James Patrick Kelly 2009 Interview
James Patrick Kelly is nominated for his short story “Don’t Stop.”
First off, how did you first get involved with speculative fiction?
I was a voracious consumer of fantastic stories (and movies and TV and comics) as a kid. When I went to college, sf was considered just a half-step above porn by my English professors, so I settled into a headlong infatuation with the Theater of the Absurd. When I first started submitting fiction for publication after college, I tried my hand at pretty much every genre I could think of, but it was clear that my best stuff was speculative. Then I went to the Clarion Writers Workshop and my fate was sealed.
You’ve dabbled in a lot of fields. What’s the appeal of cyberpunk for you? How about slipstream?
When Michael Swanwick published his controversial essay “A Users’ Guide to the Post Moderns” in Asimov’s, he lumped me in with my pals Connie Willis and John Kessel and Stan Robinson as one of the “humanists,” a group said to be in opposition to the cyberpunks. It was news to us. I went to Clarion with Bruce Sterling and had been following what he called The Movement pretty much from the beginning. I did think that the cyberpunk vision of the future was incomplete. I wrote a story called “Rat” which was a satiric take on the standard issue cyberpunk hero. And although my story “Solstice,” used cyberpunk tropes to forward the humanist agenda, Bruce bought it for Mirrorshades, which became something of a classic anthology. However, it was about that time that I started messing around with computers and realized that, although I was never going to get to outer space, there was an exciting future waiting for me in cyberspace. That’s when I began to lose some of my ironic distance from cyberpunk.
I started thinking about slipstream at the Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop in the eighties when I had to come up with something to say about wonderful and enigmatic stories by the likes of Carol Emshwiller and Karen Joy Fowler. Nothing in my literary toolbox seemed to be of much use. So I set out to acquire better tools.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Probably when I was in eighth grade, although it seemed rather an improbable aspiration. I thought it only slightly less likely that I would be a Martian when I grew up. My dad wanted me to be an engineer, I think. Or failing that, a lawyer.
What was the biggest hurdle you faced breaking into the industry?
Believing that I would make as a writer, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. It took me a long time before to become James Patrick Kelly . I sold my first story in 1975. In 1980 I crammed about 500 rejection slips into a box and tossed it into the attic. In the eight years after I went to Clarion, I published a clutch of stories and a novel; I now regard all of the early stuff as apprentice work. I was very proud of them at the time, but at this point I’m glad they’re hard to find and I intend to keep them that way.
You’ve attended Clarion before and currently the Vice Chair of the Clarion Foundation. Can you tell us the impact Clarion had on you back then and now, and its influences, if any, on the current industry?
Getting into Clarion was the first validation I ever had as a writer. The encouragement of my teachers at the workshop and afterward—especially that of the founders of Clarion, Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm—sustained me through the lean years of rejection. Probably the most enduring legacy of Clarion is my career-long reliance on the workshop method. Just about everything you have ever read of mine has been subjected to group critique. Before I found workshop bliss, I used to put stories away for a month or so to try to get distance from them before I attempted a submission draft. I have found nothing quicker or better for getting that necessary distance than hearing smart people unpack my stories—especially when they speak bluntly about what isn’t working.
As far as fiction podcasts are concerned, you’re a veteran. How do you think podcasts are affecting the industry and your career?
I have no doubt whatsoever that I wouldn’t have been nominated for the Hugo or won the Nebula for my novella Burn had I not podcast it. I talked Jacob Weisman at Tachyon Publications into letting me start with Chapter One the day he published. Four months later, it was available to anyone who had the patience to download all sixteen episodes. And that was quite a few people! There were upwards of twenty thousand downloads that I know about, but no doubt many more than that have listened in, since I released it on Free Reads under a Creative Commons. And Free Reads caught the attention of the good people at Audible.com, who approached me to podcast fifty-two of my stories for pay over at James Patrick Kelly’s StoryPod on Audible. So podcasting has been very good to me.
Having typed this brief history, however, I am not at all sure that my experience is reproducible. As you say, I was an early adopter and, insofar as I had an extensive bibliography, was a something like “name brand” in the early podosphere. It’s much more crowded now, which means that there many, many talented sf writers sharing their work in the hopes of growing their audience and maybe making a few extra bucks. The way I see it, podcasting is a good side bet against the inevitable changes in publishing, but it can’t carry a career.
You write in a variety of formats from short stories to novels. Is there a particular medium you favor and what are its strengths?
