Author Hugh Howey on Writing, Empathy and Creative Freedom ~ amy eyrie

Portrait of Hugh Howey by Jason Myers

Hugh Howey is a true iconoclast. His newly released post apocalyptic novel, The Shell Collector, joins a body of inventive work exploring dystopian futures, interstellar travel, alien invasions, zombies and other curiosities. His career has also broken traditional barriers.

Originally published by a small press, Hugh broke away to become an indie writer and subsequently made it to the NYT Best Seller List.There is something surprising about Hugh’s writing. His visions steal over the reader unobtrusively, the way one might notice the clarity of a sky or the scent of a spring day. His prose is lean, confident and unpretentious with moments of sheer philosophical grace. He sinks into the background so deeply, you forget you’re even reading. He extends an invitation, like a peep hole through a circus tent, and before you quite realize what’s happened, you’ve entered into a world of wonders.

Odd wonders, to be sure.

And once you’ve followed Hugh into a world, what unfolds is not always easy. His Sci Fi stories are fantastical but infused with a gritty reality borne from worldly experience. He has a refined understanding of human nature. There are moments reading Hugh’s work when you feel a sharp pang of connection; this is the way people speak, the way they think, the way they live and die. His characters are studies in contradiction. They are flawed and infallible and accordingly, they are unique, their actions unpredictable.

The strength of Hugh’s writing is in the way he records the nuances, incongruities and ironies of human behavior without flinching. He’s brave that way. If Science Fiction is about ideas, Hugh has made his writing about something more; the way the human spirit acts under pressure. He does what every great writer does, he infuses his characters with a sense of humanity and in doing so elevates the genre.

Hugh Howey is also a phenomenon. Hugh walked away from a publishing deal to go indie, early in the game. He used Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing System to release his work, experimenting and refining his publishing process. His career caught fire with the release of Wool, a dystopian story of surprising depth. As his readership grew, Hugh drew attention from film companies and became a focal point of the indie writing movement. He responded with a series of blog posts and articles in Huffpost that were revolutionary in their transparency, breaking down every aspect of his journey and detailing his experiences with NY publishing houses and eventually a unique publishing deal forged with his agent to retain his e book rights. Hugh also helped release a series of Author Earning Reports which proved to be an immense help to writers now faced with the multiple hats required by Indie Publishing. An advocate for Indie Writers, Hugh was a source of sanity and clarity during the Amazon/Hachette debate.

With the release of The Shell Collector, I asked Hugh some questions about his process.

AE— Before becoming a full-time writer, you traveled and had a number of eclectic jobs such as sea captain, roofer, audio technician and book seller. How did those experiences affect your writing?

When I speak with classrooms full of creative writing majors, I impress upon them the importance of life experiences. Writing can be broken down to plot and prose. Plot is what happens, the characters, the settings, the journey. Prose is how all those things are told. We learn prose through the language of our environment, the books we read, and focused study. This is where we acquire our voice and learn to write well.

But plot is just as important, perhaps morso. And it’s difficult to acquire all the things that go into characters and settings simply by reading other authors’ characters and settings. It’s far more powerful to go out in the world and observe. Which is why travel and varied jobs are crucial. This is perhaps why most professional fiction writers come from outside of the creative writing educational track.

AE— You often set novels in a dystopian world. What attracts you to this genre? Do you plan to experiment in other genres in the future?

When I brainstorm for story ideas, I start with an observation about the human condition. I might write about the absence of free will, as I did in I, Zombie. Or I could wrestle with the extreme positions of Rousseau and Hobbes as I did in Wool. For me, the best way to highlight these ideas is through serious satire, which often takes the form of dystopia.

I’m a huge fan of Jonathan Swift and George Orwell, both of whom were masters at bending our world into something only vaguely recognizable. But once you did recognize it, you realized the thing you’re laughing at is you. Dystopia is the funhouse mirror of fiction. It’s only when we warp things out of shape do we realize that what we think of as “normal” is also truly bizarre.

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AE— In The Shell Collector there are elements of romance and suspense. What inspired you to write this novel?

I’ve been into collecting shells since I was a little kid. These days, I take my dog to the beach several times a week to get her some exercise, and I spend a lot of my time there picking through shells. It seems like the nice shells are few and far between these days, and I wondered what the world would be like if they all started disappearing. That got the story brewing. From there, I just took my love of the sea—all the years I spent living on boats and traveling between the islands—and told a story of caution. Because the sea really is changing. The Great Barrier Reef is at less than half its former glory. Invasive species are wreaking havoc on the Bahamian reefs I spent years diving on. Beyond the surface love story in The Shell Collector, there’s also a love story between the author and this dying body of water. And that’s really why I wanted to write the book.

AE— You’ve described being moved to powerful emotions while writing. How involved do you become with your characters? Is it hard to kill them?

Very involved. I can’t get into a story unless I believe these characters are real. I can’t just describe emotions from afar and stay engaged with my writing. I have to believe in these people and really see the world through their eyes, feel what they’re feeling, and that makes writing very emotional. I often break down while writing, which has been awkward now that I spend so much of my time writing in airports and on planes. I’ve had strangers ask me if everything’s okay. It’s weird to say, “Oh, yeah, just writing some really good stuff,” so I just assure them I’m fine.

Killing characters is never fun, but I don’t shy away from it. Everyone dies. I think it’s odd that we try to keep it from happening to our favorite characters, because it happens nonetheless. I’d rather be honest and see it occur now and then, witness a life all the way to its end. It doesn’t make it easy, but to me, stories don’t feel genuine if everyone traipses across the finish line every single time.

AE— You are very accomplished at dialogue. Have you ever considered screenwriting?

I have, and I’ve been asked to do it. I might dabble when I’ve run out of novels that I feel compelled to write. The problem with screenwriting is that you’re most often writing for absolutely no audience. Very few scripts actually get made. I’d much rather write a novel that I knew was going to find an audience than write a script for a studio that would probably shelve the thing.

AE— What is your writing process?

I write best in the mornings. The rest of the day, I daydream about my story, the characters, the twists and turns of the plot, but in the morning I sit down with my laptop and hammer out the next scene. I try to embrace writing rough, with fragments and perhaps overly poetic prose, just a stream-of-consciousness punctuated by dialog. I want to get the story down. Often, I feel like I’m watching a movie and trying to take notes for a friend, so he or she will know what they missed.

After I complete a draft, I do seven or eight passes, smoothing it over with ever-finer sandpaper until I’m happy with the result.

AE— What do you think writing should accomplish?

The best fiction teaches us something about ourselves and others. We get to live in someone else’s skin, to empathize with those unlike ourselves, and I think this makes us better and more compassionate people. Perhaps you connect with the opposite gender or a different race or feel the sadness of age or the joy of wisdom or the injustice of tyranny. If everyone read more, we would fight less. I’m convinced of that.

AE—Stephen King recently tweeted “Yes, I read and liked it (Wool).” Is that intimidating?

It would be intimidating if he Tweeted: “I’m currently reading Wool.” Then, I’d have to agonize over how much he was loathing the work. So the relief came almost as quick as the shock in this case. He didn’t hate it. Whew.

I’m such a huge fan of his work, and it’s really weird to think that he made time for my novel, so it’s all just a huge honor for me. I will say this: Knowing that anyone is reading my work is intimidating. I sat behind a gentleman in a plane once who was reading Wool, and it was terrifying. And whenever I release a new work, I spend days just thinking of all the people who are probably not enjoying the story. So it doesn’t take one of my heroes reading my work to make me nervous. I wring my hands while my wife reads my final drafts.

AE—You’ve had offers from major publishers and attention from Hollywood. What made you decide to continue going indie instead of the traditional publishing route?

Freedom. Creative freedom in that I can write whatever I want (across genres, children’s picture books, whatever), but also the freedom to publish as often as I want and as soon as a work is ready. We had some very lucrative offers for The Shell Collector, but it would’ve meant delaying publication for almost a year and turning the story into something completely different than what I was trying to write. Self-publishing allows for a diversity of voices that we just wouldn’t get any other way. The pressure in publishing houses is to turn out the most commercial entity possible. Everyone is looking for something that’s just like the last thing that sold really well. Look at Hollywood, and how much of what we get there is remakes, adaptations, and sequels. Every book and film is an expensive gamble, and so the risk is minimized.

I say screw that. I want to maximize risk. I want to art on the edge. I’d be happier going back to my day job and writing the works that I don’t see on the marketplace than I would punching a clock for a publisher, writing a carbon copy of the last bestseller, and collecting a miserly paycheck for my efforts. It’s the difference between being an indie musician and a top 40 pop star, or being an indie filmmaker or someone who has to chop up their work for Hollywood bigwigs as everyone paws around in the creative process.

What’s weird about the writing industry is that the big publishing path is bizarrely touted as being more desirable, when in reality it is the less-creative and less-honest process. In all other creative endeavors, the indie process is rightly seen as the rawer, more emotional, more creative, more diverse method. As far as I’m concerned, this is just as true in publishing. Indie is where the magic is happening. Many readers have caught on to this. More will.

AE— Has the increased media attention been difficult for you?

I don’t notice it. I’m more focused on the readers, and that’s been the difficult thing. I’ve had to train myself to not think of my expanded readership when I’m writing. Otherwise, I’d be paralyzed.

AE— George RR Martin said that when it comes to writing, “there are two types of writers; architects and gardeners. The architects design with a blue print, the gardener plants a seed and sees what grows.” Which one are you?

I’m a landscape architect. I design the garden in advance, plant the seeds, and see if what I get is what I expected. It often isn’t.

Check out the tour of Hugh’s Shell Collection:

Jason Meyers Photography: http://www.jasonmyersphoto.com/

Comments

A.C. Flory says

January 2, 2016 at 3:22 pm

I was madly fortunate to meet Hugh Howey in person when he came to Melbourne [Australia] for a con a couple of years ago.

He was sitting at a table with Tad Williams, another one of my heroes, and I was gobsmacked by how /nice/ this young man truly is. ‘Nice’ in the best possible way – humble, caring, honest. And boy can he write.

Great interview. 🙂

- Amy Eyrie says
  
  January 17, 2016 at 11:06 am
  
  Thank you!
  
  Nice to get a comment from someone who has met him.
  
  Hugh’s humanity shines through every page.
  
Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt says

December 18, 2014 at 10:32 pm

It’s funny – everything you hear about Hugh makes him sound better.

I envy him his boundless energy – and don’t resent him at all for using it to write good fiction. He is as good a role model as you’ll find for going indie.

Excellent interview – learned several new things, and enjoyed your questions as well as his answers.

- Amy Eyrie says
  
  January 17, 2016 at 11:08 am
  
  “Boundless energy” is a very apt description of him.
  
  Thanks for reading.

Check out the tour of Hugh’s Shell Collection:

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