Foreword
Back when I started out in the writing game, youngster, we had it tough. There wasn’t any Internet thingy, by thunder. We had to hunt down books and magazines printed on paper. If we wanted to learn the craft of writing fiction, we had to travel by covered wagon to the bookstore or order books delivered by Pony Express.
We didn’t wake up every day to writing advice delivered to us through a computer monitor or (who’da thunk it?) on a phone! Yessir, and I used to walk ten miles to school, in the snow, right here in Los Angeles. So don’t tell me about tough!
Times change.
Now we’ve got blogs and websites and lots of knowledgeable writers and teachers sharing their expertise in a variety of ways. On my own group blog, Kill Zone, I do that each week. Why? Because I love the craft of fiction. I love to learn and grow, try new things, and teach others what I discover.
I’ve always considered myself a fiction writer first. My main goal is to write the best novel I can, every time. Which is why, even after making a living as a writer for twenty years, I still read craft books and Writer’s Digest and blogs on writing.
My favorite blog is Writer Unboxed. Therese Walsh and Kathleen Bolton made this a quality site from the get-go. It has stayed that way, which is no easy task. But you’ll see why it’s been so good when you read the contributions in Author in Progress.
I like that title. It tells me the book is not just for newbies trying to get published. It’s for the vets, too. Because real writers never feel like they’ve got everything nailed. They don’t assume they can take it easy on their yachts as they “mail it in.” Readers can smell that attitude a bookshelf away.
Real writers, even if they’ve reached a nice level of success, keep trying to get better. They experiment. Take risks. Go deeper.
I tell my workshop students to imagine they need brain surgery (and if you want to be a writer, maybe you do). You go in to meet the surgeon, and he’s playing Angry Birds. On the floor, in the corner, you see a stack of medical journals. The top one has a cover article titled “NEW DISCOVERIES ABOUT THE CEREBRAL CORTEX.”
“Have you been reading those?” you ask.
“Um, not yet. That’s my to-be-read pile.”
“When was the last time you read a medical journal?”
“Oh, not since I started here at good old Carver Memorial Hospital. I know what I’m doing! Now which part of your brain am I removing?”
We want our surgeons to keep up on their craft, do we not? Why should writers be any different? Readers expect us to deliver the goods. They’re laying out money for a return, primarily in entertainment. If you disappoint them because your characters are flat or your story stale, they’re not going to want to give you any more money.
By the way, writing for a fair exchange of money is what every writer wants to do, whether they admit it or not. So just admit it, and attend to the wisdom in this book.
Author in Progress has craft and method instruction, but also much more. It is nourishment for the writer’s soul and motivation for the writer’s heart. What all the contributors to this volume share is a love of what we do and a generous spirit toward their storytelling fellows.
You’ll find, as I did, that the material here inspires you to get to your keyboard and write.
So write! Apply what you learn. That’s how you make progress.
James Scott Bell is the author of the number one bestseller for writers, Plot & Structure, and numerous thrillers, including Romeo’s Rules, Try Dying, and Don’t Leave Me. In addition to his traditional novels, Jim has self-published in a variety of forms. His novella One More Lie was the first self-published work to be nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award. He served as the fiction columnist for Writer’s Digest magazine and has written highly popular craft books, including Write Your Novel from the Middle, Super Structure, The Art of War for Writers, and Conflict & Suspense.