Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons From a Writing Life

by Terry Brooks

  So I was somewhat surprised when I was dispatched in midsummer of the same year to Northwestern University in Chicago, a two-hour drive from my home in Sterling, to do an afternoon signing with science fiction author A. J. Budrys. I approached the event with a mix of trepidation and excitement. I was hungry for the experience, but fearful of coming off badly in front of an established and well-regarded fellow writer. After all, A. J. had done autographings hundreds of times and I was still trying to figure out exactly how they were supposed to work. I didn’t want to appear like a complete idiot to someone I admired.

  A. J. was there to greet me when I arrived, jovial and welcoming, aware of my uncertainty and anxious to do what he could to banish it. The book signing was being held in the university bookstore, and we sat side by side at a table near the back, facing out across a rather broad open space toward windows that opened onto the campus. We could see students walking around outside. They could see us sitting at the table inside. I reassured myself that I was prepared to meet and greet those who would stop in to buy my book.

  Copies of The Sword of Shannara were piled in front of me, mostly in the trade paperback format, which constituted the larger printing. There were a few hardcovers, but not many. This was perfectly normal, A. J. advised, surmising my concern. This was a university, after all; no one had money for hardcovers other than textbooks. I nodded agreeably. A. J. was the professional. He had published both long and short fiction, and he knew the ropes. I couldn’t help noticing that his books made an impressive display on his side of the table. I felt a bit inadequate with my solitary offering, but reminded myself that I was new to this game while he had been a published writer for many years.

  A long time passed and no one came. No one even came close. A. J. commented that summer wasn’t the best time to conduct an autographing on a college campus since the student population was way down. The publicity for this event was a bit Spartan, as well, he added. A notice pinned to a bulletin board here and there—that was pretty much the extent of it. Apparently the signing was thrown together in something of a hurry. I decided not to ask why.

  More time passed, and still no one came. A. J. and I talked about science fiction and writing, which helped to ease my discomfort. Nevertheless, when at last someone did approach, they went straight to him and bought three of his paperbacks without a glance in my direction. I was envious in spite of myself. Then, another student appeared. This one said hello, but didn’t give my book a second glance. He bought one of A. J.’s hardcovers. When he left, I raised a suspicious eyebrow at A. J. A. J. just shrugged.

  Finally, after what seemed an interminable amount of time, a young woman came over and stood in front of me, looking down at my book. The conversation that followed went something like this:

  SHE: Did you write this book?

  ME: Uh.

  A.J.: This is Terry Brooks. This is his first publication, an epic fantasy. It’s a terrific story. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you will soon. It was on all the best-seller lists earlier this year. I read it and enjoyed it, and I think you will, too. Take a look at the cover.

  SHE: Is it science fiction?

  ME: Uh.

  A.J.: No, it’s fantasy. You’ve read J. R. R. Tolkien, haven’t you? It’s like that, with elves and dwarves and magic, a quest and a coming of age, really terrific.

  A. J. went on from there at great length, trying to sell her the book on my behalf. He extolled its virtues and lauded my inaugural writing effort. He told her all about the different formats, the artwork by the Brothers Hildebrandt, and the importance of getting in on the ground floor of what he was certain would be a classic. He did everything but offer her coupons. I was enormously grateful. Even after all of this, I was still having trouble getting two words out in support of myself.

  Finally A. J. finished, having said everything he could to close the sale. I took a deep breath and crossed my fingers. I wanted this much worse than I had thought I would.

  The young woman put the book back down and smiled at me.

  “Have you written anything else?” she asked.

  She left without buying the book. No one else even looked at it for the rest of the time I was there. A. J. and I exchanged addresses and phone numbers at the close, and I drove home in a decided funk, my imagination kicking into overdrive. My fifteen minutes of fame were up. My career was at an end. My writing life was over.

  I thought like this because I had missed completely the point of the lesson I had just been taught.

  There would be other signings like this one—more than a few—where only a handful of people showed up and few, if any, books were sold. This would happen even after I had a dozen best-sellers in print. It would happen with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. After three signings in Salt Lake City where the crowds were so large I spent almost five exhausting hours at each venue, I flew to California the next day for a midday signing at a Wal-Mart where not a dozen people showed.

  There is no help for it. It is an inescapable part of a writer’s public life. Sometimes, no matter who you are or how well planned the event, people stay home or go elsewhere. You learn to accept that every time you agree to make an appearance, things might not work out the way you would like. You do not take it personally, because there is no point in doing so. No one involved wants a book signing to be a failure. Not even those people who choose to stay home or go elsewhere want to see you disheartened or angry. They are simply making a choice about how to spend their time and money. Sometimes you get the benefit of their largesse; sometimes you don’t. You have to respect that the choice is theirs to make.

