I’m attracted to challenging subject matter.
The distinctions of what makes a book one genre or another can sometimes be a bit muddy, but generally it’s a matter of projecting who the audience will be, which is a judgment that’s based on the subject matter. ‘Mainstream’ is the cleanest label for a book that draws readers of both sexes and from a wide age-range.
I felt that, in some ways, my novels lacked heart because of the distance between me and the subject matter. But no one wants to read a book based on good health, a happy upbringing, a long marriage.
I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea.
I think the worst and most insidious procrastination for me is research. I will be looking for some bit of fact or figure to include in the novel, and before I know, I’ve wasted an entire morning delving into that subject matter without a word written.
High-end divorce is a closed world. When I tried to research it, I was really surprised about how little there is out there. I think that’s because of the nature of the subject matter – privacy is incredibly important to this level of client.
The heavy subject matter is the most fun stuff to work with. It’s the meaty things, it’s the things that you get to get stuck in.
This time, there have been a lot of interesting discussion about the subject matter and I’ve had a good time talking about it. And in some of the cases, I’m not just signing books; I’m showing slides and talking about the work.
The kind of stuff I usually read is a bit more on the literary side, like books that I think are influential in the sense that they’re doing pulpy subject matter in a refined way. Like ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy; I loved that book.
It may be time for serious literary novelists to take back some of the subject matter we abandoned to hack novelists and the movies.
We are always taking a hard look at how life was in the past in coming up with interesting subject matter for our various series, and remembering how much I used to want an encyclopedia as a kid made me realize wanting a set is very unlikely for teens today, and that conversation would be interesting.
