The Write Stuff

  Many writers of fiction are pathologically insecure.  They are doubters, second-guessers, Monday-morning quarterbacks, and pessimists. Their literary glass is always half empty.  To survive, novelists must develop a thick skin. They take criticism badly, mostly because they are their own worst critics.  Thus, I am not a big fan of writers’ critique groups.  I had a particularly bad experience once. I found myself at the first meeting being lavishly praised by one participant and unmercifully shredded by another. I might have weathered that, but both had read the same book! One thought I had real talent. The other thought I had real nerve publishing such drivel. Neither offered suggestions. Just gushes or scorn. I left, never to return.  I believe that neither critique had merit, since neither person had written a book. They wanted to be novelists. A writers’ group of published authors might be more valuable. They are likely to be more circumspect in their comments, good or bad.

No, this isn’t about my golf game. (For those that are interested, my handicap is now 26 and rising faster than ocean levels. Pretty soon, I’ll be getting strokes on the practice range!) I’m talking about fore shadowing, fore boding, fore telling and fore warning. I once saw an interview with Sidney Sheldon, who according to Wikipedia is “the king of the potboilers” and “the seventh-best-selling fiction writer of all time”. Sheldon, who didn’t start writing fiction until he was 50 and died at 90 in 2007, said that he started with an idea but never knew where his books were going. He added that he liked to write himself into corners, and then write himself out of them.  That’s basically how I do it and that’s where the “foreshadowing, foreboding, foretold and forewarning” come in, since I don’t want my readers to be lost, too. I use computer-writing software called Scrivener, which allows me to put chapters, research, ideas, scenes and odd thoughts (of which I have many) on electr