An Interview with David Barr Kirtley
for Novel & Short Story Writer's Market
by John Joseph Adams

 
Visit the author at www.davidbarrkirtley.com

 

Excerpts from this interview originally appeared in the 2008 edition of Novel & Short Story Writer's Market as part of the article "Speculative Fiction: The Next Generation" by John Joseph Adams.   David Barr Kirtley's short fiction appears in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, On Spec, and Cicada, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction, edited by Mike Resnick, and Empire of Dreams and Miracles, edited by Orson Scott Card. He currently lives in Los Angeles and is graduate student in screenwriting and fiction at USC.   John Joseph Adams is the assistant editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. His nonfiction has appeared in Amazing Stories, Intergalactic Medicine Show, The Internet Review of Science Fiction, Kirkus, Locus Magazine, Publisher's Weekly, Science Fiction Weekly, Strange Horizons, Subterranean Magazine, and Writer's Digest.

How did you accomplish so much as a writer at such a young age? Did you have any strategies for achieving your success? If so, what were they? I've been writing fiction regularly since my earliest childhood, so the success I've had is the result of two decades of hard work. First I submitted to contests for young writers. Success there was a strong hint that I possessed an unusual talent, and that made me more confident about taking risks and making sacrifices to nurture that talent. I also investigated the markets for short fiction. I read the magazines and studied their guidelines. I read dozens of books on writing. I took writing classes in college. I attended writers workshops, such as Clarion. I wrote and submitted regularly, and collected dozens of rejections, and didn't give up. I got to know other young writers, and swapped info on writing techniques and the literary marketplace. I studied the writers I most admired, going so far as to copy out whole novels longhand to examine every detail. I attended author readings. I devoted as much time as I could to reading and writing, which meant cutting way back on visual entertainment and socializing. When did you start writing seriously (as in writing as if it were a profession you were aspiring toward rather than a hobby), and at what age did you first publish? I've been writing fiction regularly my whole life. I was 14 when I wrote my first published story, but I'd say that I didn't really start approaching writing as a profession until years later, when I attended the Clarion workshop at age 21. If you could pass along one piece of advice to the young writers reading this article, what would it be? Practical advice: No matter how good you are, don't depend on ever making a cent from writing fiction. Have another source of income. Artistic advice: If a teacher ever tells you that writing has to be done a certain way, that teacher is wrong. What are some of the sacrifices you had to make in order to achieve your literary success? I've spent my twenties studying writing and living frugally while most of my peers were making the kind of money that allowed them to live it up at the bars and start a family. Do you think that the science fiction/fantasy field in particular is more likely to publish a young author, or are the genre boundaries irrelevant? I think the fantasy and science fiction field may be slightly more likely to publish younger writers, but I could be wrong. I have a theory that there are so many successful young writers being published today because there is so much sophisticated SF available now. What are your thoughts on that? Sure. When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the very concept was considered so shocking and grotesque that she was widely denounced. Obviously that society isn't going to produce a tidal wave of young sf writers. Even my parents' generation grew up with a relative scarcity of fantasy and science fiction. You could read or watch most of what there was, and it was still something of a fringe interest. By contrast, our generation has come of age in a pop culture landscape in which conceptual audacity is a given. The entire iconography of my childhood, from television (Transformers and Dungeons & Dragons) to movies (Back to the Future and Ghostbusters) to video games (King's Quest and Metroid) to books (Narnia and Prydain) is that of fantasy and science fiction. Obviously young writers today are going to want to write fiction that reflects the world we grew up in. On kind of the opposite end of the spectrum, another thought is that Star Wars is one of the primary reasons we have so many young people writing SF/fantasy. This generation of writers (20s and 30s) is really the first to have grown up with Star Wars from a very young age. Is that a contributing factor? This generation is also the first to have grown up with Lord of the Rings, and I think if you're going to single out any work, that one's had a bigger impact. Lord of the Rings influenced just about every fantasy novel and computer role-playing game that followed. Star Wars didn't. I think Star Wars is most significant for the special effects revolution it helped usher in. This generation is the first to have grown up with fantasy and science fiction films that don't suffer from ridiculously cheesy special effects, so I think younger writers have more regard for this type of film. What is it, do you think, that drives young people to become writers of SF/fantasy rather than just readers of it? I think people become fiction writers because their favorite thing to do is make stuff up, and they become writers of fantasy and science fiction because then they get to make up everything.