  Here is what is important about book signings. It is a lesson I have learned over the years, one that helps me deal with virtually any adverse situation I encounter. The point of book signings is not to make you feel good about yourself. It is not to rack up huge sales of your work while you stand by beaming benevolently on an audience of clearly enlightened readers. It is not even about advancing your career—at least, not in a direct sort of way.

  It is not, in fact, about you at all.

  Rather, it is about making a connection between readers and books. It is about making readers feel so enthusiastic about books that they cannot wait to come back and buy more—not just copies of your books, but of other authors’ books, as well. It is about generating a feeling of goodwill toward the bookstore and the staff. Mostly, it is about reassuring everyone that they did not waste their time on you.

  How do you accomplish this? It is unexpectedly easy, once you understand the dynamics of an autographing. Believe it or not, success or failure is entirely up to you. Your attitude will set the tone for everything that happens. You are the one in control. If you don’t understand this, stay home until you figure it out. It is your obligation to be cheerful and welcoming toward everyone you encounter, from the staff of the bookstore to the readers who buy your book to the customers who don’t. If you are, there is a better than even chance that they will be cheerful back. Didn’t we learn this on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood about a gazillion years ago? Speak to everyone. Make them aware of the fact that you are grateful to be there, anxious to chat, and ready to answer questions if they have any. Never sign a book without looking at and speaking directly to the reader, and then thank them for choosing to take a chance on you.

  Think about it. How can you not do this? Every one of those people has come out to meet you because they love your work. Or if they are there purely by chance, your response to them might determine whether or not you end up with a new reader. Either way, they are paying you a compliment. They are giving up their time and maybe their money for you. You are the only one who can make them feel it was worthwhile for them to do so.

  The staff of the bookstore will appreciate this, too. They want to know something about you, a writer whose work they sell. You owe them that opportunity. You owe them your thanks. You owe them a good experience for their customers, who will come back to this store remembering what
meeting you was like. If the experience is a good one, everything that surrounds it tends to be remembered as having been good, too. The staff of the bookstore will remember how you conducted yourself, no matter whether two people appeared or two hundred. They will remember you when someone asks for your books. Perhaps they will suggest your book when a customer asks for a recommendation for a new author.

  This is not always easy. Disappointments and discouragement await us as authors at every turn. We set ourselves up in anticipation of being knocked down. Someone is always ready and willing to tell us how our books could have been done better. Someone is always close at hand to point out how we failed. Our self-esteem is closely tied to our writing, and someone is always ready to step on it. That, too, is part of the territory. But understanding what it is that we are trying to accomplish when we throw off our solitary trappings long enough to face our public at a book signing will make us better able to set a balance to whatever happens.

  Looking at it like this, it becomes clear that the failure of some twenty-five years ago lies not with the young woman who chose to pass up the chance to buy my book, but with me. I am the one who reacted badly. I am the one who based success or failure entirely on whether or not a sale was made instead of a connection formed. It is a hard lesson, but an important one. I have never forgotten it.

  I like to think that the young woman eventually thought better of her decision not to buy a copy of my book. I like to think she went back and bought it later, became an avid reader of the entire series, and ultimately introduced it to her children. I like to think she became a huge fan.

  Which explains, I suppose, why I find it so easy to write fantasy.

  * * *

  I cannot imagine life without books any more than

  I can imagine life without breathing.

  * * *

  * * *

  INFLUENCES

  * * *

  I HAVE ALWAYS wanted to be a writer.

  There might have been a time very early on when I wanted to be a cowboy or a fireman, but I can’t remember it. I know I liked playing at being cowboys and firemen, but I don’t think I ever felt that I wanted to be either so badly that I couldn’t live if I didn’t find a way to do so.

  But that was exactly how I felt about being a writer. Once I knew enough about life to understand that I had to grow up and actually do something besides play with toys, writing was what I wanted to do. I don’t know if that realization happened all at once, but I suspect it pretty much did. What matters is that it might not have happened at all if it weren’t for a handful of people who, for a variety of reasons, encouraged me in my efforts.

  My parents were always my biggest boosters, enormously supportive of my efforts, often without reason for being so beyond the generally held belief that this was what parents were supposed to do. They praised my early efforts as special and indicative of real promise, when I suspect they were quite ordinary. They indulged my passion for playing with figures and making cutouts for storyboards long after they thought that I should be out playing baseball or riding my bike. They put up with my imaginings and playacting and general strangeness as if it were all perfectly normal. When I was desperate for advice on what I needed to do to improve my writing, they managed to find a children’s book editor out of Detroit who gave me just enough encouragement to keep me going.

  Mostly, they set an example. They read books in a way that suggested right from the beginning that I should want to do so, as well—not because reading books was a requirement, but because it was a privilege. Books were the source of such happiness and contentment that there could be no better experience. I can remember watching them read, so absorbed in their books that I could sit there making faces at them and they would not notice. There were books everywhere in our home, and while some were placed high up on the shelves, out of reach of children, I was never told I couldn’t read one once I had it in my hands, even when I knew they probably weren’t always thrilled by my choice.

