“Ginungagap” appeared in a special science fiction issue of the literary journal TriQuarterly, guest-edited by David Hartwell. I hadn’t known it was a potential market, but my agent, Virginia Kidd, sent the story in. How I happened to have an agent and why she was handling short fiction are stories for another time.
Where were you in your life when you published this piece, and what kind of impact did it have?
I had just turned thirty and lost my job and gotten married and I was in the middle of a nine-month-long writer’s block. So seeing my first story in print was a greatly needed encouragement that I wasn’t entirely mad to think I could be a writer. Later, it and my second story, “The Feast of Saint Janis” both made it onto the Nebula ballot, which brought me a lot of attention, and that helped too.
Probably the best thing that happened, though, was that neither story won. I’ve known people who won major awards right off the bat, and it made every time they didn’t win one feel like another failure. I had the good fortune of getting on the ballot often, so that by the time I did actually win a Nebula many years later, I felt that I deserved it.
How has your writing changed over the years, both stylistically and in terms of your writing process?
The process is still the same—I write as far into the story as I can and then go back to word one and rewrite from there. Eventually, the first page or so is as good as it’s going to get, so I start from the first iffy sentence. By the time I reach the end of a novel, every page has been rewritten at least ten and probably twenty times, but there’s no need to go back and do revisions because they’ve already been made. It’s a slow and laborious way to create fiction and I recommend it to no one. The only advantage it has is that it works for me, while methods that work for other writers do not.
Stylistically ... well, I don’t have a single style. Some stories are written very plainly and others are written as ornately as possible, depending on what they’re about. I simply write as best as I can. That hasn’t changed a bit.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Write what you love to read rather than what you think you should write. Charles Stross introduced me to Martin Hauer, who’s writing an Edgar Rice Burroughs-esque novel about tanks versus magic swords, simply because that’s the sort of thing he likes. He’s got the right idea. He’s far more likely to be a success with that than if be wrote in slavish imitation of, say, Thomas Pynchon.
Also, keep your day job. Even if you’re lucky enough to be reliably productive, money you’re owed can be routinely delayed for a year or more.
Any anecdotes regarding the story or your experiences as a fledgling writer?
I showed the opening section of the story to Gardner Dozois (this was before he became editor of Asimov’s) to get his advice. Later I saw him again and he asked how the story was going. “Great,” I said. “I just wrote a scene in which a cat hijacks a spaceship.”
“Oh, you did not!” he exclaimed.
But of course I had.
That was the only time I’ve ever been able to flat-out boggle Gardner with something I wrote. I’ve often tried to since, but never succeeded. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, like having your first story published.
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Before They Were Giants Page 32