It's Been a Good Life

by Isaac Asimov

  2. 1 take science fiction seriously, and I was annoyed at the satire.

  3. I just happened to think up a plot.

  So I wrote "Playboy and the Slime God," using some of the same quotes that Playboy had used and trying to show what an encounter between sex-interested aliens and an Earthwoman might really be like.

  [Later] When Groff Conklin was considering the story for one of his collections, he asked, rather piteously, if I could come up with an alternate title.

  "You bet," I said, "how about, `What Is This Thing Called Love?"'

  He was delighted, and so was I, because it fit the story perfectly.

  [The first time Robyn read one of his books I She came to me, one time, with the sad announcement that she had nothing to read.

  "Read one of my stories," I said.

  "Your stories aren't for kids," she said.

  "I have a story about a little boy," I said. "How about that?"

  "Where?"

  I got a copy of Nine Tomorrows for her, opened it to the story "The Ugly Little Boy" and said, "Here, Robyn, read this."

  Off she went to her room, from which she emerged on several occasions to tell me that she was on page so-and-so and it was great. Then there was quite a long lapse, and when she finally emerged, her face was red and swollen and tear-streaked, and she fixed me with a woeful look and said, "You didn't tell me the ending was sa-a-a-ad!"

  As a father, I hugged her and consoled her, but as a writer I was delighted.

  Twenty-One.

  ON PROLIFICITY

  My favorite kind of day (provided I don't have an unbreakable appointment that is going to force me out into it) is a cold, dreary, gusty, sleety day, when I can sit at my typewriter or word processor in peace and security ...

  A compulsive writer must be always ready to write. Sprague de Camp once stated that anyone wishing to write must block out four hours of uninterrupted solitude, because it takes a long time to get started, and if you are interrupted, you would have to start all over again from the beginning.

  Maybe so, but anyone who can't write unless he can count on four uninterrupted hours is not likely to be prolific. It is important to be able to begin writing at any time. If there are fifteen minutes in which I have nothing to do, that's enough to write a page or so. Nor do I have to sit around and waste long periods of time arranging my thoughts in order to write.

  I was once asked by someone what I did in order to start writing. I said, blankly, "What do you mean?"

  "Well, do you do setting-up exercises first, or sharpen all your pencils, or do a crossword puzzle-you know, something to get yourself into the mood."

  "Oh," I said, enlightened, "I see what you mean. Yes! Before I can possibly begin writing, it is always necessary for me to turn on my electric typewriter and to get close enough to it so that my fingers can reach the keys."

  Why is this? What is the secret of the instant start?

  For one thing, I don't write only when I'm writing. Whenever I'm away from my typewriter-eating, falling asleep, performing my ablutions-my mind keeps working. On occasion, I can hear bits of dialogue running through my thoughts, or passages of exposition. Usually, it deals with whatever I am writing or am about to write. Even when I don't hear the actual words, I know that my mind is working on it unconsciously.

  That's why I'm always ready to write. Everything is, in a sense, already written. I can just sit down and type it all out, at up to a hundred words a minute, at my mind's dictation. Furthermore, I can be interrupted and it doesn't affect me. After the interruption, I simply return to the business at hand and continue typing under mental dictation.

  It means, of course, that what enters your mind must stay in your mind. I always take that for granted, so that I never make notes. When Janet and I were first married, I would sometimes say, during a few wakeful moments at night, "I know what I ought to do in the novel."

  She would say, anxiously, "Get up and write it down."

  But I would say, "I don't have to," turn over, and let myself drift off to sleep.

  And the next morning I would remember it, of course. Janet used to say that it drove her crazy at first but she got used to it.

  The ordinary writer is bound to be assailed by insecurities as he writes. Is the sentence he has just created a sensible one? Is it expressed as well as it might be? Would it sound better if it were written differently? The ordinary writer is therefore always revising, always chopping and changing, always trying on different ways of expressing himself, and, for all I know, never being entirely satisfied. That is certainly no way to be prolific.

  A prolific writer, therefore, has to have self-assurance. He can't sit around doubting the quality of his writing. Rather, he has to love his own writing.

  I do. I can pick up any one of my books, start reading it anywhere, and immediately be lost in it and keep on reading until I am shaken out of the spell by some external event. Janet finds this amusing, but I think it's natural. If I didn't enjoy my writing so much, how on earth could I stand all the writing I do? ...

  I do edit the first draft and make changes that usually amount to not more than 5 percent of the total, and then I send it off.

  One reason for my self-assurance, perhaps, is that I see a story or an article or a book as a pattern and not just as a succession of words. I know exactly how to fit each item in the piece into the pattern, so that it is never necessary for me to work from an outline. Even the most complicated plot, or the most intricate exposition, comes out properly, with everything in the right order.

  I rather imagine that a grand master in chess sees a chess game as a pattern, rather than as a succession of moves. A good baseball manager probably sees the game as a pattern rather than as a succession of plays. Well, I see patterns too in my specialty, but I don't know how I do it. I simply have the knack and had it even as a kid.

