Interview with Kevin J. Anderson

SRM: In the past, you’ve expressed a certain amount of skepticism about the “artsier” aspects of writing—watching sunsets for inspiration and so forth. It sounds like, for you, the spiritual experience is in the doing—in sitting down and producing.

KJA: Yes. And I do get inspired by watching sunsets and going through the mountains—and hiking. In fact, I did two Fourteeners yesterday, Mt Evans and Mt Bierstadt across a Class 3 ridge, which was miserable because it was storming, but still an epic and gratifying climb.

The thing I’ve been more skeptical about is the more literary navel contemplating and writers moaning about not being inspired, or overanalyzing some metaphor or other, while forgetting to enjoy the story for its own sake.

The writer’s job first and foremost is to tell a good story. There have been many very Precious literary works—I want you to capitalize that P—that just don’t have good stories.

The story is the underpinning of all fiction—story and characters. And if a writer forgets that, I don’t care how fancy their writing is, how intense the scenes are, how apt their metaphors are…they’ve failed as a writer if they forget that foundation.

SRM: What, for you, defines a good story?

KJA: I like an interesting plot, interesting people, an interesting setting. I want to be entertained and educated and inspired, all of that together…that would make just about the greatest novel ever.

SRM: You’ve remarked that part of the reason you love Frank Herbert’s Dune is that it works on so many different levels: as an adventure, as an ecological parable, as an exercise in worldbuilding…

About Grand Admiral Sean 7 Articles
Grand Admiral Sean lives in Colorado.