  My father was a story doctor for a time in the thirties, before the war, for a periodical called Story magazine. His job was to read and correct pieces of fiction that had been accepted for publication. He was essentially a line editor, but frequently was called upon to rewrite prose that needed help in order to make the story publishable. Often, the problem was severe enough that it was necessary for him to rewrite the story completely.

  I found out some years later that he had wanted to be a fiction writer himself. He was nearly eighty years of age when he told me this, and just beginning to reveal some of the secrets he had kept hidden from me for many years. He had tried his hand at writing fiction, but nothing had ever come of it. I asked him not long before he died why he hadn’t kept at it, and he told me, rather ruefully, that he didn’t think that his writing was good enough to have bothered.

  By then, there was some tension between us, and I think it was caused at least in part by my success. He was seeing in me something of what he could have been. He was happy for me, but a bit sad for himself, as well. Unfulfilled dreams are not easily forgotten. It made me wonder how much encouragement he had received in his writing efforts. Had there been someone there for him as he had been there for me? He had lived through the trials of the Depression and World War II. Demands had been made of him that had not been made of me. Had things been different, he might have pursued his writing more aggressively. I have read some of his work, now that he is gone. It is pretty good.

  My mother was a writer, as well, but only sporadically and always in secret. She kept a journal, and after she died my father gave it to me to read. It was the first time I knew she had written anything. It was a typical series of entries chronicling events that had been important to my mother—visits to relatives and friends, trips abroad, and observations about her life. It showed she had a way with language and an eye for detail, but it was oddly unrevealing about her as a person. I wondered why that was. She was outgoing and loved conversation. Her writing did not suggest this.

  Mostly, these writings of my parents made me wonder about my genetics, about whether my enthusiasm was in some way inherited. It seems almost impossible to believe it wasn’t.

  After my parents, teachers influenced me most. That piece of fiction about aliens inhabiting a haunted house was written in the fourth grade for Mrs. Dawn. She was a spark plug of energy and encouragement to her students, a woman who always seemed happy and anxious to get on with whatever she was doing. What I remember most about her class was how much fun it was. Everything we did was exciting and different, from the model of the pueblo village we built of mud on a sheet of plywood to the stories we wrote and read in class. She never told us what to write and never told us afterwards that we shouldn’t have written it. She seemed to understand that at ten years of age it was important just to learn to love writing.

  In the seventh grade, I had Mrs. Wylie for English. She was small, perky, sharp-eyed, and full of enthusiasm. She let us write and put on plays. We divided into groups, conceived our spectacles, dressed in costumes, and acted them out. Everyone participated. It made the books we read come alive in a new way.

  Mrs. Hill, my English teacher in my freshman year of high school, rescued my first real effort at writing a book, a space opera about a trip to the moon, from my Latin teacher. The latter took it away, quite properly, because I was working on it during her class, and refused to return it afterwards. She said, in fact, that she intended to burn it. Mrs. Hill, reading the panic in my voice as I begged her to intervene, did so without hesitation and thus kept my efforts alive long enough for me to finish writing it, the first long piece of fiction I ever wrote and an important milestone.

  Finally, there was Miss Dickson. She was my Advanced English teacher for my junior and senior years of high school. Everyone was afraid of her, including me. She was tough and demanding, and it was no secret that she thought girls better students than boys. Both years, in classes of more than thirty, I was one of only four boys. I feared
the worst each time and was not disappointed. I struggled for my grades. But I also learned more than I had ever learned before about books and writing. I was challenged in ways that made me so much better as a writer it is difficult to describe them all. She taught me to think a story through. She insisted on outlining, which taught me to organize. She chose difficult books and made us discuss what they meant, even when we thought they didn’t mean much of anything. She refused to let us sit silent. She made us write a paper every single week.

  A professor of English in college would introduce me to William Faulkner. A girl I was dating would give me a copy of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. A speech on the importance of writing by author and poet James Dickey would kindle a fire inside me that would keep me hungry and eager to write for years afterwards. He would also teach me what it felt like to have to pay for an author’s signature after I had bought the book.

  But it was the teachers of my elementary and high school years who made the real difference in my commitment to and love of writing. They were the ones who made everything I wanted so badly seem possible. They were the ones who made me believe.

  I am often asked who influences me now, so many years later, twenty-odd books down the road. All those people from my past are gone, or nearly so. My relationships in the publishing business are mostly professional and keep me at arm’s length. I am expected to do well, to write regularly, to sell and keep selling. But without the fire of those early years to sustain me, how could I continue to do that? It isn’t enough just to be paid to write. You have to love it, as well.