In this series on how to become a writer, I wanted to get the views of some experienced and successful authors. So it’s with great pleasure that I can present this interview with Barry Eisler
Don’t forget to check out his site for some more resources for writers and a great forum.
Q: How did you start out writing your first book?
A: I have a long-standing interest in what I like to think of as “forbidden knowledge:” methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy stuff, and other things that the government wants only a few select individuals to know. When I was a kid I read a biography of Harry Houdini, and in the book a cop was quoted as saying, “It’s fortunate that Houdini never turned to a life a crime, because if he had he would have been difficult to catch and impossible to hold.” I remember thinking how cool it was that this man knew things that people weren’t supposed to know, things that gave him special power. Anyway, since then I’ve amassed a small and unusual library on some of the foregoing and on other esoteric subjects, I spent three years in the CIA, I got pretty into a variety of martial arts…
And then I moved to Tokyo to train in judo. I think all the other stuff must have been building up in my mind like dry tinder, waiting for the spark which life in Tokyo came to provide. Because while I was there commuting to work one morning, a vivid image came to me of two men following another man down Dogenzaka street in Shibuya. I still don’t know where the image came from, but I started thinking about it. Who are these men? Why are they following that other guy? Then answers started to come: They’re assassins. They’re going to kill him. But these answers just let to more questions: why are they going to kill him? What did he do? Who do they work for? It felt like a story, somehow, so I started writing, and that was the birth of John Rain and Rain Fall.
Q: When did you decide to write full-time and how did you reach that decision?
A: You remind me of that joke about why dogs lick their genitals… (oops, did I say that out loud)?
I love writing, and had for a long time thought that getting paid to do full time what I love would be wonderful. So as soon as I got my first check, from Sony’s Village Books imprint for the Japanese rights, I left my day job and started concentrating full time on writing. That was in 2001, and it’s been a dream come true ever since. [Read more…]
book. The sequels, movies and merchandising made her one of the wealthiest women alive today. Excellent! But, it also took her six years to write that first bestseller and many publishers turned down the manuscript.
was born. There’s no feeling quite like the one when you open the box of author copies and see all your hard work lying there on the table. Tangible, real, after all that time and effort. It’s easy then to romanticize the process that led up to that moment. In your mind’s eye, it all turns into fun and good times:
