But if a writer does not entertain his readers, all he is producing is paper dirty on one side. I must always bear in mind that my prospective reader could spend his recreation money on beer rather than on my stories; I have to be aware every minute that I am competing for beer money-and that the customer does not have to buy. If I produced, let us say, potatoes or beef, I could be sure that my product had some value in the market. But a story that the customers do not enjoy reading is worth nothing.
So, when anyone asks me why I write, if it is a quick answer, standing up, I simply say, “For money.” Any other short answer is dishonest-and any writer who forgets that his prime purpose is to wangle, say 95 cents out of a customer who need not buy at all simply does not get published. He is not a writer; he just thinks he is.
(Oh, surely, one hears a lot of crap about “art” and “self-expression,” and “duty to mankind” — but when it comes down to the crunch, there your book is, on the newsstands, along with hundreds of others with just as pretty covers-and the customer does not have to buy. If a writer fails to entertain, he fails to put food on the table-and there is no unemployment insurance for freelance writers.)
(Even a wealthy writer has this necessity to be entertaining. Oh, he could indulge in vanity publication at his own expense-but who reads a vanity publication? One’s mother, maybe.)
That covers the first two reasons: I write for money because I have a household to support and in order to earn that money I must entertain the reader.
The third reason is more complex. A writer can afford to indulge in it only if he clears the first two hurdles. I have written almost every sort of thing-filler paragraphs, motion picture and TV scripts, poetry, technical reports, popular journalistic nonfiction, detective stories, love stories, adventure stories, etc. — and I have been paid for 99% of what I have written.
But most of the categories above bored me. I had enough skill to make them pay but I really did not enjoy the work. I found that what Idid enjoy and did best was speculative fiction. I do not think that this is just a happy coincidence; I suspect that, with most people, the work they do best is the work they enjoy.
By the time I wrote Stranger I had enough skill in how to entertain a reader and a solid enough commercial market to risk taking a flyer, a fantasy speculation a bit farther out than I had usually done in the past. My agent was not sure of it, neither was my wife, nor my publisher, but I felt sure that I would sell at least well enough that the publisher would not lose money on it-would “make his nut.”
I was right; it did catch hold. Its entertainment values were sufficient to carry the parable, even if it was read Mrictly for entertainment.
But I thought that the parables in it would take hold, lot), at least for some readers. They did. Some readers (many, I would say) have told me that they have read this fantasy three, four, five or more times-in which case, it can’t be the story line; there is no element of surprise left in the story line in a work of fiction read over and over again; it has to be something more.
Well, what was I trying to say in it?
I was asking questions.
I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers.
If I managed to shake him loose from some prejudice, preconception, or unexamined assumption, that was all I intended to do. A rational human being does not need answers, spoon-fed to him on “faith”; he needs questions to worry over-serious ones. The quality of the answers then depends on him…and he may revise those answers several times in the course of a long life, (hopefully) getting a little closer to the truth each time. But I would never undertake to be a “Prophet,” handing out neatly packaged answers to lazy minds.