how writers do what they do: James Maxey

I just got several more of these interviews in, I should probably spread them out over time, but I’m never any good at doing what I should do.  Ha!  My mother can attest to this.  But today I’m delighted to bring to you the amusing James Maxey, author of several cool dragon books, Bitterwood, Dragonseed, and Dragonforge, a super-hero novel, Nobody Gets the Girl, and a new one on the horizon, Greatshadow, plus a new short story collection, There Is No Wheel. I first met James ten years ago (!!!) at Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp course.  I really, really can’t believe that was 10 years ago.

Maya: Hi, James!  So, this is all about creative process.  Can you tell us something about how you write?

James: My writing process is the least efficient, least effective method any author could possibly come up with, I fear, at least with regards to first drafts. I set aside windows of time to write, then spend the vast bulk of those windows of time doing everything I possibly can to distract myself from writing fiction. I read, watch TV shows on the internet, catch up on emails, blog posts, interviews, etc., then maybe, if I’m lucky, squeeze out 250 to 500 words before I get the cycle of distraction going again. Sometimes, in great fits of panic or guilt, I’ll manage to bang out 1000 or even 2000 words between distraction cycles. It’s a jerky, messy, troubled affair that terrifies me as I’m trapped inside it. Have I no discipline at all? Was I always this useless?

And yet, little by little, the words accrete. It’s like frost building up in an old refrigerator. At any given hour, the build up is imperceptible. Yet, after three or four months, there’s a giant lump of stinky ice that’s filled all the available space. And that’s what my first’s drafts resemble, giant lumps of stinky ice. So for my second draft I go after this with a serrated knife and a hammer and try to pound the ice free so I can carve it into something a bit less lumpy.

So, 90% of the first draft process for me involves feeling bad about my so-called talent and a more diffuse worry that I’ve rendered my brain useless for more respectable lines of work by spending all my college years, when I could have been learning actual job skills, playing Dungeons and Dragons and trying to get laid and utterly failing to notice how the first activity cancelled out the second. The remaining 10% of the first draft process involves me feeling like Jehovah God himself, Father of Worlds, Creator of Men, High King President of Dragons, and Grand Poobah of Imaginationland. This happens when some character I created as an afterthought has just said something clever, and I know with clarity that I really am a genius. Then I have to write the next sentence and the bottom drops out from under me and I tumble into despair.

I sometimes worry about my mood swings.

Maya: Tell me about it.  I know that roller-coaster too well.  So what are you inefficiently working on right now?

James: Currently, I’m under contract to turn in two books I’ve not yet written, one this November, one next July. Contracts have a wonderful way of clearing all the clutter from one’s mind. I know what I’m supposed to be working on! Alas, part of the clutter that got blasted away when I signed the contracts were things like characters, plots, etc. And yet, I’ve never failed to meet a deadline. It turns out that, when panic really sets in, I get kind of good at making up stuff. And, for this project, I do have something of a grand master plan in mind, a very rough, very loose outline for six to eight books that pit human protagonists against big freakin’ dragons. I don’t really have a roadmap, but knowing my final destination gives me something like a polestar. As long as I can look up and still see I’m headed for that star, I know I’m on the right track.

Maya: Have you ever had writer’s block, or given up writing for a while?

James: I’m in the grip of it right now! Since I’m writing Hush, the second book in my Dragon Apocalypse series, I have complete writer’s block on the dozen other novels that I’d also like very much to write. I’d love to one day be a writer who can work on more than one project at a time, but so far I haven’t mastered the skill.

As for giving up writing for a while, sure. I have long gaps in my writing resume, months at a time when I didn’t crank out anything new. After I finished Greatshadow, I basically went almost 8 months without producing anything while I tried to sell the book. I didn’t want to write the next book in the series if I didn’t sell the first book. And, I worried about starting up something new and unrelated, only to have to abandon it if I did sell Greatshadow and suddenly had deadlines to meet.

In a perfect world, I would have used thos

e 8 months to either work on Hush or finish a completely new novel. I was paralyzed both by my confidence that Greatshadow would sell, and my uncertainty of what the timing would be. Confidence and uncertainty can induce writer’s block in me like nothing else. I either have to blast away the uncertainty (in this case, by making a sale) or blast away the confidence and convince myself that my last novel was no good and it’s time to trunk it and move on.

Wow, I seriously need therapy. These cannot be the thought processes of a well man.

Maya: *laughing*  Maybe there is a middle path?  But nothing about writing is moderate, if you ask me, so maybe go with your neurosis!  Go deep!  That’s where the good stories are!  But tell me about the one you’re working on now, the sequel to Greatshadow, right?

James:  It’s called Hush. It’s set in a world where dragons were dominant before the age of man, but as mankind grew in power, the dragons that survived increasingly found themselves relying on elemental magic to survive, to the point that they became living embodiments of these elements. Known as primal dragons, these creatures are essentially forces of nature… there’s a primal dragon of fire, another of storms, a dragon of the seas, etc. The primal dragon of fire has a small part his spirit in every flame, so that each flickering candle is an eye through which he gazes out upon mankind, ready to pounce and devour anyone careless with fire. Each book finds a protagonist in conflict with one of these primal dragons.

In the novel, a woman named Purity who worships Hush like a goddess has decided that it’s time to speed up the day when the sun shall shine no more. The icy fragments of Hush’s broken heart have been shaped into weapons, and she intends to use these to enter abstract realms where she will hunt down Helios as he travels across the heavens and kill him, bringing permanent winter to the earth.

Standing in her way are a pregnant warrior princess named Infidel, a ghost named Stagger who’s animating a driftwood golem, and a witch named Sorrow.

Hush is my most ambitious novel to date, and I say that having just written Greatshadow, my most ambitious novel to date. With my Bitterwood novels, I took great delight in grounding everything in the material world. Everything that transpired had to make sense in terms of the laws of physics and biology as we know them. They were essentially science fiction in fantasy drag. Having written three books where I systematically removed all traces of actual magic from dragons, I’m now rushing in the complete opposite direction, delving deeply into myth and symbolism. After spending most of my career trying to ground my work in gritty realism, I’m writing these books with frequent excursions into the abstract realms that border the material world, places where ordinary senses can’t be trusted and the laws of time and space play second fiddle to the logic of dreams.

There is the very real possibility of failure when one attempts something like this. In Bitterwood, I don’t think I was asking that much of a reader to have him accept that my hero was shooting down dragons using only a bow and arrow. In Hush, I’ll reach a point in the story where a naked shape-shifting woman in a walrus-hide boat sailing on an ocean of stars is about to murder the sun with a harpoon carved out of the broken heart of winter. That sounds so obviously plausible when I say it. I don’t know what I’m worried about.

Sweet merciful Jesus, I’ve never been so terrified of a book in my life.

Maya: That’s the best sign that you’re on the right track, I think.

For more information about James and his books, visit his site.  For more in this author interview series, click “author interviews” in the tag cloud.  More to come…