  Of course, it helps if you don't try to be too literary in your writing. If you try to turn out a prose poem, that takes time ... I have therefore deliberately cultivated a very plain style, even a colloquial one, which can be turned out rapidly and with which very little can go wrong. Of course, some critics, with crania that are more bone than mind, interpret this as my having "no style." If anyone thinks, however, that it is easy to write with absolute clarity and no frills, I recommend that he try it.

  Being a prolific writer has its disadvantages, of course. It complicates the writer's social and family life, for a prolific writer has to be self-absorbed. He must be. He has to be either writing or thinking about writing virtually all the time, and has no time for anything else ...

  I imagine it does weary a family to have a husband and father who never wants to travel, who never wants to go on an outing or to parties or to the theater, who never wants to do anything but sit in his room and write. I daresay that the failure of my first marriage was partly the result of this.

  Twenty-Two.

  The writer's life is inherently an insecure one. Each project is a new start and may be a failure. The fact that a previous item has been successful is no guard against failure this time.

  What's more, as has often been pointed out, writing is a very lonely occupation. You can talk about what you write, and discuss it with family, friends, or editors, but when you sit down at that typewriter, you are alone with it and no one can possibly help. You must extract every word from your own suffering mind.

  It's no wonder writers so often turn misanthrope or are driven to drink to dull the agony. I've heard it said that alcoholism is an occupational disease with writers.

  When an interviewer, on the phone, asked about his drinking, and he said he didn't drink] There was a short pause, then she said, "Are you Isaac Asimov?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "The writer?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "And you've written hundreds of books?"

  "Yes," I said, "and I've written every one of them cold sober."

  She hung up, muttering. I seemed to have disillusi
oned her.

  The most serious problem a writer can face, however, is "writer's block." .. .

  When a writer has it he finds himself staring at a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter (or a blank screen on the word processor) and can't do anything to unblank it. The words don't come. Or if they do, they are clearly unsuitable and are quickly torn up or erased.

  What's more ... the longer the inability to write continues, the more certain it is that it will continue to continue ...

  In real life, some science-fiction writers, and very good ones too, have had serious episodes of writer's block that sometimes extend for years.

  It may be, therefore, that a writer's block is unavoidable and that at best a writer must pause every once in a while, for a shorter or longer interval, to let his mind fill up again.

  In that case, how have I avoided writer's block, considering that I never stop? If I were engaged in only one writing project at a time I suppose I wouldn't avoid it. Frequently, when I am at work on a science-fiction novel (the hardest to do of all the different things I write), I find myself heartily sick of it and unable to write another word. But I don't let that drive me crazy. I don't stare at blank sheets of paper. I don't spend days and nights cudgeling a head that is empty of ideas.

  Instead, I simply leave the novel and go on to any of the dozen other projects that are on tap. I write an editorial, or an essay, or a short story, or work on one of my nonfiction books. By the time I've grown tired of these things, my mind has been able to do its proper work and fill up again. I return to my novel and find myself able to write easily once more.

  This periodic difficulty of getting the mind to deliver ideas reminds me of how irritating that perennial question is: "Where do you get your ideas?"

  I suppose that all writers of fiction are asked that, but for writers of science fiction, the question is usually phrased, "Where do you get your crazy ideas?"

  I don't know what answer they expect, but Harlan Ellison answers, "From Schenectady. They have an idea factory and I subscribe to it, so every month they ship me a new idea."

  I wonder how many people believe him.

  I was asked the question a few months ago by a top-notch sciencefiction writer, whose work I admire greatly. I gathered that he was suffering from writer's block, and phoned me as one notoriously immune to it. "Where do you get your ideas?" he wanted to know.

  I said, "By thinking and thinking and thinking till I'm ready to kill myself."

  He said, with enormous relief, "You too?"

  "Of course," I said, "did you ever think it was easy to get a good idea?"

  [Letter] I couldn't sleep last night so I lay awake thinking of an article to write and I'd think and think and cry at the sad parts. I had a wonderful night.

  Twenty-Three.

  MISCELLANEOUS

  OPINIONS AND QUIRKS

  [Letter] To me it seems to be important to believe people to be good even if they tend to be bad, because your own joy and happiness in life is increased that way, and the pleasures of the belief outweigh the occasional disappointments. To be a cynic about people works just the other way around and makes you incapable of enjoying the good things.

  [Letter] Every nation in the world should agree that in any battle fought, the losing general should be instantly executed. In the event of threatened war, the military services of either side will claim they're not ready because the generals can't risk losing a battle.

  [Writing of the years of worry during Hitler's racism] I also tried to avoid becoming uncomfortably hooked on anti-Semitism as the main problem of the world. Many Jews I knew divided the world into Jews and anti-Semites, nothing else. Many Jews I knew recognized no problem anywhere, at any time, but that of anti-Semitism.

  It struck me, however, that prejudice was universal and that all groups who were not dominant, who were not actually at the top of the status chain, were potential victims. In Europe, in the 1930s, it was the Jews who were being spectacularly victimized, but in the United States it was not the Jews who were worst treated. Here, as anyone could see who did not deliberately keep his eyes shut, it was the African Americans.

