Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Creators Across America

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That admirable organization, the Copyright Alliance, has posted the latest installment in their Creators Across America series, an interview with . . . well . . . me.

There it is above.

I haven't looked at it yet but Marianne tells me I came across okay.  For which I am duly grateful to the video's creator, Patrick Ross.


Oh, and speaking of teeshirts . . .

. . . as we of course were not, there was an article in the Inquirer today about the guy who came up with the shirt pictured below.  He discovered he needed such a thing only after moving to the West Coast.

Which put me in mind of the time I opened a reading in Seattle by saying, "Your city is so beautiful.  If I'd come here as a teenager I would've stayed forever.  But I've lived in Philadelphia too long.  Now I could never feel comfortable in a city where if you cut across the street people will stop their cars just because you're in their fucking way!"



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4 comments:

Bruce said...

Great interview...definitely liked 'The Mask' comments.

Hmmmm...saw a certain title flash on the screen!

David Stone said...

A great interview. Do you think that it would have taken you 11 years to get to the point where you were satisfied with your own work and able to have it published if you had started trying to write a few years later in life?

genovefa said...

I find this interview very honest convincing and humble. It is great to hear you talk( good practice for me still learning English after 11 years and more) and see all these books and documentation around you.
There is a French saying about the need to practice and persist:" c'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron". The literal translation would go: by forging one becomes a blacksmith.
You say writing is a handicraft drawing an analogy with a carpenter and it took you 11 years to get your first story published. My belief is that such a carpenter writer with an eleven- year training has demanded a lot of himself which is great for his readers.
I found your comments on how you immortalized your wife's face along with a story so beautiful.

Michael Swanwick said...

It helps that Marianne has such a beautiful face.

If I'd started later, it would have taken me far longer to become publishable. The one virtue I had when I was young was that I knew I was a terrible writer and it didn't bother me. Because I could see that, however slowly, I was getting better. An older man would have been far more discouraged by the process.