Sunday, November 14, 2010

Max McCoy, live from Dogwood

I went to a journalism/writing/word-nerds convention in Kentucky a few weeks ago (just now getting things settled from the trip) and I am going to transcribe and talk about some of the seminars I went to on Concerning Fiction.

The seminar that really got me going and pumped about writing was by Max McCoy. He is the guy who wrote the Indiana Jones books, some westerns, but above all novels with mystery elements. In the seminar he told about how he became a writer and (without saying it all out loud) what it is like to be in the word-writing industry.

McCoy wore a plain dark navy suit, his hair was slicked back, and he wore a smile that said the milk in his coffee was a little sour, but he would drink it since it was free. He spoke in a dull timbre. He made sure to remind us that he had a day job, and at the end he told us the books on the table top were for sale.

I want to be Max McCoy when I grow; a shameless self-promoting writer/journalist who does and writes pretty much whatever he feels like.

Just to point out, these are his personal ideas, I cannot attest to any of these for sure--all I can say is I have heard a lot of these before so some of them are more than likely true.

But I digress. Here are the important bits straight from his talk: