Solidarity

Scott Westerfeld is the only author whose entire volume of work is on my "favorite books" list. It all started in sophomore, junior year of high school with a stand-alone book called "So Yesterday" (which apparently you can read in its entirety on Scott's website). I think, though, that Midnighters is my favorite work of his.

Well, anyway. Scott did an interview with Simon and Schuster on UStream last night. He answered questions received by tweet, blog and Facebook. It was enlightening. The question I asked was, "They say there's no such thing as an original idea. How do you come up with something fresh to say & say it in a unique way?"

Scott's answer: “There are obviously original ideas. What there isn’t is new ideas, completely new, and in fact if you came up with a completely new idea, I bet everyone would hate it. Because they wouldn't know what it was. They would be confused and freaked out and I have a feeling they wouldn’t actually like it. All the people who say they want something original, what they really want is something familiar that they already like but with a new twist they’ve never seen before… What you want is one new thing surrounded by many familiar old things.”

It was really thrilling to hear this guy I've looked up to for years talk about his work, and even more so to feel like he was talking to me - author to author. Someday I hope I can do what he's doing and be an inspiration to other young writers.

The whole interview is an hour long, but if you're into cool people doing cool things, steampunk, Manga, Miyazaki, the writing process, vegetarians changing the world, and how smart people plan for zombie apocalypses, check it out!



Peace, love and steampunk,
Miss Rex