About Fiction 101 And 201

Home Blog E zine Articles Best Practices Talks Products Contact Writing a Novel is Easy! Writing a Great Novel is Hard. It Took Me 5000 Hours to Learn the Magic Secrets of Writing Fiction That Gets Published. I started writing my first novel back in 1988. I figured in a few months, I'd have a few great chapters and I could sell them for a nice advance and quit my day job. Honestly, I wasn't looking for huge bucks. Medium size bucks would be fine. All I wanted was a nice number of zeroes on the advance check. I had a specific number of dollars in mind that I wanted to see on that check. Well . . . a funny thing happened when I showed the first chapter of my novel to my wife. She wasn't nearly as thrilled with the quality of my writing as I was. I thought maybe she just didn't understand Great Art, so I went for a second opinion. I joined a critique group. Real writers. Sensitive souls. Artistes. Surely, these folks would see my hidden genius. Oddly enough, they didn't think my writing was all that wonderful, either. About then, I realized that writing fiction is a lot harder than it looks. And I decided that I was going to do what it took to learn this craft of fiction. I was going to learn it really well. I was going to get published. I was going to show them all. It wasn't about the money. Yeah, sure, money's nice. But I wanted to see my name in print. Wanted to hold my book in my hands. Wanted that inner sense of achievement that comes from having written something excellent. I started buying books on writing. Started going to writing conferences. Started carving out more and more time from my personal life to learn how to write. To tell you the naked truth, I was scared spitless. Scared that I really wasn't any good. Scared that I was fooling myself. Scared that I was wasting my time and my money trying to do something that I had no talent for. Years passed, and I got so I hated having to answer my friends' questions: When are you going to get published? Are you sure you've got what it takes? Shouldn't you be spending your time on something more productive? 9 years blipped by. I must have spent five hundred bucks on how to write fiction books. Thousands more on computers and writing conferences. And I put in hundreds of hours of writing every year. For years and years and years. In the 10th year, I finally sold a short story for $150. That was my whole writing income for those ten years. I don't have to tell you how discouraged I felt. But I couldn't quit. See, when writing is in your blood, it's in your blood. When writing is in your blood, you're going to keep writing, no matter what. Like I said, it's not about the money, it's about the inner satisfaction of telling a story the way you want it told. It's about writing a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Even if yours is the only heart that ever gets broken. Even if you're the only one who feels staggered by your genius. You write because you love it. I love writing. In the 11th year, I sold my first book. Actually, I sold two a nonfiction book and a novel. The advances for the two books weren't huge, but together they exceeded 5 digits, and that's a whale of a lot better than what I was used to earning. That year, I paid taxes on my writing income. I was so excited to be paying taxes instead of taking yet another deduction for expenses. I've now been writing for 18 years. I've written six novels and have won about a dozen awards for my writing several of them quite prestigious. I have fans. Editors and agents respect me. Writers come to me for advice on writing. Conference directors ask me to teach. The last contract I signed had a nice number of zeroes on it. Matter of fact, it's exactly the amount I dreamed of earning way back when I first started writing. Like I said, it isn't huge bucks, but it's a good number. I'm thrilled with how things have turned out. I don't have a day job anymore, but occasionally I do some consulting. I charge $125 an hour, which is a fair rate, given my skills in theoretical physics and software design. I also teach fiction, and that's about what they pay me when I teach. Somebody asked me recently how much time and money I spent learning how to write before I got published. I ran some numbers and made an estimate. The answer almost knocked me over. I invested at least $7,000 in learning how to write before I ever earned a dime. I worked at least 5,000 hours learning the craft of writing fiction before I ever sold a thing. If I'd been paid $125 per hour for those 5,000 hours, I'd have earned $625,000! And you know what? It was worth it. I love being a writer. I love walking into a store and seeing my name on the shelves. I love autographing my books. I love hearing from angry fans who are furious at themselves for staying up till 6 AM reading my book because they couldn't put the darn thing down. I love it all. Being a writer is the only thing I ever want to be. But there's something else I love doing. I...

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