Remembering Mike Resnick
I studied under Mike Resnick at Clarion in 1999. Every night, he’d invite whichever of the students wanted to come down to the local Denny’s to pick his brain, and most nights only two of us accepted, me and Tobias Buckell. He very much took Tobias under his wing, and for whatever reason (possibly gender, possibly my lack of interpersonal skills at that age), I wasn’t his cup of tea, but he never made me feel unwelcome, and I learned a lot from those late-night conversations and from him in general:
1. The first night, he teased me for not having a pen and paper with me to write down a recommendation of his. “And you want to be a writer? What happens when you get an idea and you’re in the middle of nowhere?” (My private answer was that I need time to develop ideas before I write them down, and if I can’t hold on to them, they’re not worth writing, but 21 years later, I still carry a pen and notepad everywhere I go.)
2. He taught us that as writers, we are the ones who get paid, not the ones who pay, not for editing or publishing, and not for a working meal, and thus generously paid for whatever we wanted to eat or drink, night after night.
3. The reason he went to Denny’s was that they were cheap and open at ridiculous hours, ideal for his writing schedule because late hours means no phone calls or other interruptions. He taught us to be protective of our writing time.
4. He explained both book/magazine contracts and the Hollywood option and screenwriting process to us in such a way that we would feel comfortable taking ownership of our careers. In my MFA program, this meant more than one of my classmates turned to me when they sold their stories because I knew what a reasonable contract should look like and what it was okay to push back on.
5. He taught us to break down the mechanics of any book or plot to understand it better, and apologized that we’d never be able to just enjoy watching a movie again. He made up for it by showing us Casablanca, which he argued was the perfect cyberpunk movie if you swap out the letters of transit for any tech MacGuffin/plot device.
He’s an indelible part of my formation as a writer, and while I may have wished for more, I’m glad for what I learned from him.
1. The first night, he teased me for not having a pen and paper with me to write down a recommendation of his. “And you want to be a writer? What happens when you get an idea and you’re in the middle of nowhere?” (My private answer was that I need time to develop ideas before I write them down, and if I can’t hold on to them, they’re not worth writing, but 21 years later, I still carry a pen and notepad everywhere I go.)
2. He taught us that as writers, we are the ones who get paid, not the ones who pay, not for editing or publishing, and not for a working meal, and thus generously paid for whatever we wanted to eat or drink, night after night.
3. The reason he went to Denny’s was that they were cheap and open at ridiculous hours, ideal for his writing schedule because late hours means no phone calls or other interruptions. He taught us to be protective of our writing time.
4. He explained both book/magazine contracts and the Hollywood option and screenwriting process to us in such a way that we would feel comfortable taking ownership of our careers. In my MFA program, this meant more than one of my classmates turned to me when they sold their stories because I knew what a reasonable contract should look like and what it was okay to push back on.
5. He taught us to break down the mechanics of any book or plot to understand it better, and apologized that we’d never be able to just enjoy watching a movie again. He made up for it by showing us Casablanca, which he argued was the perfect cyberpunk movie if you swap out the letters of transit for any tech MacGuffin/plot device.
He’s an indelible part of my formation as a writer, and while I may have wished for more, I’m glad for what I learned from him.
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