An Interview with Tim Powers

Tim Powers’ two governing rules for research: ‘Nothing is a coincidence’ and, ‘Okay, but what were they up to, really?’ With such thoughts to guide him, it’s no wonder he’s created an impressive body of strange and original work. Not historical fantasy, not alternate history, his novels seem to be rather the secret history of what really lies beneath the surface of our mundane world. His goal, Powers says, is to ‘trick the reader into thinking this is happening in the real world,’ and he’s done this through extensive research and intricate plotting that never messes with known historical events, but rather creates, with the given framework, a dark tapestry of supernatural intrigue that coexists with the history we think we know.

Summertimes, Powers can be often found teaching at the Clarion workshop in Michigan or at the workshop for Writers of the Future in Los Angeles where he’s served as a contest judge for the past 16 years. He and his wife Serena live in San Bernadino, California with their many books and cats.

Robin Catesby: You started with Writers of the Future in 1986…

Tim Powers: I was co-teaching with [Algis] Budrys, and actually I think I was mostly, along with the students,listening to Budrys rather than contributing a whole lot on my own. And then in ‘88 I taught Clarion for the first time. And in fact just a couple of years ago I was up for a Nebula and didn’t win, and the person who did win was one of my students from Clarion in 88, so that was kind of fun.

RC: How does the WOTF workshop work — how long is it and what do you do there?

TP: It’s about a week and what happens is, oh say the first day we’ll talk about suspense or research, characterization, say. And then they have to run off and do an assignment related to that. For example at one point they’re given a couple of hours to run away and meet someone interesting and find out what they do and what they think about what they do. And often they come up with some great stuff. But, it’s a lot of practice, a lot of lecturing and I think the main virtue is that it is Algis Budrys teaching it. I can’t imagine anyone else giving the same value.

RC: How does the WOTF workshop differ from your week at Clarion?

TP: For one thing, everyone at WOTF has written a publishable story by definition since they are published in the book. At Clarion it’s enough to show promise of one day writing publishable stories. At Clarion, you probably write, on average, six stories during the course of the workshop. At WOTF you just write one. There’s just a lot of intensive assignments each just aimed at one thing, at one quality — suspense, say. And of course, it’s probably not even a full week; it’s probably something more like five days. But, it is real effective — I think it does get a lot of information across.

RC: And as a writer do you get a lot of value just from the process of being there with these students?

TP: Mainly from guilt. I see them working so hard and I think, ‘you’re taking a week off, man!’

RC: Is there a particular type of student or a particular type of beginning writer who will prosper at Clarion? I’ve heard stories of writers who just sort of crumble there and never write again.

TP: I think it’ll do anybody some good. Also, I think anybody who’d be repelled for the rest of their lives probably wasn’t going to write anything anyway. At far as being repelled for a year or two, I think that happens to most Clarion students. I think it’s very common for people to come home from Clarion and not look at a keyboard for six months at least. I never did Clarion myself, so I really… you know you can’t really guess what it’s like. I certainly don’t think Clarion or WOTF is necessary. I mean all the publishers are really hungry.

RC: You’ve mentioned that it takes you nearly as long to plot a short story as it does a novel, so you don’t write many short stories. Do you bring that detailed outlining technique into your short story classes at Clarion?

TP: Yes. I tell them that I’m an extreme, at one end of the spectrum, with the totally spontaneous and inspired writers at the other end, and that they can find out where in the spectrum they’re comfortable. But this really only comes up when we’re discussing plotting — when we’re discussing characterization or description or how-to-be-plausible, my methods aren’t all that different from other writers’. Every writer’s got his or her own favorite rules-of-thumb — for instance, Karen Fowler says ‘Always be aware, in any scene, what the lightsource is.’ I like that.

RC: Have you ever tried to write a short story without outlining it first?

TP: I did in my youth! And the stories read well enough until you noticed that nothing was adding up to anything. Even when there was action, it wound up with a sort of ‘So what’ feeling.

