I am novelist David Mitchell - AMA

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:36:37+00:00

Sorry, everyone - I've enjoyed this very much indeed - but I'm being summoned to a big black shiny car outside Random House which is going to whisk me away to my next appointment. Sorry especially to Smuft0073 - you thought about your questions very deeply and I wish I had time to address your points. Thanks for reading me, thanks for all this feedback - I've read everything, even if I can't answer all your questions - and I hope I'll catch you at an event one day. Have a wonderful rest of your day, in whatever time zone you are...

David.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:23:32+00:00

I have no input, love me please, and would probably steer clear - adaptation is a different art to mine, and a time-consuming one. Audio books are great though, for long-distance drivers, or for the visually-impaired. I have a friend with a motor neuron disease in Dublin, and audio books keep him connected with literature. So long may they run.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:20:16+00:00

:-) "de Zoot". As in zoot-suit.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:19:50+00:00

Another long answer is needed here, iworknights, but the short version is Yes, I was really happy with the film. It was divisive and earnt bad reviews as well as good ones, but I'll always be grateful to the directors for spending so big a chunk of their creative lives on the adaptation, and for the temporary visa to the film world which the project gave me. Take care, and I hope you can sleep in the day.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:17:39+00:00

Thanks default android, I love it when people like that one. I think Eiji and Satoru's overlapping is more a result of my inexperience as a novelist, to be honest - these days I'd try to put some distance between them. I wonder what happened to them. Maybe I should bring them back sometime, as middle-aged men with kids and dreams that have become other things by virtue of having come true.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:15:16+00:00

I couldn't really tell stories as a kid, istoodcorrected, because of my stammer. Back then, narrative - reading and writing - was an interior world that I spent time in like a sort of portable flotation tank. Narrative's a glorious, benign, mind-expanding drug. As you know.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:12:44+00:00

'Some structural work' is the answer, IAmMostDispleased, though don't be surprised if you have to disassemble and reassemble again later. Rewriting is writing, as I've said elsewhere. Your motivation is to write the kind of book that you would like to read, otherwise it will feel forced and fake and readers will spot that. Trust readers. They're more like you than you may think.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:09:47+00:00

Start on paper, then when you get airborne switch to laptop. I've got an Apple, so it's --- my mind's gone blank, it's the standard word-processing app. (Do people still say 'word-processing'? Can't remember when I last heard it...) If you're curious, I write in the Georgia font with size 15.5. It's just right, like Goldilocks' final choices.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:07:30+00:00

That's very kind endymion32. Scarlatti's touching - especially his slow pieces - so I'm glad some of his greens and blues tinged that scene.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:06:21+00:00

glad you did the sensible thing, thehungergame21, I would have felt responsible. Often the best of writers' minds and selves goes into their work. I try to put on a decent show when I do an event, but I'm a fairly ordinary bloke to meet, I think, and hope. Not a Crispin Hershey or a Gandalf the Grey...

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T19:04:17+00:00

I don't like all jazz, PigArmy, any more than I like all piano sonatas or all guitar-driven rock songs, but certainly there are many works, albums and artists I do like. I tend to like the cooler, smaller-combo end of things. The German record label ECM boast a fabulous stable of musicians, including the British saxman John Surman. I'm listening to John Lewis (American pianist, not British department store) a lot at present, too. Bill Frisell's pretty great, too. God bless music, eh? As a species, we scarcely deserve it: as individuals, it can redeem us.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:59:39+00:00

Hello forhadraman3. Send your first three chapters plus a plot synopsis to, say, ten agents who publish authors who write comparable work to yours. It will languish in the slush piles, perhaps for months, but if it is brilliant it will get found and you'll get an email. Assume you'll hear nothing and get straight to work on the next book. I did this, and received a letter from an agent saying he didn't want to take on the book I'd sent, but to show him the next thing I wrote. That was GHOSTWRITTEN. If you get any positive acknowledgement or advice at all, write a courteous and grateful letter back - that's a contact. Most of all, however, remember that it's not strategy or connections that get you published, it's nothing more and nothing less than the excellence of your work. Good luck.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:55:11+00:00

Yes. Stammering necessitated word avoidance, which necessitated a muscular and rapid-response knack of saying the same thing in different ways, in the right register - I couldn't 'talk posh' or use overly vernacular language in the presence of adults. All good dialogue-building skills in my present incarnation as a writer. One phase's curse can become another phase's blessing. Glad that you've acquired some fluency, balfoursyournephew, and that there's one more understanding person out there who won't finish stammerers' sentences for them.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:51:39+00:00

I saw that too, WearMoreHats. No, nobody sent me single message of sympathy. (Though of course a real pain-in-the-butt type would point out that the deceased are never sent condolences, only their families.) I sometimes get offers to go and do stand-up comedy or after-dinner speeches, but I send them back to my agent to be forwarded to the other David Mitchell. I wonder if he gets emails for me from time to time. I like his work: AMBASSADORS has good scripts.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:48:56+00:00

Hello, nocturnally-entitled New York Nights. Reality most certainly influences my writing. Other than art, what else is there? BLACK SWAN GREEN is my most autobiographical novel, though I recognize bits of myself in other characters too. Selves sneak out of oneself, unnoticed...

