I've paid my dues to make it
Walter Mosley on writing, interviewed by Charles L.P. Silet:
MysteryNet: Obviously you don't see much distinction between what we would describe as genre or crime fiction and straight fiction or literature.Raymond Chandler, from Frank MacShane's The Life of Raymond Chandler (1986):
Mosley: No, I don't see any difference in it. Of course, in the genre there are certain kinds of things that you have to do, but it's the same in a coming-of-age novel, somebody has to come of age. So you have to follow the conventions. Good fiction is in the sentence and in the character and in the heart of the writer. If the writer is committed to and in love with what he or she is doing, then that's good fiction.
MysteryNet: Who have you read both in crime fiction and in regular fiction that's had an influence on you?
Mosley: In crime fiction, I've read lots and lots of people. Charles Willeford, I just adore. Every one of his books is so deeply flawed plot-wise, but it matters nothing to me because he's such a wonderful writer. I was reading one of his books the other day about some old guy and his wife; he was seventy-two but looked older and she was sixty-three and looked older than him. It was so funny; just the way he wrote it. My God, this guy is fantastic! Hoke Mosley is a real guy. It's so right. I've read everybody -- Gregory MacDonald -- I've read all the Fletch books. I thought they were wonderful. Parker, of course. Vachss, who I adore, because I think that he is so deeply committed to what he believes in. I feel the heart coming through it, and I compare him to Dickens. Rex Stout. I've read almost everything Simenon ever wrote. The people I love for writing are the French: Malraux, Camus, Gide, for just the style of writing. It is almost the heart of fiction for me. Then the older guys like Proust, and tons of black poets: Gwendolyn Brooks, Derek Walcott, Amiri Baraka. It doesn't matter who writes it, no matter their sex or their race or what period of time they lived in.
My theory was that readers just thought that they cared about nothing but the action; that really although they didn't know it, they cared very little about the action. The thing they really cared about, and that I care about, was the creation of emotion through dialogue and description.