Of course, since I haven’t published a full-blown novel in more than a decade, I guess I favor the short form. Short story writers have to be nimble. The work must be focused. It’s a high impact art form; if a story doesn’t leave a strong impression, then it almost certainly has failed. That said, the reader’s investment of attention and emotion in a story is far less than it is with a novel, which is why sf has evolved from story genre to a novel – or trilogy! – genre. Readers tend to remember titles and authors of novels; if they’re trying to recall a story they may only have the vaguest notion of the plot. It’s that one where they push that girl out the airlock. It’s that one with all the forest fires.
Lately, there are a lot of changes happening in the publishing industry. How have you adapted to the changing scene and what steps do you think other authors/publishers/editors should take?
Vernor Vinge wrote about the possibility of a cultural singularity overtaking us someday, and I wonder if we might not be seeing the first signs of a publishing singularity. Of course, one of Vinge’s key insights about that larger singularity was that we who are on the near side of it can’t possibly know what those on the far side will be like. Similarly, it’s hard for me to imagine what a writer’s life would be like without the magazines, without books (or with paper books marginalized) and without the economic infrastructure of readers paying for the texts they read. Are we really going to have to earn our income from sales of tee shirts or some such paraphernalia or by slipping product endorsements into our stories? As you know, Bob, as a starship pilot I couldn’t even manage to navigate my way out of near earth orbit without my Microsoft Envision™ wetware.
So take this advice as from one who admits to being deeply confused about the future of publishing: work on your charisma. Having charisma doesn’t mean you have to soar into Neil Gaiman space, but it does mean that you have to do more than just sit at home and churn out stories that get honorable mentions in the Year’s Best Science Fiction. You have to find – or develop—some attractive personal quality that you can exploit to raise your profile. Blogging? Sure, but not about your goldfish, please. Podcasting? Absolutely, but buy a decent mic. Paneling at cons? Yes, but not if you’re going to spend the entire hour pimping your latest masterpiece. And I’m sorry, but if you’re not giving away some free content on your website, then nobody is going to click over to you.
Let’s talk about your story “Don’t Stop.” What was the inspiration for the piece? Were there any challenges in writing it?
“Don’t Stop” is a story that workshops made – and unmade. I wrote the first draft when I was teaching at Clarion West in 2004. Usually when I do a Clarion, I try to write something to show solidarity with the students and that skinny twenty-three year old wannabe Jim Kelly. Then as Norescon Four loomed, the members of my local workshop, the Cambridge Science Fiction Writers Workshop, proposed to the con that we would critique a story by one of our members in public as a kind of performance panel. I volunteered a very different version of “Don’t Stop.” Others may have a different recollection, but what I remember is that the comments were withering. In fact, I put the story in a drawer for a year because I was so confused by what my friends had said. Eventually I pulled it out again and ran it through BRAWL, another local Boston workshop, which had been kind enough to invite me as a guest. This time the comments were gentler, but no less confusing. There was something wrong with the ending, something missing in the middle. Okay, okay—back into the drawer. Again, it sat for the better part of a year. What finally got me to look at it again was the curse of the June story. Sheila Williams wondered often and at length whether I had something to keep my streak of consecutive appearances in the June issue of Asimov’s. I rewrote the story all over again, added a character, and totally changed the ending. And here I am, writing about a Nebula nominee!
But you really asked about inspiration, so here it is: I’m a runner, and every so often I have to write about my love of running. There is a short passage that includes a few sentences that some of my personal favorites. The main character and her coach are racing each other down a hill:
He always made a distinction between running and jogging. Jogging is a mental activity. You do it because you ought to. Running is a physical activity. You do it because there is no choice. Ought doesn’t win races. You win the race because there’s a tiger chasing you or because you absolutely have to get home in time or maybe just because it’s a beautiful day and you’re seventeen and life is impossibly sweet. Coach no longer looks sixty-eight. He is seventeen all the way to the bottom of the hill.
James Patrick Kelly has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His most recent book, a collection of stories, entitled The Wreck Of The Godspeed, was published in the summer of 2008. His short novel Burn won the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette “Think Like A Dinosaur” and in 2000, for his novelette, “Ten to the Sixteenth to One.” His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel he is co-editor of Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology and the forthcoming The Secret History Of Science Fiction. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and the Board of Directors of the Clarion Foundation. He produces two (count ‘em – two!) podcasts: James Patrick Kelly’s StoryPod on Audible and the Free Reads Podcast. His website is www.jimkelly.net.
Charles A. Tan is the co-editor of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler and his fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has conducted interviews for The Nebula Awards and The Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as for online magazines such as SF Crowsnest and SFScope. He is a regular contributor to sites like SFF Audio and Game Cryer. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, where he posts book reviews, interviews, and essays.
