Because Talking To People Is Fun
Ran across this today on Tor’s website:
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=11183
Jon Evans discusses the relationship between authors and their interaction with their fans/audience. Here’s his conclusion:
It seems to me that delving into the personal life of a great writer, much less establishing any kind of personal relationship, is usually like unmasking the Wizard of Oz - you’re bound to be a bit disappointed.
Evans isn’t wrong - there’s something akin to a bursting bubble when you see any author outside of the context of his or her professional work. Here’s someone who’s taken you to enchanted lands full of noble (or dastardly) elves and dastardly (or noble) orcs, and you discover that his ass quacks as much as the keynote speaker at a duck convention. Or when you run into the the woman who’s inspired your own imagination with her intricate, so-real-you-can-feel-it alien worlds and her finger is buried in her nose up to the second knuckle. Or, more probably, they’re just quieter, louder, smaller, taller, more boring or more antsy than you expected them to be. It can happen whether you meet them and exchange a few words, see an interview, hear them speak, or notice that they’re in the next lane of traffic.
This phenomenon is especially beguiling when you first encounter the author’s books during your formative years and it feels like their writing has become a part of you.
But it’s all about our expectations - when I went to a Neil Gaiman reading a few years ago, I was super pumped to be there. It was exciting. But I’d read his blog enough to know that he would not make his stage appearance by floating out from behind the curtain, cross-legged, his head spinning around on his neck and issuing laser beams from his eyes. I was familiar with him as a person: he ate sushi, he got jet-lagged, he watched Dr. Who reruns.
Unfamiliarity breeds godhood. Neil Gaiman has, because of his blog, lost his status as a god. He is just a man who puts in the effort to write entertaining stories.
Who would want to be a god, anyway? Seems rather daft. Their lives are filled with capricious decisions and you often have to take weird, corporeal forms and, depending on your origin myth, bang your sister/brother/the earth/the sky/a fish.
Gross.
But there are those authors who simply don’t want to interact with their audience anymore than is required to practice their craft, i.e. releasing a book, or who feel that they’re putting their best foot forward if they only communicate through their fiction (which, if I recall correctly, is Neal Stephenson’s explanation for why he’s not more prolific in non-novel form). And that’s perfectly acceptable, it’s who they are as human beings.
But those authors don’t necessarily suffer from a lack of publicity. Reclusive writers sit at the intersection of mystique and eccentricity. Who wouldn’t want to bask in fame, the audience asks themselves. The author must have a good reason and we want to know what it is. This Recluse Effect is similar to what’s at work in suspenseful horror movies: don’t show the monster, only the shadows it casts. The shadow of the monster is, in this case, the author’s reclusivity, while the monster is the author’s reason to reject fame. This curiosity as to the author’s secret brings it’s own sort of attention - it may not be quite the same draw as having a blog and a twitter feed, but its attention all the same.
The more you talk, the more likely you are to offend, to make a jackass of yourself, to let a malformed opinion run wild. But nobody is forcing the audience to read the blog and let it inform their opinions of the author’s fiction. Let the rest of us be fascinated by what the author had for breakfast (apple-cinnamon oatmeal, by the way).
Even more than controversial or radical politics, being a jerkface is the biggest turn-off in pretty much any arena (except, I suppose, a jerkface competition. But good luck organizing one - the jerkfaces will never show up, just to make you mad). Exploring, learning, and discussing ideas is one of the greatest things about fiction writing and you can’t do that if you’re jerkfacin’ it up and repelling those who might talk to you. I have this blog because I like talking to people, not because I’m trying to convince them that their aunt Hortense will just love a second copy of my book(although a second copy is totally on her shopping list, and it’s almost her birthday!)
I equate an author talking to his or her audience as any kind of human communication: the rewards are intangible, unquantifiable and way better than money. Money can’t buy you love, just seven flat-screen TVs on your wall, all of them showing the first Jurassic Park movie where that cow gets eaten.