What’s so special about an "authorized" biography? Unauthorized biographies get published all the time, and for the most part they don’t seem to be lacking in crucial information. If that’s the case, then what is the difference between an authorized biography and an unauthorized biography?

For Dean Koontz’s biography, Koontz supplied most of the information to the writer, Katherine Ramsland, but he wouldn’t authorize it. Same goes for Courtney Love when she had Poppy Z. Brite write her biography. Very curious.

Maybe it’s because there is concern that an authorized biography might be favorably biased toward the author – how wonderful they are, how nothing bad ever happened to them (unless it puts them in a favorable or sympathetic context). The word for such a work is hagiography: an idealizing or idolizing biography.

One day I may write an autobiography. But I don’t think I’ll authorize it.

Ian

As an addendum to my Joyce Carol Oates post, I thought I would mention a magazine called Ontario Review, created by Oates and Raymond J. Smith, who conceived it as journal of the arts by two Americans teaching in Canada. They publish authors from both Canada and the U.S., and it’s pretty snazzy to have Ontario in the title. It’s a literary magazine which I happened upon recently, and the timing couldn’t have been better. I have a non-genre story in the works, tentatively titled "The Kiddie Pool," and I think Ontario Review would make a good first stop on what are sure to be its many travels.

Ian

Happened upon a great website devoted to atomic war/nuclear holocaust in fiction. Very useful if you’re interested in checking out some especially creative and, for the most part, bleak fiction. Strangely there’s nothing by Danielle Steel.

Ian

I’m a big fan of Joyce Carol Oates. A prolific writer with a number of novels and short story collections under her belt, she is someone who has achieved success in the mainstream, explored virtually every kind of genre fiction (including some deliciously twisted horror stories), and managed to remain a truly original writer.

Despite her fame, Oates’s official website is little more than a placeholder on the HarperCollins site. If you want to see a truly useful JCO resource, check out Celestial Timepiece. The difference between the two websites is quite evident: love and admiration went into one of them. Take a look at both of them and try to figure it out.

Ian

As an addendum to yesterday’s post, I’d like to recommend a website called Unseen Videodrome that features stills from several deleted scenes and alternative endings from what I feel is David Cronenberg’s best film. On the audio commentary of the Criterion Collection DVD, Cronenberg admits that James Woods’ character of Max Renn and his sleazy cable TV station, Civic Video, were inspired by Moses Znaimer and CityTV (though the character of Max Renn is not supposed to be a cinematic version of Znaimer). Some cool Canadian movie trivia for you.

Ian

Two movie bits tonight. First of all, I just re-watched Vanilla Sky, a very good film with lots of mind fuckery, and I always laugh at the part where Jason Lee is telling Tom Cruise in the bar that he wasn’t falling for Penelope Cruz, that she was only a "proximity infatuation." A writer sitting behind him is scribbling away, and Lee leans back in his chair and says to him, "Don’t use that, it’s mine." Great gag for us writers.

The other bit is a brief cameo in The Shipping News. Another good movie, with great cinematography and a great score (must be my east coast blood). The character in question is Kevin Spacey’s dad, seen in the opening shot as Spacey’s character as a chlid is being taught to swim (by being pushed off a dock into a lake, no less). You have to look really close ’cause you only see him for a minute, but the actor playing him is the same one who plays drunk trailer-park supervisor Jim Lahey on Trailer Park Boys. Good old Canadian casting. You can’t go wrong.

Speaking of which, I’m on a big Cronenberg kick right now, having recently picked up most of his flicks on DVD. Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, a sweet Videodrome DVD out from Criterion, and a special-edition of Cronenberg’s early, non-hororr flick, Fast Company, which has a bonus disc with his first two student films, Stereo and Crimes of the Future. Avant-garde stuff, to be sure, but very creepy and eerily prophetic of his work to come. Canadian film rules. Long live the new flesh.

Ian

It’s become cliché for the writer to bemoan the oft-asked question of Where do you get your ideas? Writers don’t like to answer that question, I guess because it doesn’t have an answer … or at least not one that can be expressed easily with words, verbal or written.

For the unpublished writer the question we hate to hear is What are you going to do if you don’t get published? It’s a reasonable question, but, boy, it sure can take the wind out of your sails. It’s a question that can be taken in one of two ways and neither one is especially pleasant. The really bad one suggests that your dreams of writing are just that — dreams — and while it might be fun to entertain such lofty notions, you better have a backup plan because, let’s face it, kid, it probably ain’t gonna happen.

It’s the one question struggling writers hate to hear because, in addition to being an insult hiding behind a piece of advice, it leads to that other favorite: How many writers actually make enough to get by, anyway? It’s another good question. How many people worldwide actually make a living from writing books? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? One hundred? I don’t know, and I’m not so sure I want to know.

Regardless of how many novelists are making a living from their craft, those of us who are still struggling need to believe that it can happen. It’s the old reach-for-the-stars bit, I know, but it’s the thing that keeps most of us motivated when we receive our rejection letters or, in some cases, no letters at all. We have to believe that we’re doing it for some reason. That if we try hard enough and long enough it will happen. I guess there is a certain amount of self-delusion involved, but I like to think it’s going toward a good cause.

So how should one deal with this question should it come up? Well, the simplest solution would be to tell the person to go fuck themselves, but that’s not exactly the polite approach. And if the person is bigger than you, they might end up giving you some facial reconstruction, totally gratis.

So what do I do? Well, I’ve never been asked the question myself, though I dread the thought of it. It hangs over my head, not like the Sword of Damocles but rather like one of Wile E. Coyote’s 1000-ton Acme anvils, waiting to conk me a good one when I least expect it.

If someone does try to stick it to you, I would thank them politely for their interest in your work and then use those writerly skills to cleverly turn the conversation onto another subject. The hockey strike, maybe? Or The Bachelorette?

Or you could make like the Roadrunner and stick your tongue out at the offending questioner and zip away before the anvil drops.

Meep-meep.

Ian

It happened again. The other day I was at the Dominion and some lady asked if I was a doctor at Sunnybrook. This is the third time I’ve been asked. Each time I’ve been dressed normally (i.e. not in scrubs or a lab coat), so I can only surmise that there is a doctor at Sunnybrook who looks very much like yours truly. Lucky bastard.

Ian