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April 2005 Message from Dan
Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Visitors:
I want to thank so many of you for sending your
suggestions on cities and bookstores (and in some cases, nations)
that I should visit during the summer signing and reading
tour for OLYMPOS. I’ve read all of the e-mails –
more than 100 – and sent them along to my publicist,
Jack Womack (a very accomplished writer as well as publicist
for HarperCollins). Jack knows that more suggestions continue
to come to me through my web site and that I’ll be sending
those along as well – at least until the list of cities
and stores is finalized by the publisher.
Dan signing pages for a limited edition. |
Besides thanking those who took the time
to send in the suggestions, I’d also like to thank
you for the polite tone of the vast majority of the
brief e-mails and for the extra kind comments on some.
(There were no impolite suggestions – only some
very concise ones.) I not only enjoyed reading these
notes but was struck – not for the first time
– by the politeness and generosity shown by so
many people who read my work and who take the time to
interact with me.
This tone is reflected in almost all of the exchanges
I’ve seen in the Forum on my web site –
a place I visit only infrequently since the interlocutors
there carry on their conversations so well without my
kibbitzing. Not being familiar with chat rooms, other
authors’ web sites, or forums in general, I’ll
have to go along with the opinion of several more experienced
web-forum travelers who tell me that the tone of conversation
on the Dan Simmons Forum is exceptionally civilized.
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I agree. I’ve never imagined a “Dan Simmons’
reader” nor theorized on any traits such a mythical
beast might have, but it pleases me very much to think that
a possible common element to a Simmons’ readership might
be a high level of politeness and civilized behavior. (Not
to be parental or anything, but this is coming from an elementary
teacher of 18 years who, every year on the first day of school,
handed out the ever-thickening phonebook-sized tome of obligatory
“school rules” and then had the sixth-graders
toss them aside, telling them that the only rule that would
apply in Mr. Simmons’s class would be – “We’ll
all treat each other with dignity and respect this year.”)
The other day, after reading and forwarding the book tour
suggestions and being struck by all this politeness, I did
encounter a less-than-polite letter on the Forum – one
addressed to me. Its rudeness was the common garden variety
sci-fi-ish fanboy arrogance I tend to associate with a small
minority of people at SF conventions or somesuch, and the
note began with an accusation that I’d taken all of
my ideas from another writer. It was late in the day when
I encountered this posting and I made the mistake of responding
to it on the Forum. And I compounded my mistake by responding
sharply and with sarcasm. (Writers tend to act that way when
they’re told, by anyone, that their life’s work
is founded on plagiarism, but that’s no excuse.) Even
by pointing out that the visitor’s posting had been
impolite and not in keeping with the tone of the Forum, I
was being impolite myself – I consider all the visitors
to this web site as visitors to be treated with the respect
one treats visitors in one’s own home – and I’m
sorry for responding at all.
If I had used such sarcasm in my class, I would have publicly
apologized to the student. In this case, sarcasm not only
violates the polite tone established and maintained by others
on the Forum but is always an attempt to violate the dignity
of someone else (however insulting or poorly informed their
comment may have been.) I can only console myself by knowing
that if I were my old friend Harlan Ellison, I would have
driven to the offending person’s home and not left until
their forehead had been well and truly sewn to the carpet.
Everything is relative.
This raises the larger question – and one that I’ve
thought about often in the 24 years I’ve been a professional
writer: What does an author owe his or her readers?
My own answer has been – nothing except the promise
to produce the best and most honest writing one is capable
of.
That excludes a lot of things which many reasonable people
assume are part of a published author’s obligations
– signing books, responding to letters, looking over
manuscripts, giving advice, creating a web site, answering
posts in a forum there, giving readings, or even going on
tour and appearing in public.
Some of those things I choose to do because I believe
they’re important (going on tour, signing books at bookstores,
meeting readers at signings, teaching the occasional writing
class to adults at a place of my choosing) and others I will
never do (read unsolicited manuscripts to give advice,
sign and return books that arrive without prior approval),
but I consider all these things optional, to be decided by
each author.
The only obligation any writer has to his or her
readers – and I believe this absolutely – is to
write to the best of his or her ability and to write as honestly
as possible. All the rest, as they say, is gravy. (To the
writer as well as the reader.)
The encouraging thing is that most readers understand this
almost intuitively. Perhaps they know that an old saying is
correct – that the only thing one can really steal from
a writer is his or her time. Still, after many months of solitary
writing, revising, proofing, and then moving on to a new project,
I look forward to book tours – they tended to be annual
for me, but it’s been two years now since my last one
– as a chance to meet readers, look them in the eye,
hear their opinions, thank them for the trust they put in
me (at the cost of even paperbacks these days, much less hardcovers,
I describe the purchase of every book as a sincere and even
reckless act of trust), and perhaps entertain them a bit with
a reading or talk.
The only drawback I find in book tours (besides the schedule,
of course, which is carefully calculated to kill
the touring author – and this is not quite a joke, as
you’ll see if and when I get around to writing the article
I’ve researched on writers and celebrities who’ve
keeled over dead while on tour or immediately after
– and not that small a number) . . . the only other
drawback I find in book tours is that the conversations with
readers are necessarily so limited in time and focused
on my writing.
This sounds absurd – even to me – since the only
reason readers-of-Simmons’s fiction and this writer-of-Simmons’s-fiction
are meeting at all is because of the books, but perhaps some
of you understand what I’m talking about. Other published
writers would understand at once. I’m pleased to count
more than a few writers as my friends – some very well
known indeed, some not at all – but the one thing writers
have in common when socializing is that they tend not to talk
about the other’s work (or one’s own usually)
beyond the most general, cursory, and quick comments.
When I have a few minutes to talk to someone at one of my
signings or readings, I enjoy it most when the conversation
shifts (preferably quickly) to what we really have in common
– i.e. being readers. Which other authors do you
like? Have you read anything really good recently? What would
you recommend?
In that sense, my book tours have been not only energizing
and enjoyable but educational. I don’t think I’ve
ever come back from a few days or weeks on the road peddling
one of my own books – always, you might remember, something
I’ve finished many months or even a year ago and since
moved on to other projects that are commanding my attention
– without returning with a reading list for myself on
scribbled cards, napkins, and bookmarks.
Which raises another question I’ve thought about for
years – Have you ever considered the fact that we
readers are the largest invisible minority in America (and
certainly the most disorganized and least respected) and that
many, if not most, of the most important aspects of our lives
are dictated by the single fact that we’re addicted,
convicted, recidivist, irredeemable readers?
But that’s a discussion for another time. If I don’t
get to it on this web site, perhaps you and I can discuss
it in person some time soon.
Sincerely,
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