1. Introduction

90% of my writing time is spent on two things:

Trying to write the next sentence.
Trying to improve the sentence I just wrote.

Many writing seminars concentrate on finding story ideas, creating characters, developing plot, etc. Those things are important, but they don't occupy much of a writer's time. It takes me about 12 hours (spread over a few days) to come up with everything I need to start writing a novel. After that, I spend a few minutes a day sorting out plot and character details, but the rest of my time is spent writing or revising prose: one sentence after another, putting down the words that actually constitute the story.

This seminar discusses how to string words together...and how to do it well. Writers who can't use words are like painters who can't hold their paintbrushes; artists (including writers) have to master the materials of their art, and words are the most basic materials we writers have.

If you want to learn to draw, you have to draw. It's not enough to read a book or listen to a lecture. You have to train your eye-hand coordination; you have to improve the fine-motor skills of the muscles in your drawing hand; you have to develop the visual areas of your brain to see as an artist sees. There's no magic—there's just the (lengthy) process of improving your physical and mental abilities by applying yourself to the work.

Similarly, if you want to learn to write, you have to write. How-to books and seminars may open your eyes to new possibilities and help you avoid going down blind alleys, but they won't build the neural circuits you need for good writing. Your brain can't change overnight: it takes time to develop the skills and insights required to be a writer. If you're lucky, you'll enjoy that time. It won't always be easy, but it doesn't have to be drudgery. Writing should be a labor of love—you can't avoid the labor, but the love of what you're doing makes it worthwhile.

A Slightly Embarrassed Disclaimer: This seminar contains numerous prose passages designed to illustrate principles of writing. Often, these passages have been exaggerated to make a point. For example, when I talk about narrator tone of voice, I use narrators with intrusively extreme tones of voice; I want to make it very obvious how the narrator's personality influences the prose. In practice, however, one would usually aim for more subtlety...unless you're Damon Runyan, P.G.Wodehouse, or some other writer whose style is intended to be blatant.

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