Meme Therapy interviews Rudy Rucker

Meme Therapy has a long and interesting review with one of my very favorite authors, Rudy Rucker.

MT: What aspects of writing do you enjoy the most?

RR: I like leaving the daily world and going to another world, a world that I had a hand in designing. You’ll notice that in most of my novels, the main character in fact leaves the world where I start him out and goes to another world. Another planet, another dimension, another sheet of reality. It’s an objective correlative for what I’m doing when I leave this mundane world and go into the world of my novel.

Writing is so much work. Every part of writing a novel is hard. The planning, the sitting down and creating, the revising. I guess the most fun part is when it seems to pour out and I’m having a good day. When I’m doing that, I stop worrying for a while, I forget myself and I’m happy and proud and even exalted and amazed to see what’s coming down or going up.

More precisely, that fun part is “the narcotic moment of creative bliss.” I just heard John Malkovich deliver that phrase, playing the role of an artist/art prof in Art School Confidential. That’s very right on; the operative word is “narcotic,” it’s definitely something you get addicted to over the years. Really I go to all this trouble writing a novel day after day month after month because, in a way, I’m trying to get high. Or see God. Or make love to the Muse. Waiting for the narcotic moment of creative bliss.

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