Author Michael Chabon says discipline is key

By Belinda Goldsmith

SYDNEY (Reuters) - American author Michael Chabon has won a Pulitzer Prize, but he's not taking it for granted, saying discipline and hard work are the only ways to succeed as a novelist.

Chabon's third novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 while his most recent work, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," which is just being released in paperback, won a Nebula Award.

Chabon, 44, spoke to Reuters about writing and families:

Q: Did you always want to write?

A: "When I was still pretty young, 11 or 12, I started writing primarily for school and I took to it. I found it to be pleasurable and writing fiction, writing stories like the kind I liked to read, made me feel connected to the work and the authors and, although I did not know it at the time, to the whole tradition that I was to become a part of."

Q: Is it still pleasurable?

A: "Yes, particularly when it is going well. It comes more easily than other things. I have bad days of course."

Q: Your second novel, "Fountain City," you dropped and never published. Did you learn anything from that experience?

A: "I tried to draw lessons from that experience. I saw it as my duty as an American to learn from my mistake and see the bright side. I tried dutifully to draw something of moral instruction from that experience of failure! But I'm not sure what went wrong there. I just set off on the wrong foot and could not get it right although I tried for five years."

Q: Is it hard to keep living up to your success so far?

A: "I don't take success for granted. Like being awarded the Pulitzer prize for "Kavalier & Clay" -- a book I had qualms about as I was writing it -- that really reflected my own fears. To have it come out well and get the Pulitzer, it made me feel that it was good that I took a chance on an unlikely story and an unlikely idea and stuck with it. "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" felt very unlikely but when it was not going well I would tell myself that I had felt the same way about "Kavalier & Clay.""

Q: You wrote the original script for the movie "Spider-Man 2." Is screenplay writing something you enjoy?

A: "I've done a lot of screen writing over the years. It's a way to supplement the money from writing and belonging to the Writers Guild of America means we get our health insurance. There are practical reasons. I enjoy the first draft before I have to turn it over to other people and allow them to collaborate. You don't go into the business of being a writer or a poet because you want to collaborate."

Q: Several of your books are on and heading to the big screen. Do you stay involved or leave them alone once in film?

A: "I stayed involved with "Kavalier & Clay" as I was hired to write screenplay. Every time one of my books has been optioned by producers I have been asked if I would be interested in adapting it myself but mostly I have said no. I said yes to "Kavalier & Clay" as I needed the health insurance. When I say no I just take the money and I am done. It is not hard. No one is forcing me to sell the movie rights to a book."