  For two centuries they had actually been enslaved. Since that slavery had come to a formal end, the African Americans remained in a position of near-slavery in most segments of American society. They were deprived of ordinary rights, treated with contempt, and kept out of any chance of participation in what is called the American Dream.

  I, though Jewish, and poor besides, eventually received a firstclass American education at a top American university, and I wondered how many African Americans would have the chance. It constantly bothered me to have to denounce anti-Semitism unless I denounced the cruelty of man to man in general.

  I once listened to a woman grow eloquent over the terrible way in which Gentiles did nothing to save the Jews of Europe. "You can't trust Gentiles," she said. I let some time elapse and then asked suddenly, "What are you doing to help the blacks in their fight for civil rights?" "Listen," she said, "I have my own problems." And I said, "So did the Gentiles." But she only stared at me blankly. She didn't get the point at all ...

  The whole world seems to live under the banner: "Freedom is wonderful-but only for me."

  [Sharing a platform with a famous Holocaust survivor] He said that he did not trust scientists and engineers because scientists and engineers had been involved in conducting the Holocaust.

  What a generalization! It was precisely the sort of thing an antiSemite says. "I don't trust Jews because once certain Jews crucified my Savior."

  I brooded about that on the platform and finally, unable to keep quiet, I said, "... it is a mistake to think that because a group has suffered extreme persecution that is a sign that they are virtuous and innocent. They might be, of course, but the persecution process is no proof of that. The persecution merely shows that the persecuted group is weak. Had they been strong, then, for all we know, they might have been the persecutors."

  Isaac congratulating Clifford Simak in 1971. (Courtesy Jay Kay Klein)

  Janet, Harlan Ellison, and Isaac at a science-fiction convention in 1972. (Courtesy Jay Kay Klein)

  John Campbell, Janet, and Isaac in a science-fiction convention hotel room. (Courtesy Jay Kay Klein)

  Isaac in 1973, with his hair at its longest. (Courtesy Jay Kay Klein)

  Isaac and his good friend Lester del Rey. (Courtesy Jay Kay Klein)

  Isaac with his friend Marty Greenburg at the 1980 Noreascon II World Science Fiction Convention. (Courtesy Jay Kay Klein)

  Isaac with a collection of some of the books he wrote. (Courtesy Jay Kay Klein)

  Isaac and Janet at Lunacon '88. (Courtesy Jay Kav Klein)

  [The famous man] said, "Give me one example of the Jews ever persecuting anyone."

  Of course, I was ready for him. I said, "Under the Maccabean kingdom in the second century B.C.E., John Hyrcanus of Judea conquered Edom and gave the Edomites a choice-conversion to Judaism or the sword. The Edomites, being sensible, converted, but, thereafter, they were in any case treated as an inferior group, for though they were Jews, they were also Edomites."

  [The famous man] said, "That was the only time."

  I said, "That was the only time the Jews had the power. One out of one isn't bad."

  That ended the discussion, but I might add that the audience was heart and soul with [the famous man].

  The Bible says that those who have experienced persecution should not in their turn persecute: "Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exod. 22:21). Yet who follows that text?

  [Isaac gave a talk at a book fair] ... with my usual indifference to such matters, I didn't realize it was Rosh Hashanah. It wouldn't have mattered at all except that a couple of days later I received a phone call from a young man, who was a stranger to me but who had apparently seen a notice in the Globe that I had spoken at the book fair and who felt he had a right to ask me why I had spoken on Ro
sh Hashanah.

  I explained politely that I hadn't known it was Rosh Hashanah, but that if I had, I would still have spoken, because I was a nonobserving Jew. The young man, himself Jewish, flung himself into a selfrighteous lecture in which he told me my duties as a Jew, observant or not, and ended by accusing me of trying to conceal my Jewishness.

  I felt annoyed. I thought I had caught his name when he started the conversation, but wasn't sure. I had caught enough, however, to feel confident of my next move. I said, "You have the advantage of me, sir. You know my name. I didn't get yours. To whom am I speaking?"

  He said, "My name is Jackson Davenport." (not his real name, but his real name was just as Anglo-Saxon, I assure you.)

  "Really? Well, my name, as you know, is Isaac Asimov, and if I were really trying to conceal my Jewishness as you claim I am trying to do, my very first move would be to change my name to Jackson Davenport."

  That ended the conversation with a crash.

  [Being on a panel with Wernher von Braun] I was not an admirer of Wernher von Braun. He had worked under Hitler and would have won the war for the Nazis if he could. I know, of course, that it might be said that he was just being patriotic or that he would have been thrown into a concentration camp if he had refused or that he had to work on rockets whatever the purpose-and for those reasons I was prepared to remain neutral where he was concerned. I did not have to be friendly.

  When we all got onto the platform, therefore, I studiously remained at the end opposite from that occupied by von Braun and did my best to be unaware of his existence.

  It didn't help. The moderator, anxious to introduce everyone to everyone, brought von Braun to me and began performing the introduction. There were eight hundred people in the audience watching and I had two seconds to decide what to do. I couldn't make a scene; he was holding out his hand.