by Rajan Khanna

Tad Williams is a New York Times and London Sunday Times bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, with novels published in twenty languages and a global readership. He hosted a syndicated radio show for over a decade, co-created the first completely interactive television program, and has worked in many forms of media, including film-making, theatre, television, and singing for several years in a rock n roll band. He lives quietly with his wife, children and cats in the redwood mountains above Silicon Valley. He writes at least one novel a year: his form is the epic, and Tad writes long, multi-book series.

In June 2001, Tad began a project called Shadowmarch, an online novel available by subscription, with new chapters being released twice a month. Unfortunately, the experiment (the first of its kind at that scale) was not successful enough to continue. Fortunately, that story, fleshed out in more detail, is now available in book form, the first of a several volume series.

RK: You're mostly known for long works of fiction. Even your stand alone novel, War of the Flowers, was a big book. Why do you think your writing lends itself to the long form and what are the advantages and disadvantages? Is it in any way influenced by your audience and the expectations of your readers?

TW: I can't say that I set out to write a particular size of book, it's just that some ideas are obviously longer and more complicated than others. (The obvious example being something like OTHERLAND.) I just want to tell the story at the length that seems right. Because Theo's story in FLOWERS was going to be almost entirely his viewpoint, as in TAILCHASER'S SONG, it seemed like a standalone.

My readers will obviously tolerate, and some may actually prefer, big books, but that's more the result of my approach, that I've found readers like that, rather than any attempt on my part to write any particular sort of thing.

RK: As someone who's written for a variety of media - novels, screenplays, comics, and others - do you find that you have to change the way you work or are you basically using the same 'muscles' for everything?

TW: The creativity muscles are the same, but, as with different sports, which ones get used most differs. Short works are all about fast-twitch, doing a lot quickly, whether in a short story by being more poetic and less expository, or in a film script by being more
action-oriented. A long novel, on the other hand, allows me to stretch out, to develop things slowly, especially plots and character development, and to bring in lots of small details that add to the symbolic patterns of the work.

RK: What is your writing routine like? Do you write every day? Are you an outliner? Do you play dialogue out in your head?

TW: I try to write every day, but in practice it doesn't always work out. I do more work in my head than most people -- I don't outline that much, but I work things through while I'm driving around, sitting and staring, etc., then write for fairly intense stretches of a couple of hours. A working day for me might be four to six hours of thinking while I do other things, then two or three hours of actual keyboard-punching.

RK: The idea for Shadowmarch was ambitious and experimental. Even though it (unfortunately) didn't work out the way that you'd planned, what did you take away from it? Did it in any way influence the way you write?

TW: I think it reinforced certain things I already did, namely that I trust my instincts (or subconscious, or Muse, or whatever you want to call it) to not get me into situations I can't get out of. In fact, my subconscious is usually much more creative than my conscious mind, and puts things together in a much more elegant way than if I tried
to force a completely intellectual solution.

Ultimately writing is a rather grand combination of plagiarism and invention, and the plagiarism part works best when you can cast through all the ideas you've seen and heard, real and fictional, and pick and choose and reassemble. Usually that works best at the level below conscious thought (although the conscious editing brain is important to make sure you're not repeating yourself, or using something too similar to someone else's reality or invention.)

RK: Would you ever try anything that experimental again? Are there any other ideas like that waiting in the wings?

TW: I've love to do more experimenting -- I'd enjoy writing a Douglas Adams style comedy, for instance, and publish it online. We'll see. I've got a lot of ambitions, and I have to ration them out, because most of them won't make any money, and I do have all those bills to pay, children to feed, stuff like that...

RK: You've been all over the genre map, writing animal fantasies, virtual reality stories, fantasy epics, and urban fantasies. Do you ever see yourself writing more mainstream works, perhaps shedding the genre label for a time? Why or why not?

TW: I'd be perfectly happy to write mainstream, but I don't think it will ever happen. First of all, I love the people I write for -- the readers of SF and Fantasy -- who will let me do pretty much anything I want as long as it's interesting. Second, it makes the publishers REALLY nervous. I'm at an age and career-point where writers start to repeat themselves, so I don't want to do that, but I don't necessarily want to alienate my editors and regular readers, either. I'm not stupid, whatever the rumors say.

RK: What was the best advice on writing that you've received?

TW: I don't remember who specifically said this, but I admire the person who said that writer's block is a crisis of confidence, not talent, and that if you don't panic, it'll resolve. I believe that firmly, and I've never had anything like writer's block. When I have to stop
for a little while, it's because I've got something that's not ready to be written. I just go write something else for a few days. It helps that I'm not one of those writers who feels too strongly that my own self-worth is being judged every time I write something.

RK: You've written comics before - any plans to venture back into that arena? Any dream projects you'd like to tackle?

TW: I have a comic coming out from DC sometime in the next year -- they're trying to get some of the last art issues resolved -- called THE NEXT, and I hope to be doing something else for them after that, possibly called THE FACTORY.

RK: You're a writer, a musician, you've worked in television and radio - are there any other areas you'd want to branch out into, any waters you'd like to test?

TW: I'd LOVE to go back to painting. I wouldn't mind playing music again regularly, too -- even just doing cover songs with a bar band. But painting is what I dream about. When the kids are a little older, perhaps, and the pull of parenthood isn't quite so constant.

RK: After the upcoming Shadowmarch releases, what can we expect from you?

TW: I'm currently in love with a project called (will almost certainly change) ARJUNA RISING, which is a science fiction story with galactic war, superheroes, and big chunks of the Mahabharata (the ILIAD of India), as well as a certain debt to Zelazny's LORD OF LIGHT and similar books. It's about Belief versus Reason, and seems like a lot
of fun.

I also have A CHRONICLE IN STONE on the burner, which is the promised semi-sequel to MEMORY, SORROW, AND THORN. And I'd like to do my fantasy/mystery, Heaven-and-Hell Cold War story, THE CHOIR INVISIBLE, too, if I can find the time.

RK: We've been hearing for a while now that the audience for fantasy and SF novels is shrinking, that the audience of comics is shrinking, and that nobody goes to see the movies anymore. Is it all doom and gloom? Your take?

TW: I don't know. I'm just writing stuff and, for now, enough people are buying it that I can keep writing it. Thinking about it any deeper than that gives me the collywobbles. That's my wife's job, and my agent's. (My wife is an ex-publisher, and pretty much keeps her fingers on the business side of things for us.)

RK: Recommend to our readers some of your recent favorites - books, movies, music, whatever.

TW: Music (newish albums): Beck, Mos Def, Fountains of Wayne, Missy Elliot, Secret Machines, Gorillaz
Movies: Nothing earth-shattering.
Books: OLYMPOS, FREAKONOMICS, KAFKA ON THE SHORE, tons of mythology
ART: Howard Finster

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