Interview continued
- So when you sit down to write (and I believe you're getting back into the swing of it after a break) do you have something specific in mind? Do you consciously experiment with style or is it a case of sitting down with a blank piece of paper and acting as catalyst for some other/inner muse?
The answer to this is straightforward. I belong to a Writer's Group where I live and I do the monthly homework - which derives from pulling a title out of a hat and writing fiction inspired by it, which is then read aloud and commented upon at the next meeting. We also do speed writing exercises during the meeting itself based on another title pulled from the hat, and then immediately read out loud (and I usually polish up my own efforts subsequently). All my recent fiction work derives from these processes and has done for the last few years.
- I have read that you are a big fan of classical music. Do you listen to music as you write and can it dictate your mood and therefore the mood of the story? Would you consider suggesting a particular piece of music as an accompaniment to the reading of your stories, a kind of soundtrack, as it were?
Music has been, probably, more important than writing and reading over the years for me, although I know nothing about music technically. I am, I think, very eclectic in my music tastes. Philip Glass inspired me (and my son) in the early eighties and we both ventured further into Classical music and Opera as a result. However, I've now gone off Opera. I love Chamber music, i.e. the quiet and sometimes passionate conversation of a few instruments, eg. Schubert, Beethoven... and the String Quartet is my favourite form. (Actually, Glass's String Quartet for the film 'Dracula' is one of my favourites.) I love symphonies and so forth, Shostakovich, Mahler etc. But, really, I've settled down into loving modern 'classical' music (if that's not another paradox in terminology!): 'dyncopated' (my word) and avant garde, like Penderecki and so forth. The more one listens to these overtly inaccessible pieces the more one can enter their sound worlds and enjoy them, becoming acclimatised ...and my fiction (in hindsight) owes something to this effect and to my eclectic love of music in general (including also the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and 60s pop etc). I think music does evoke moods and does help with fiction writing. But so does silence! (Compare the blank story in Nemonymous 2!) I would never recommend any music to writers for this purpose. This has to be natural and/or serendipitous with the 'planets' and/or synchronous with some Jungian underbelly! All I will say is that music can be productive even in its seeming counter -productivity! Inscrutable, I know, but I hope you see what I mean.
- You are the sole editor of Nemonymous (though if I recall correctly you once said you sometimes feel like you are the publication and Nemonymous is the editor!) and it is your 'baby'. However, when it comes to writing you have collaborated with other writers on many short stories and 'Only Connect' is a collection of shorts written by you and your father. How does one go about collaborating on a story? Is it a case of passing it back and forth after each paragraph or does one person write the bare bones and the other fills in the meat? I'm curious because I've never done it myself, being somewhat possessive of my work!
Yes, I have collaborated with many other writers over the years but funnily enough, now that you draw my attention to the fact, not so much since starting Nemonymous! I don't know what that proves. Anyway, when I do collaborate it's always on my terms, I suppose. (Not thought about it before. I must be a control freak!). And those terms are that we do not have a forward plan - and we each do a bit until one of us (often me!) thinks it's finished and polishes it all up. And this, in fact, is the opposite of being a control freak, because it's effectively losing control and waiting for the exciting unexpected turns of the plot etc to evolve. Blurring towards a communal nemonymity? I really must get back to collaborating. You've reminded me how much I miss it.
This is connected with 'shared universes' which I thought about bringing to Nemonymous in some way, but, so far, it's never really worked out. One revolution at a time, I guess!
- You are currently in the process of making every one of your published stories (apart from those in the Weirdmonger book) available online in the numinous megazanthus. Can you comment on your reasons for doing this? Once this is complete, do you have any other projects in the pipeline?
Yes, the 'Numinous Megazanthus' network is in many ways the maddest thing I've ever attempted to do. And a few people have told me this, too. Indeed, the re-publication of all my previously published-in-print stories (well over a thousand) is still in progress and I don't anticipate finishing it very soon! I'm told by many that the Internet is just as permanent as print - with as much ongoing provenance. So, this exercise in providing vehicles or berths for my fiction is, ostensibly, a way to establish and codify my work forever (even though a lot of it may be worthless) - because, previously, much was published in hard-to-find or 'amateur' small-run publications as well as in professional ones. In other words, I am really auditing the DF Lewis bibliography (1986-99) not just with titles and dates of appearance etc. but also bodily with complete texts. I'm sure this has never been done before.
But I don't know if I believe all this about permanence! This absurd series of sites, blogs and message boards carrying my huge back catalogue is, in many ways, a paradoxical attempt to destroy the whole concept of doing it in the first place!! In any event, I hope some people read the stories and (heavens!) enjoy them. I don't expect anyone necessarily to read this huge overall exercise in story posting or pay it any attention at all. It's more a 'happening' from the Sixties (during which era of time my artistic leanings were formed)! And that brings us back again to the blank story in Nemonymous 2. And I suppose this is in the blood - for I formed a Society at University in the late sixties called The Zeroist Group trying to explore new avenues of art from a sub-Dada base (which actually received a grant!). This seems to have blended with my more 'normal' interest in fiction literature (including genres like SF, Horror and Fantasy) - and hopefully my endeavours in these fields may be vaguely remembered as wild nameless attempts to create a new and constructive 'Interstitiality' for the fiction arts.