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Walter Mosley is one of the greatest American crime-fiction writers.
[Snowfallco-creator] John Singleton asked me, and I love John, so of course I said yes.
Youre all together working it out.
Thats the question that you constantly deal with.
You dont think of the What happens next?
part the plotting or structural part as part of the writing process?
By the part thatsnotwriting, I mean the part where youre breaking everything down structurally.
Your Easy Rawlins books became a kind of alternative history of Los Angeles and Southern California.
Its an aspect of American history that isnt understood in the way it ought to be.
There are no neighborhoods in Los Angeles that people are just afraid toevergo into.
Its possible for us to get into just about any field now and excel.
Weve had a black mayor [in Los Angeles], and a black president.
But a lot of the inequality remains.
Mass incarceration is a major problem.
Generations have been devastated by it.
Snowfallis about the effect of the crack cocaine trade on Southern California, particularly on black and Hispanic men.
The incarceration of people in the drug war in this country is a tragedy.
We have the highest incarceration rate of any developed country on Earth.
They all have different processes.
I wrote a whole book about this, so I usually just refer people to it.
Its calledThis Year You Write Your Novel.
The main thing is discipline to justteachyourself discipline.
I dont think theres any doubt that things are different.
Things change, you know.
You know, the number of books sold stays pretty consistent year after year.
The problem is more people are publishing books, and are able to publish books, than ever before.
There were something like300,000 bookspublished last year, just in this country alone.
Thats a lot of books!
I dont think anybody has a good answer for that.
Have you ever lost a manuscript and worried that it was some of your best work?
Oh, maybe a draft of a story, or a chapter of a novel, something like that.
What happens when you lose it?I just start all over, writing it again.
You know, its fine.
I know some writers who never get over it.
They think of that story, that manuscript, as the one that got away.The one that got away?
I tend to think if it got away, itll either return to you or it wont.
I know a guy who was obsessed with the girl that got away.
The one that got away, the one that got away, thats how he thought of her.
Forty years later, she came back into his life.
She returned to him!
What happened?He broke up with her.
