LA Festival of Books. John Scalzi in Conversation with Richard Kadrey

It was off to one of my favorite events of the year in Los Angeles: The LA Times Festival of Books. My final conversation was called "John Scalzi in Conversation with Richard Kadrey."

The below biography was stolen from the LA Times Festival guide:

John Scalzi.  Scalzi is the author of several novels including his massively successful debut "Old Man's War" and the New York Times bestsellers "The Last Colony," "Fuzzy Nation" and "Redshirts." He has won a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the Hugo Award for "Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded," a collection of essays from his blog, Whatever.  He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

The below are my notes -- flawed as they might be:

He used to worked as a newspaper journalist where he learned to write quickly.  His first gig was as a movie critic and would have to drive from Fresno to San Francisco.  He had a tight deadline and would need to write quickly to get his movie review in soon after getting back home.

He can't really do anything else so if he wants a certain lifestyle he needs to write.  Finds it fun.

He wanted to be a writer at 14 when he wrote a story about a gift either given and received.  He was the only kid who got an 'A' even though he wrote it in a last minute panic.  "That's what I should do."  It is easy to be better than your friends at 14, but you learn you need to work hard to be good.

He got fired at AOL.  Do I have faith in my writing and marriage in this crisis test?  He decided to move forward with his life, which included buying a home.  Started to do consulting.  Consulted for AOL as they needed him back.

Believed there is some luck to being successful.  He got into television when someone read one of his books.  He got to learn script writing.  Being at the right place at the right time is helpful, but you need to capitalize on it.

One needsto have an ego.  Need to believe you have something to say.

Journalism teaches concise, not to feel overly protective about own writing, fast writing.

Many writers don't have a business sense.

Publishing now is where film was in the late 60s/early70s.  Publishing does not know about what will work next.  Interesting times is when interesting work happens.  You may as well try something new.