RC: Let’s talk about your own process and specifically the research and how you get started. You’ve mentioned that many times it’s just from picking up a random book and finding this kernel —

TP: Generally, yeah. For example, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Straight Dope books by Cecil Adams? It’s just people asking questions like ‘why are fish flat?’ ‘Why is wet stuff darker than dry stuff?’ And ‘why do Chevy Novas drive a little bit sideways down the road?’ And he’ll answer these things and it’s just fascinating, and I’ll find a lot of times that I’ll read something in Cecil Adams and think — golly, that’s worth further thought. It was there I got the fact that Edison’s last breath was corked up in a test tube.

For Last Call, I read in a gambling book that Tarot cards were the sort of progenitor of playing cards. So yeah, it’s always something I just read in recreational non-fiction and suddenly I realise, you know, you could use this in a book. And if it really seems like a viable idea, I’ll go and get a book specifically about that subject and read more about it, like, say, a biography of Edison. And, at that point I realise I’ve kind of shifted from recreational reading into research reading, and then I just read everything the research suggests. If Edison hung out in the Florida swamps a whole lot, I’ll think well okay, go there. So, I’ll read about Florida swamps. And if he was a big fan of Kentucky whiskey, I’ll read up on Kentucky whiskey.

With every book, I’m looking for any bit that is too cool not to use, and after I’ve got 20 or 30 things that are too cool not to use, you can kind of line them all up on the table and then the big challenge is just connecting the dots. What sort of story is it that these would all be a part of? So, in a way I put a whole lot of weight on the research. I don’t know what the plot’s going to be, what the protagonist is going to be. I let the research indicate all those things.

RC: So, after you’ve got notebooks and notebooks of all these things and you’ve marked up all these books, then you do plot cards after that?

TP: I do, actually. I’ve got all these things that are too cool not to use and I’ve got little bits of dialogue that I’ve heard friends say… and I’ve got descriptions of places that are too cool not to use. And I’ll arrange all of them on the floor and say, what is the plot? Is this event better toward the end, that is to say, south end of the room, or better toward the beginning of the story up at the north end of the room?

RC: So you’ve got this chronology of events that gives you your basic skeleton —

TP: Yeah, before is at one end of the room and after is at the other, and you rearrange them. You say: it would be better if he broke up with the girl at the beginning of the book rather than at the end of the book. And when I’m pretty confident about it all — sometimes you’ll notice gaps, you’ll say well there’s nothing happening there, we need something to happen in there — but when I’m pretty content with the whole mess on the floor, then I’ll get a giant piece of paper and make a big calendar where every day is about a foot square and I’ll transfer all these events into squares of the calendar and then tack that up on the wall.

RC: That would be a great workspace, just having all that stuff everywhere…

TP: Yeah, and the cats knock it down all the time. But you can always see right where you are. You just look at the wall and say well I’m up to that point. Today I have to do that business there: ‘George gets telephone call; acts like he’s not home.’

RC: So, how difficult is it when you’re also dealing with the actual historical events, say when Kim Philby is in a particular location?

TP: Those things would be like the pattern in the rug. Those would be unalterable. In a case like that, I would have the calendar made first, and I’d say moving things around on the sort of chess board of this calendar, what can you accomplish. But some things are not movable. Like if Philby was shot in the head on January 1st, you can’t change that. But, I’ve always found there is, nevertheless, plenty of room to say well, I might have had him for example, shoot himself in the head. The main thing is the history not be changed.

RC: You mentioned in one of the panels [at Westercon] that you do your brainstorming on the keyboard. How does that help you with the process?

