often, I am forced to put my own writing away for weeks at a time, so when I get back to it, I need quite some warming up before it flows again.
LEA: What do you find harder: sending in your novel for a review or your promotional journey? Please explain.
Blush. I should be doing both of those with great skilful skill and great speedy speed, to quote the great Dr. Seuss. It's been years since I've done either. However, I do get book reviews because I have a condition: I will review another person's book if that writer reviews one of mine. But because I am so busy, I don't accept books sent to me for review. If I find one that really interests me, I'll approach the writer and invite a review exchange.
I guess I promote my editing work far more than my writing. But then, it gives me an income, while sale of books gives me pocket money.
LEA: Are there any other writings in the works? Can you give us any write ups on them?
My last book out is the anthology Bizarre Bipeds, which is currently a finalist in EPIC's e-book contest. The results have not been announced yet, so it's a potential winner at this stage.
I have four unfinished books. I am occasionally working on three of them.
1. The one in reserve has no title yet. It's about questions like: What is the nature of the universe? Is there a God, and what does that mean? What is the role of people including the humans on this planet? What is life, and why?
2. I have a part-completed self-help book on depression. Actually, the way it's going, I might end up splitting it into two books, the second being something like "First aid for living in a crazy culture."
3. A book I really love is at the completed first draft stage. It's about an Australian Aboriginal girl who was born in 1850, after her mother was raped by a white man. Actually, she is an apprentice guardian angel, assigned to humans. She needs to live a number of lives as a human in order to guide our kind, and this is her first life. I already have ideas for the second reincarnation. The end of this life is guaranteed to get you crying. But then there is one more twist that will make you feel wonderful.
4. Hit and Run is the story I mentioned before, with 78-year-old Sylvia as the narrator and hero. She was walking across a school crossing, slower than the crossing supervisor and six little children, when a 14 year old boy in a stolen car appeared out of nowhere and killed them all. Sylvia was the surviving witness. She of course suffered terrible flashbacks the first night, but then the boy appeared in her bedroom. He was very abusive, but over many contacts her gentle empathy enabled them to form a bond. And then psychologist Dr. Jim helped her to realize: she had a loving bond to the boy from a previous life. He used to be her dog...
LEA: Do you have a website where readers can keep in touch to find out what else is new in your writing career?
No. I don't have A web site. I have several. The three main ones are my writing showcase http://bobswriting.com, my psychology site http://anxietyanddepression-help.com and my conservation site http://mudsmith.net. My newsletter http://mudsmith.net/bobbing.html is large enough to be a web site in its own right. I am in the middle of its ninth year of publication.
LEA: Any helpful tips to writers out there who are just beginning their careers?
Life is a journey, not a destination. Write because everyone needs creativity to stay sane. Write because it gives you joy and satisfaction. Write because that is where you are at this moment. And when you write, include a stage when you must make your work the best it can possibly be; not so it can become a bestseller or at least be published, but because it is a piece of your soul, a baby of your spirit.
My own writing improved in big jumps when I got an external editor to look at one of my books. I now have the honor, and sometimes even the pleasure, or offering the same service to other writers.
LEA: I want to thank you for your time and being my guest today.
Lea, for you anything.