Finally, I have a short story coming out later this summer -- "Night of Two Moons" in the Summer 2002 issue of BLACK GATE -- that I think would be a fabulous movie. Quite often, short fiction lends itself to a movie better than a novel, simply because with shorter material a director has more time to bring out the complexities of character and relationships. Too often these elements of a story get glossed over in the rush to make a coherent movie out of a full-length novel. "Night of Two Moons" is about a traitor during a war and his attempts to rationalize his choice as he watches the people around him being killed. Like my books, it has many of the elements Hollywood wants in a movie, but it's short enough to be translated to the screen without sacrificing too much in the interests of time.
DL: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
DC: Giving advice, particularly on an endeavor as personal and idiosyncratic as writing can be tricky. That said, I do have a few suggestions that are worth what you're paying for them. First off, all the writers I know began as readers, and so for younger writers out there I would say read as much as you can. That's how we begin to learn our trade. We read the work of other men and women and learn what works and what doesn't, what makes a compelling character as opposed to an uninteresting one, what makes a narrative flow and what makes it stall, what elements make a world believable and fun to visit. As we experience other people's stories, we begin to get a sense of how we might write our own, not by imitating, certainly not by stealing ideas, but rather by applying storytelling techniques that we see to our own ideas.
I would then say that a writer writes. That may seem laughably basic, but how many times do we see in media the stereotype of the frustrated writer awaiting inspiration. I find that image offensive. It implies that most of the time writers aren't working. They're just waiting for that one magical moment to strike and then--POOF-- out pops a bestseller. By my experience, that's not at all how it works. A writer writes, every day. Some days go better than others, and occasionally you have a day where nothing comes or what does come is worthless. But the important thing is to write. I don't believe in writers' block -- for me (and all writers are different, so I'm not casting aspersions on others) if I'm "blocked" it usually means that I've taken my narrative or one of my characters in the wrong direction. But if I make myself write every day, I never have to wait around for inspiration. Which is a good thing,
