David Drake

I’ve been composing on a computer since 1986, when IBM came out with its first laptop. From 1981 I was using a dedicated word-processor for second and third drafts, but I was composing with a pencil on legal pad. (Many legal pads.) As soon as there was a computer I could take out in the yard and work as I had with pencil and paper, I switched to computer first drafts.

I’m obviously not a technophobe, let alone a Luddite; but neither do I find anything magical to technology. Some of the stories that I wrote longhand and typed on a portable I bought in Nam (electric but with a manual carriage return; very cheap) are still in print after thirty years. continue reading…

I sold my first story when I was an undergraduate. I’d always liked to tell stories; in high school I started writing them down, and at age 19 I started submitting them.

I think it’s necessary for a successful writer to be a reader, but literature classes are if anything contraindicated for a writer. There are people who swear by writing classes/courses/groups, but my opinion is that at best they’ll teach you how to write a particular sort of story for which there isn’t a mass market. continue reading…

Written for the Tor/Forge May 2010 Newsletter

THE MOTORCYCLE WAY TO COMPLEX PLOTTING

Writers use various tools in their work. One of my tools is my motorcycle.

Well, plural: my motorcycles. Bikers learn quickly that if they expect to ride every day, they’d better have two. (And that’s if they’re Japanese, as both of my current rides are. More exotic bikes tend to be two-wheeled versions of owning a Lotus Elan.) continue reading…

Dave’s Introduction to a volume of August Derleth short stories titled That is Not Dead: Black Magic and Occult Stories, volume 3 of 4 being produced by The August Derleth Society in conjunction with Arkham House Publishers, February 2009.

A BELATED THANK-YOU

Eugene Olson, my 11th grade American Literature teacher, read and wrote fantasy fiction. I really wanted to read fantasy, but in 1961 the genre was hard to find in Clinton, Iowa. (I didn’t dream of writing professionally at the time.) Over the Christmas holidays, Mr Olson loaned me a copy of the September, 1950, issue of Weird Tales (a legendary magazine which I’d never seen). continue reading…

Cover art: Donato

My friend Mark Van Name is, among other things, a business consultant. After I sold the final trilogy in the Isles Series to Tor but before I started work on the three books, he asked me if I would like him to do a business analysis of the Isles fantasies. I said I would appreciate that. (It would never have occurred to me to ask.)

Mark shortly provided a written report, which he went over with me. I won’t describe his methodology, but even if it hadn’t seemed valid on its face, I would have accepted it anyway: Mark is an expert on the subject; I am not. I don’t argue with experts in their own fields. continue reading…

AFTERWORD: WHERE I GET MY IDEAS

If you decide to write about far-famed Achilles, make him active, hot-tempered, inexorable, and fierce; let him deny that laws were made for him, let him think his sword rules all. –Horace, The Art of Poetry (lines 120-2)

My undergraduate double major was history and Latin, and I continued to take Latin courses while I was in law school in a laughable attempt to stay sane.  Reading Latin centers me. (Note “laughable” in the previous sentence.) continue reading…

Do you write sequentially, from beginning of the plot to the end?

I do plots beginning to end, and I do very long plots, but there’s not a right way.

How do you go about writing your drafts?

I work on a notebook computer outside, then edit the hardcopy and go through at least three drafts.

At any one time, how many stories are you working on?

I work on one thing at a time. Other people like multiple jobs, but for me I concentrate very heavily and I get crazy when I’m taken off it.

What novel have you personally enjoyed the most writing?

Once I apparently answered this question, ‘Northworld.’ I can’t imagine why I did that, because I was so stressed while writing Northworld that I was having back spasms that made it difficult for me to walk some days. I’m very proud of the book and the series, but they’re enormously complex works–note the way words are echoed within and among the interwoven plot strands, for example–and the first one darned near crippled me.

Now I’d say Lord of the Isles. I’ve always loved fantasy, but because I’d been successful with military SF I wasn’t able to do as much as I’d have liked to. Getting the chance to write Lord of the Isles was a wonderful change of pace. You can take the series as homage to Tolkien and to Robert E Howard both if you like; I do.