Andrea Long Chu Wants to Write a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign (And Other Goodies)

Andrea Long Chu’s essay collection, Authority, is available now from FSG, so we asked her a few questions about writing, reading, alternate careers, and more.

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What part of your writing routine do you think would surprise your readers?
When I really have to lock in, I blast certain musicals on loop. Some of these shows, I’ve listened to for decades at this point. They’re worn so smooth in my ears that I’m not distracted by the lyrics, and I can harmonize under my breath without becoming distracted. (Currently playing as I write this: “The Worst Pies in London,” from Sweeney Todd, the late Angela Lansbury. Sondheim wrote it just for her, and you can tell.)

I feel like it gives me the form of narrative momentum that I can pour whatever content I’m working on. I flatter myself with the Sondheim reference but it can be anything. Sometimes it’s Waitress. Sometimes it’s The Last Five Years, which is deeply embarrassing for many reasons, but I’m a sucker for that kind of rhythmic piano.

How do you tackle writers block?
I take a walk, or better yet, I get on the subway. I can spend all day knocking my head against a paragraph that just won’t budge, but the moment I’m on the train, it all melts away and I know what I need to do. I think you have to escape the scene of writing and remind yourself that it is not some transcendent experience. It’s just getting from one place to another.

Which non-literary piece of culture—film, tv show, painting, song—could you not imagine your life without?
I’m sure I could find something flattering if I thought hard about it, but anyone who knows me knows that the answer is Dungeons & Dragons, not least because I’ve probably gotten them to play it. I joke that I would be a dungeon master for a living if I could, but it’s only half a joke. The game probably saved my life during the greatest depths of my mental illness, and now it is the only thing in my life that can really match the creativity of writing.

The other day a player of mine—a fifth-level genasi drakewarden—told me that I’d done so many voices in a single session that it was like whiplash when I returned to my actual voice. That feeling of really delivering the imaginary world, that’s the real Pulitzer for me. I chase it every week.

No dungeon master can escape the delusion that she should write a fantasy novel. One of these days I’ll probably succumb to it. But I would settle for writing an official campaign setting. Sea of Fallen Stars, early eighteenth century, gunpowder, age of sail, monotheistic church, financial capital, rise of the nation state, imperialism, war, the oppressed slowly transforming, without knowing it, into the oppressor.

Wizards of the Coast, shoot me a sending.

What’s the best or worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
When I was moving out of academia, where as a rule you are expected to publish without compensation, someone told me: Never write for free. That’s very easy for me to say as someone with a cushy staff position as a legacy magazine. It’s certainly not practical advice for a freelancer who’s getting paid ten cents on the word to help train a large language model.

But for that exact reason I do think it’s important never to have any illusions about “art” or “craft” that are divorced from the material reality of writing as labor. If you’re getting $100 for something, it’s absurd that an editor should expect work that is worth more than that.

The least writers can do is to try, as much as they can, to withhold services for which payment simply has not been rendered. Scrap buys slop.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you do instead?
Probably try to become a writer.

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Authority by Andrea Long Chu is available via FSG.