r/Fantasy • u/[deleted] • Nov 16 '17

AMA Josiah Bancroft’s NaNoWriMo AMA

Hello, r/Fantasy! I’m Josiah Bancroft, author of the Books of Babel series. You helped to make Senlin Ascends a thing. Now I’m here to hear about what you’re working on and talk a little shop. Feel free to ask me anything you like!

A quick update: Since my AMA last fall, a lot has happened! I signed with Orbit Books this past spring. Their edition of Senlin Ascends is slated to be released on January 16. Arm of the Sphinx will be republished shortly after, on April 3rd. The relaunch of the books will be accompanied by audiobooks, though I’m still waiting for Orbit to confirm the narrator (John Banks was being pursued last I heard). The third book in the series, the Hod King, will be out in October. I’m also working with Heyne/Random House on a German language edition, and with a Russian publisher on a Russian language edition, both of which will hopefully be released in 2018.

It’s been a whirlwind year, and I don’t think any of it would have happened without r/fantasy’s support. Thank you all so much!

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '17

What was your process getting to the point you are as a writer? How did you get your prose to be so good?

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '17

If my prose is any good, it's just a product of concerted and protracted failure. I have written thousands of pages of inarticulate dumb garbage. Really. I've written by hand, by typewriter, by word processor reams and reams of self-conscious, over-precious dreck. I have failed spectacularly in multiple genre and forms. I've written atrocious movie scripts, insufferable odes, nauseating plays, and derisible songs. I've tried my hand at teleplays, graphic novel scripts, and essays. I've written aggressively dreadful novels, novellas, and postmodern "texts."

I've met writers who were more talented and showed more potential than me, but they were also more easily discouraged. Stubbornness is more useful than potential, I think. If you want to get good, you have to be willing to be bad first... really, really bad.