Martin Amis was interviewed in the July 2nd issue of Publishers Weekly (as you can see, I’m way behind on that magazine) and had this to say about why he spent an unusually long time (well, for him, anyway) revising his latest novel:

Lionel Asbo took Amis a year to write and a year to revise. “I’ve never spent that long revising before,” he says. “A writer friend asked me, ‘What did you put in that wasn’t there in the first draft?’ My answer was ‘anxiety,’ there wasn’t enough anxiety in it. Books come out of a mixture of ambition and anxiety, and the anxiety has to match the ambition, that’s just how it works.”

I don’t know about you, but when I write, anxiety is far from my mind. When I write, I go to a place of peace, a space of almost spiritual contemplation. I am in that zone runners talk about, in which all the world falls away, and everything’s right with the universe.

But then, that’s just me. Who knows? Maybe anxiety is what’s been missing from my writing all along.

What do you think? Do I need to become a little (or a lot) more anxious to become a better writer?

Here, from playwright and actor Wallace Shawn, is a sentiment you might find … inconceivable.

When I think about my own case, I don’t think of writing as a professional skill. I think of it as an odd thing that I feel an impulse to do. You eat chocolate because you feel a desire to do it. You don’t develop a technique for doing it. You don’t get better at it. And I don’t want to think of writing as a skill I have that I habitually exercise according to a certain schedule of procedures. If it had to be that, I’d possibly feel that I’d rather not to it. Actually, I find the idea of writing as a professional skill somewhat sickening.

I’m not religious, but wouldn’t a religious person find something sickening about it if he were asked to think of meditation, prayer, or adoration of the universe as professionalized skills for which a method could be codified? I guess I am halfway between saying that writing is too personal, intimate, humiliating, and miniscule to discuss and saying it’s too sacred and vast to discuss. And I don’t like to think of it as a thing I do the same way again and again. Who says one instance of writing has anything in common with another instance?

(from an interview in The Paris Review #201)

When I was a kid, I joined the Merry Marvel Marching Society the moment its existence was announced in the pages of the comics. Yes, I was that much of a Marvel fanboy, even though the term fanboy hadn’t been invented yet. But considering how I joined, it’s surprising I ever became a member.

I gathered my pennies, nickels, and dimes, shoved them into an empty Junior Mints box, taped it shut, shoved that into an envelope, taped that shut, and mailed the chunky package off to 625 Madison Avenue. After what seemed like a millennium of waiting, and wondering whether the mess I’d mailed ever made it, my membership kit arrived … including this snazzy button, which I still own, and which I often think of wearing to Comic-Con, stopped only by my fear of the heartache I’d feel if I lost it.

But there’s another momento of that membership I’ve lost over the years … and I’m hoping you can help me regain it. (more…)

I wish I could have shared the following videos while Chicon7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention, was still ongoing, as that would have hewed to Edelman’s Schadenfreude Rule of Convention Reporting. But alas, I was far too busy. (Future posts will show you just how busy.)

First up, on Thursday, August 30, Adam-Troy Castro read his short story “My Wife Hates Time Travel,” recently published in Lightspeed. Since you weren’t there, you don’t get any of the chocolate chip cookies he was handing out in support of his new novel Gustav Gloom and the People Taker—which should teach you to show up in person next time.

And then, on Monday, September 3, I read “A Most Extraordinary Man,” a sequel of sorts to Saki’s “The Open Window,” which will be published in the anthology The Monkey’s Other Paw: Revived Classic Stories of Dread and the Dead from NonStop Press. (more…)

Behold the true but secret headline which hides beneath all headlines …

If only a newspaper would run this for real instead of leaving it as subtext!

(panel from Hawkeye #2, November 2012, words by Matt Fraction art by David Aja)

As usual, whenever a new month begins, I gather together all of the dreams I tweeted the previous month to see whether they gain anything by rubbing up against one another. During August, I dreamt of Cornel West, Jaclyn Smith, Nelson Van Alden, Cory Doctorow, Boyz II Men and more.

August 2012

I dreamt I sat with ‪@MaryRobinette at a Star Wars event, eating ‪@Alinea‘s Lamb 86, watching James Lipton interview Ralph McQuarrie. 30 Aug

I dreamt Harlan Ellison had written a controversial story starring Sammy Davis, Jr. which we couldn’t stop arguing about during ‪#Chicon7. 29 Aug

I dreamt I was a new SNL cast member, performing in my second show, having a ball watching the band from backstage. (I don’t remember who.) 29 Aug

I dreamt I sent President Obama a postcard, and though I have no memory of what I wrote, I remember very meticulously applying the stamp. 27 Aug

I dreamt I rode shotgun in a car, trapped listening to an extremely unfunny comedian sitting between me and the driver, testing out his act. 27 Aug

I dreamt my dad was Terry Crews in his persona from the Chris Rock Show and I disappointed him by not understanding a chore he tried to describe. 27 Aug

I dreamt I was in some unidentified foreign country buying pastries to eat aboard a train, and when I turned around — my bags were gone! 27 Aug

I dreamt I escaped (from who knows what) on a riverboat, pursued (who knows why) by a woman who turned herself into a mouse to sneak aboard. 27 Aug

I dreamt a group of friends and I watched ALL of Lost, and as the final credits rolled, we stood, held hands, and sang. I don’t recall what. 26 Aug

I dreamt that as I walked crowded city streets, Darrell Schweitzer zoomed by on a Segway, handing out flyers for a new Kickstarter project. 26 Aug (more…)

If you’d like to know more about The Scarecrow, who I created for Marvel Comics back when dinosaurs still walked the Earth, pick up a copy of Back Issue magazine #60, which features a five-page article by Dewey Cassell focused on the character.

In addition to gathering and making sense of everything I’ve written about the Scarecrow on my blog over the years, Cassell also conducted new interviews, melding it all together to finally put in one place the story of the character’s creation, how he almost got his own book, and why that never came to pass.

So pick up a copy, if for no other reason than that it will satisfy your craving for the history of Marvel in the ’70s that you won’t get a full picture of until Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story is published next month.

According to the latest issue of Roy Thomas’ fanzine Alter Ego, artist Odgen Whitney used himself as a young boy as the model for Herbie Popnecker, star of the wonderfully surreal comic published by ACG during the ’60s.

Which kinda boggles the mind.

I mean—have you seen Herbie Popnecker?

Which makes me ask—does anyone out there have a photo of a young Ogden Whitney? Because if Whitney really once looked like Herbie … this I’ve got to see!

I got back home from my Chicago Worldcon trip after midnight last night—or should I say, this morning—and while I’d love to write up right now how much fun I had, both at the con and elsewhere (like at Alinea!), it’s unlikely I’ll be able to compose my thoughts until the weekend.

After all, I did return from my trip to something like 5,000 emails!

So let these eight photos, one for each day I was away, stand in for the posts to come.

Wednesday
A note left on our table at the start of Next restaurant’s Sicilian meal

(more…)

With Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention, beginning in Chicago just a few days from now, here’s a flashback to the 54th World Science Fiction Convention, L.A.con III, which took place in Anaheim, California. Life sure was a lot different back in 1996.

I’d been editing Science Fiction Age for four years by then, and was about to take over as editor of Sci-Fi Entertainment as well.

Sovereign Media was flying high, with a booth promoting those two magazines plus Realms of Fantasy, and as you can tell from my smile, I was having a blast. Because in addition to the pure joy I was having editing SFA, that was also the year I’d gotten my first Hugo Award nomination for Best Editor.

There’d be three more nominations to come, but the first was somehow the sweetest.

Here’s hoping you get to make some sweet memories of your own next weekend!