TP: Yes, good question. All of us do this thinking where we say ‘Well, I could have my man be a professional taxi driver because I wanna involve this — well except it would actually be better if he was a bicycle courier because I could use the bridge but in a more intimate way then a taxi. In fact I should have two — one guy is a repairman of the bridge and he could be up there with rivets while the bicycle courier… Meanwhile, I think we really should have the old woman be the guy’s mother rather than his wife and — ’ We do this, and you could go on — I could continue this for ten minutes and ultimately we come up with a conclusion: ‘Okay, I think it’ll be the bicycle courier.’

The thing is, that’s often not at all the best option. If you’ve done it in your head, all those previous thoughts are gone. But if you did it into the keyboard, you can simply print it out and look back three or four pages and say now there’s where I was really thinking well. That’s what I should have done — the guy with the rivets up on the girders.

I even type in ‘um um um.’ I’ll say, ‘He needs to have his situation reversed.’ And I’ll say, ‘What do you mean by that, Powers?’ and I’ll write, ‘I don’t know, give me a minute, um um um … ’ It’s essential that you put every single thought down. For one thing then if you have amnesia or if you drink heavily, you can always come back next day and it’s all there.

RC: Okay, so how do you know when the research is done and you’re ready to write?

TP: Well, actually, I think I’m an example of someone who fails to find that point. After a year I’ll get alarmed and say ‘Powers, are you ready yet? Go over your notes. Condense them. Arrange them.’ And usually the answer is ‘no, sorry, I’m not ready yet. I’m nearly, but I’ve got to read three more books on the desert and I need to read these two books on, god knows what, the NSA… and after those are done, I’ll come back and look at the notes again.’ And you’ve got to kind of just indulge that.

I’ve heard people say ‘but what about your deadline?’ And I think well, you know, just make sure your editor knows you’re not going to make the deadline. Don’t surprise them with the fact that you’re not going to make the deadline, but I haven’t made a deadline since ’75. With Last Call I was only two weeks late, but mostly I’m years late. And the reason is, you find yourself in a position where you say ‘the book’s due in three months. I could, if I really cranked, finish it on time.’ And then you think, would it be every bit as good as it would be if you took another year? And if the answer is well no, it wouldn’t be every bit as good as it could be if I took another year… then the answer is, take the year. Don’t finish a book hastily because even if nobody else in the world has a copy 20 years from now it’ll be underfoot at your house. And you don’t want to be constantly thinking, that’s that book I rushed the ending for some deadline I can’t even remember anymore.

RC: Once the research is done, what’s a typical writing day like?

TP: I try to write for most of the day, but not a lot gets done because of catfights and phone calls and having to change spark plugs on the truck and having to go eat tacos with friends. Most of my work gets done between 10 pm and 1 am. When I was finishing Earthquake Weather I wasn’t getting to bed before 3 am, but that was because I had the deadline of us having to move out of our apartment in Santa Ana by the end of October ‘96.

RC: You mentioned The Straight Dope series by Cecil Adams as one of your favorite ‘too-cool-to-use’ fact sources. What are some of your other favorite books for miscellaneous research?

TP: Oh, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy is always good for screwy ideas! And I’m a big fan of Physics for Morons-type books, and they often suggest ideas. The Weekly World News tabloid paper is actually a great source too — I used a lot of stuff from it in Expiration Date.

RC: And, when you’re in writing mode, you obviously keep a good collection of research books handy to get all those details right — physics, architecture, weapons, etc. Any favorites there?

TP: Well, the books I’ve got right by my elbow are foreign-language dictionaries and architecture. I think that’s just random. But whatever the book-at-hand is, I want to be able to quickly look up appropriate food, drink, weapons, architecture, geography — I’ve got several atlases right here too… and I get a lot of use out of a set of National Geographics on CD. And I’ve got an Encyclopedia Britannica on CD too, and several paper-editions of it nearby, from different years. This stuff is kind of always useful. I also have shelves over my desk that I freight with books on whatever the topic at hand is.

RC: Do you ever get to a point where everything’s done and then you discover something new and say, ‘Oh wow, it would have been really cool to put in this here – ?’