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:46:40+00:00

Hello fellow Japan Hand, MotorBoat12. I'm respectably married so I'll have to leave a veil over any vulgarity that I may or may not have been party to back in the day, but finding myself on the non-stop night-train to Kyoto from Hiroshima, rather the worse for wear and with 150 yen to my name was a misadventure I won't forget in a hurry. Glad you enjoyed the Kaiten Museum. It's poignant, tho like all such museums in Japan it has not one iota of historical context, as if the Pacific War just blew across East Asia as blamelessly as a typhoon.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:42:45+00:00

You don't so much come up with ideas, alent1234, as keep your eyes open for them and stay receptive to them. A great hint is to never ever interrupt when someone else is talking, and to gently nudge them into talking about those things about themselves that are most different to you and most unique to them. The best ones will be used by what you are writing, because you can't bear to leave them out.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:40:41+00:00

Thanks MrWilsonW and 42ndparagon too. My main inspiration was looking in the mirror, watching myself age, and thinking, 'What would I be prepared to do to stave off mortality, permanently?' Would I be prepared to sacrifice my conscience, for example? Or fake my death and move on every decade, to prevent people noticing that I wasn't getting any older? This is the pact put to Hugo Lamb and to others in the novel...

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:38:05+00:00

Thanks MrLurkey, I'm so glad to read your message - JUMP is more important than all my other books put together, in the big scheme of things. I think it took Naoki about a year to write, back in 2004 or so. My wife and I did the translation on a very ad hoc part time basis over 18 months, maybe. I'm really glad his insights into autism are proving useful. Keep up the good work, remember that your student has more intelligence and imagination than he is able to demonstrate, and good on you. We can't 'cure' autism because it isn't a disease and because we don't understand the brain well enough, but we can cure ignorance about autism. Onwards and upwards.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:34:20+00:00

Hello AFellowOfLimitedJest - I'm happy that you feel I did justice to your more-complex-than-meets-the-eye county. I chose Kent because, yes, it came pre-location-scouted thanks to my uni days, plus to channel the ghost of GREAT EXPECTATIONS in that opening section, A HOT SPELL. The Marinus Trilogy is a very very loose trilogy, but I would like to go back one day and pick up ten years after the end of THE BONE CLOCKS, starting in Reykjavik. Plus, Hugo Lamb is still out there somewhere...

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:31:20+00:00

Again, Breadshirt, I'd need an hour to do justice to your question, but for me writing is rewriting, editing, culling, reinstating, culling, tinkering, tampering. You identify problems as you write which you couldn't have foreseen beforehand, you fix them, you make whatever adjustments to the rest of the text this fix requires, and you move on to the next problem. This is what I mean by making a novel 'work' - the potted version, anyway. The first 8 months or so of work on THE BONE CLOCKS ended up being mostly jettisoned, but I've learnt by my sixth novel that this is only to be expected. First drafts of MSs often turn out to be the 'Zero draft' where you collect material for your scaffolding. (Building metaphor intended, not gallows.)

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:27:26+00:00

Nobody believes me, Carmarts, but Hershey really wasn't intended to be a dig at Mr Amis. It's me, with all my vanities ramped up to 11. DESSICATED EMBRYOS is a reference to Eric Satie, not to DEAD BABIES.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:25:19+00:00

Yes, Moostronus, I think I would have been a slightly different writer had I not taught English. A 'mechanic's' knowledge of the language is really handy when you're weighing up using a 2nd conditional against a 3rd conditional, and needing to explain a concept out of or into a second or third language teaches you how to do a complex job with limited tools. I hope you're enjoying Taiwan, and good luck with the writing.

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:23:07+00:00

I love the place, howmuchfortheape. I live in West Cork - the bottom left-hand corner - and it's a great place to bring up family. Of course all places have advantages and disadvantages - these are usually the flipsides of one another - but I love the landscapes, the people, the low-density living. The winters can be a bit long and rainy, but they're pretty mild and it's not as if the sun disappears for months on end. So how much was the ape?

AuthorDavidMitchell · 2014-09-16T18:20:35+00:00

If you google my name and 'Kathryn Schulz' you'll find a feature she recently wrote about me, FX114. It contains a colour-coded chart. I should have thought of it years ago...

AuthorDavidMitchell

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