Interview, Robin Hobb
A little background: A friend of mine, Amy recommended Robin Hobb to me several years ago. I read Assassin’s Apprentice with the appropriately level of shock and horror and complete envy. After that, I ate everything else Robin had written. Since then, i have been an avid fan. Then (belatedly) i discovered she was also known as Megan Lindholm, whose work Wizard of the Pigeons helped define and shape modern Urban Fantasy. Go figure. In any event…
Welcome, Robin Hobb, to Oberon’s Law!
1. The classic question is: how did you get to where you are today with a sprawling amount of highly praised work?
Write. I always wish there were some magical secret or insider trick to pass on, but there isn’t. Every book out there was written one letter at a time. That’s a lot of key-pressing. Every writer I know has received rejection slips. Every writer I know has books that are unpublished because they were not publishable. You have to do a lot of writing before you reach the point where your writing is good. Even after you are published, expect to still get rejection slips, because you will. I just finished a massive rewrite of a manuscript I had turned in because it really did need that much more work to make it a good book. So the only answer to the question is that I persevered. I kept on writing and I kept on submitting what I’d written until it began to sell.
2. What’s been the most unexpected thing about being a successful writer?
All the paperwork involved!!! And not the ‘write a story’ kind. There are interviews (like this one!) And email to answer, and contracts to look at. There are websites to update and blogs to write (you almost have to have a blog is you are a commercially published writer. Not my favorite task but it’s expected. And then there is the tax related paperwork. To be a writer in my home, I still have to have a business license and a zoning variance that allows me to operate a business out of my home. Even though all it entails is having a computer on a desk. In Washington state, I have to compute and pay my Business and Operating taxes quarterly. I do the same for the city of Tacoma. Pierce County has a property tax on small businesses. Then there are my thankfully-only-once-a-year Federal Income Taxes. For which I also have to submit my self-employment tax, and pay all my own social security. Then there is the ‘reading the royalty statement’ headache . . . I remember thinking, when I was growing up, that if I became a successful writer I wouldn’t have to be good at arithmetic. HA!
3. If you could give your teenage self advice–of any sort–what would it be?
Keep a journal. Write in it every day. This is some of the best writing exercise you can get. But it also provides you with a bank of information later in your life. Just what did it feel like when your best friend moved away? When your boyfriend cheated on you and everyone knew but you? What did you think when you were trying to figure out if you wanted to go to college and which one? You think you will always remember those things, but having those journals will help you write a believable teenage protagonist when you are 50. Because some things never change.
4. What projects are you working on now? Could we get a snippet?
No snippets because it’s still with the editor. It would be the rewrite of Dragon Blood that I just sent off to the editors. It was a massive rewrite of what will be the fourth and final volume in The Rain Wild Chronicles.
5. If you were a fruit, what fruit would you be? And why?
What? Wow. No idea of an answer to that one. Somehow, I’ve never imagined myself as a fruit. People do tell me I’m a nut but seldom say what kind. Possibly a wingnut.