TP: Yeah, yeah. That’s one reason I kind of like taking a long time to write a book — it’s like you spread the net very far. But just at this convention this weekend somebody asked me if I’d heard of the Kiev Buzz saw — some kind of radio transmission out of Russia. And I thought, damn — I wish I’d heard about that, you know, a year or so ago! And so, yeah, I want to err on the side of thoroughness. If the question is, should you read a few too many research books or a few too few, I’d much rather read too many. And I’d rather take more time at writing it than less time.

RC: What stage are you in with your current project?

TP: I’ve entered into a sort of eclipse stage where it’s impossible to say. Eventually I’ll emerge from the other end of the eclipse, but I think the reading’s all done. Or enough of it’s done. I’ve got to read a few more bits but they’re about things later in the book. It’s going to involve Palm Springs and east — Death Valley and LA in the thirties. It’ll have consequences of things that were going on in LA in the 30s. God knows. I always have no faith at all in whatever book I’m working on. I’m always very pleased with whatever’s done and published, and in despair about what’s in the works. I do think self-confidence and self-esteem and feeling good about oneself are terrible for writers. I think you should always have vast self-doubt and guilt and selfdeprecation.

People with confidence, it’s impossible to say whether they’d make good writers or not because I don’t think they get published.

RC: On getting the details right in your setting, it’s also important to focus on the details your protagonist would notice. This is something you do wonderfully well in a wide variety of settings. Do you have a process that helps you determine what to put in and what to leave out? (And how do you tackle it for settings you’ve never visited?)

TP: Well, first I have to totally picture the setting a scene is going to occur in — dimensions of a room, smells, lightsource, echoes, all that sort of thing; and then I pick about three details that will (I hope!) effectively give the reader the sense of experiencing it. If it’s a long scene, of course, I can give a lot more than three! I generally do this consciously, rather than instinctively — like, ‘Did I convey the size of the room? Were there enough sounds, did you mention the colors?’

Most of the places I write about are places I’ve never been to. I get lots of those oversised picture-books — A Souvenir of Paris type of thing — and lay them all out on the floor and say, ‘If a guy was standing here, and looked left, he’d see this,’ and so forth; and I read every travel book and traveler’s journal I can get my hands on, ideally from the period I’m writing about. Eventually I get a pretty good feel for the place, I think — and I avoid the ‘same as ever’ tone people fall into when they’re writing about a place they know monotonously well.

RC: What’s some of the worst advice that you’ve heard given to new writers?

TP: I’ve heard new writers advised that they should go to, for example science fiction conventions if they write that stuff, and they should intrude themselves on editors. Leap into the editor’s path, stick out their right hand and say ‘You don’t know me man, but I got a short story on your desk and I wanted you to have a face to put with the name and — and — and a minute ago you didn’t know who I was at all; now you’re convinced I’m a total geek.’

With only a couple of exceptions I’d never met an editor until I had sold something to the editor and I very much preferred that than ‘this is your old pal, you remember me. I’ve written a mediocre short story but I bought you a beer once, remember?’ Ah, I think on the whole, all things being equal, it’s better not to meet editors that you’re going to have dealings with. And certainly if you do, never initiate or prolong a discussion of your own writing. Also, if the editor tells a joke, just laugh at it normally like hah hah hah. Don’t fling yourself half out of the booth onto the floor to show how funny you think the editor is.

Also, you hear advice like ‘you have to have an agent in order to get published.’ That, luckily, is a lie. Still. It’s still a lie. And it’s totally a lie for short stories. You’re way more likely to get the kind of agent you need if you have some publication record — some track record, say short stories, than if you don’t. A whole bunch of the very good agents would pay attention to you if you’ve got a bit of a track record, while if you don’t it’s only going to be the other ones who have a side business as notary and pet portrait painter in like Norwalk California that would consider taking you on.

