Conversation with an Author

If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be? What would you talk about? This always brings up some great conversations in writing groups and in our circle of friends.

For me, it would be Jim Morrison. While he’s recognized for being a rock idol, front man for the 60s group the Doors, he was a poet long before putting his verses to music with Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore.

During his life (1943-1971) he self-published, (long before self-publishing was mainstream, before Amazon, before POD,) three books of poetry. The Lords and The New Creatures were two titles published in 1969, followed by An American Prayer in 1971. The latter was turned into an album (An American Prayer - Jim Morrison) by his surviving band mates in 1978 which went on to be nominated for a Grammy and remains the largest selling spoken-word album according to doorexaminer.com. Posthumous works include, The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison: Wilderness Volume One and The American Night Volume Two, in 1988 and 1990 respectively, published by his friend, Frank J. Lisciandro.

My favorite quote from Morrison is "The Crossroads: A place where ghosts reside to whisper into the ears of travelers & interest them in their fate." From that, I wrote a short horror story, I Met the Devil at the Crossroads which is available on Amazon http://amzn.to/2FzyW4M

But what if I were able to sit with Morrison and engage in a conversation? What would I ask him? What would we talk about? Good questions. Morrison was very well read and perhaps beyond his years in knowledge, but my first question would be where does your inspiration come from? I’m not going to speculate on his answer, but I’m sure it would have to do with his life experiences.

I’d ask him what he’s writing now, which would likely be a collection of poetry. Have you ever considered writing a novel? While I don’t recall reading anything about Morrison writing a novel, he did have two movie scripts in the works. Perhaps he thought writing a book about his trial in Miami. He took a lot of notes during the trial. The title could have been “Observations of an American While on Trial in Miami.”

I would ask him about his time in Paris and what places did he enjoying writing at. Did he write freely or plot and plan his words? How often do you write, I would be sure to ask him.

My last question would be what advice do you have for people who want to write? Would he tell them to write every day, always carry a pad and pencil? I’m hoping he would, after all he was known to always be reading a book or writing one.

So, what author would like to meet, and what would you ask them?