November 23, 2005
"What does Mr. Turkey say? Gobble, gobble, gobble."

Okay, with that, happy turkey day.

Now, the kewl thing about blogs is in most cases we can ask people questions or throw in our own comments as if we're having some sort of meaningful dialogue. It occurred to me that I have some questions for other authors, especially those who make their living writing either novels or a mixture of freelance and novels. So I thought I'd ask some of them here. Anybody is welcome to give me an answer.

1. Do you ever look at the financial insecurity of writing for a living and think, "I should chuck this for a real job."

2. How often do you think, "Oh man, I've got to write about this shit again?"

3. Do you ever find yourself working on fiction and think, "Christ, this is hard. It's all crap, crap, CRAP!" I'm going to have to go get a job for UPS or something.

4. Do you ever wonder what you would do with a million dollar book advance?

5. Really, we all thank our spouses for their support, but do we really think they understand what we do for a living?

6. Do you ever think, "I hope nobody finds out that I'm really faking all this and I'm a fraud."

7. Do you clean your office on a regular basis or do you, you know, kind of let it go too long?

8. What knicknacks do you have on your desk? I'll tell you mine: a Beanie Baby spider, a Peanuts coin bank given to me by my son, a Darth Vader Pez dispenser given by a friend, a painted rock paperweight of my wife's, a beer stein my brother gave me when I was about 9 years old when he got back from Germany (I keep pens in it), a rolling eyeball that always looks up (I think of it as a metaphor), a little metal sculpture doo-dad, one of those things you turn upside down and the colored liquids all shift.

9. What color is your office phone?

10. Do you use an analog tape recorder or a digital tape recorder to tape interviews?

11. Do you still use floppy disks because burning chapters to CDs is a pain in the ass?

12. Mac or PC?

13. Listen to music while you write or not? What do you listen to?

14. Do you ever worry that all this staring at a computer will wreck your eyes?

15. Do you have a story idea you want to write and publish, but it's so different from what you regularly write and publish or the feedback you've had on it isn't so good, that you really, really want to write it anyway?

Best,
Mark Terry