Luckily all the science fiction and fantasy publishers are very hungry. Every month they have to get out a new issue or publish three or five or ten new books and they can’t rely on established published writers for that. They’re constantly tearing open manila envelopes hoping. ‘I hope you’re it. You know, out of the slush piles where everybody comes from, and I hope you’re the next one.’

And finally, I would say any time somebody’s telling you how writing and publishing works and they use the phrase Catch-22, that sentence is a lie. They may not mean it to be a lie, they may simply be quoting somebody, but any sentence including the phrase Catch-22 is a lie.

RC: That’s encouraging.

TP: Yeah, you hear it all the time. ‘Well, see it’s a Catch-22 dude, you don’t have an agent so you can’t get published; can’t get published ‘cause you don’t have an agent.’

It’s a stupid — you know who made that up? People who discovered they couldn’t get published and needed to find a second excuse because the obvious excuse is the first one, which is ‘your stuff’s no good.’ And that was inadmissible so they had to find a second reason and they came up with this agent thing.

You want to be doubtful of your own genius, but at the same time you want to be aware that it’s a hungry field. They want stuff. And they don’t just want it today — they need it every month. And who was a brand newcomer five years ago isn’t any more and maybe has gone on to want more money, and [the editors] are thinking where are all those people that will take a $3000 advance for a novel? And you want to say, ‘Here I am!’ In fact, my first novel I got a $1200 advance and was very pleased to get that. I’d have taken $120.

RC: At the WOTF panel Algis Budrys talked about pulling the story submissions just part way out of their envelopes and sometimes reading only the first line or two of a story before setting it down. Do you have any good advice for tackling that all-important opening? There’s such a great risk of over-anxious writers trying to cram far too much into just the opening line.

TP: Right, everybody thinks they have to put a ‘narrative hook’ into the first sentence, so it winds up reading something like ‘After I rescued my left eyeball from Albert Einstein’s martini glass and ordered all the Munchkins back into their cryogenic bunks, I was finally able to check the monitors to see how quickly the alien space-craft was closing distance with us.’ The trouble with this kind of thing is that — though it’s lively enough — it doesn’t seem serious; it seems ‘let’s pretend.’ Like with the Wizard of Oz, you can see the little man behind the curtain, wrenching at levers.

I would advise not worrying about snatching the reader in, but instead worry about not forcing the reader out. Long description right away will be likely to force the reader out; very explanatory dialogue will do it too: ‘As you ordered, captain, I’ve got us on maximum acceleration with hyperspace-shift expected in three hours.’ It’s much better to start with some not immediately explained dialogue, in medias res type of stuff — with, very soon, a few sentences of description so we can see the scene, at least — and give us something even just mildly enigmatic.

Here’s an opening that wouldn’t stop me reading:

‘‘You sure he said pencil?’ ‘I guess. What else sounds like pencil?’ Without looking around, I could hear more scotch splash into his glass. ‘Um,’ he said. ‘Prehensile.’ ‘Sure, the secession party has a prehensile constitution.’ The basement window was dark, only the close-pressing ivy visible in the light from the desk. ‘Reprehensible?’ ‘Fair enough.’ A knock on the door then made us both jump.’

I don’t know where you’d go from there, but so far it wouldn’t have thrown me out of the story. The thing is, you’ve got to make it seem as if it’s really happening, as if it’s real people the reader is eavesdropping on; and you can’t abruptly shift the reader from zero to sixty. It could be more exotic and overtly SF, but it still needs that eavesdropping feel:

‘John cut the hydrogen jet, and the go-cart was in free fall, coasting and slowly starting to rotate tail-over-nose. To his left he could see its clock-hand shadow moving across the broad hull of the empty starship. He bumped the radio lever in his helmet with his chin. ‘Peewee to Junebug. Are you sure he said pencil?’ Sam’s voice in the little speakers sounded irritable. ‘Sure. What else sounds like pencil?’’