“Ladies and gentlemen, start your . . . word processors.”

“Where did you get that idea? It felt like being there.” Writers puff up with pride at such comments. They know that good writing is brain food, the glue of life. There are no simple answers but my experience with six novels may help. All but one of my novels was original: things that never happened lived by people who never existed—my definition of genuine fiction. You have similar juices in you, based on your life.

You must get the physical stuff right, writing what you know or via research. Dan Brown, in his badly written DA VINCI CODE, handled Paris geography at a five-year-old skill level, despite the availability of excellent research sources and maps. My rule: my readers know more than I do about anything I write about. I don’t want them to toss my book away in rage at my errors. I need editing. Everyone does.

Other traps await. Regurgitating childhood memories and dressing them up as ‘fiction’ is a writing cheap-shot, far easier than creating original material. You know the ‘name’ writers who do it. Can’t they save those recollections for a memoir? Well?

You have your own core ideas to develop. Work them. Don’t rush. You can’t, anyway. One of my book endings took two years to devise. It came out of thin air after endless frustration. ‘All’ you need to succeed as a novelist, or screenwriter: create a brilliant, original story idea, execute flawlessly, then acquire the services of an agent who can find a publisher or producer who believes in you. Easy, right?

Easy? Writing is hard work. Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book OUTLIERS, says that it takes 10,000 hours to succeed at . . . anything. Writing properly takes longer. One of my novels, A FULL ACCOUNTING, about the Vietnam POW/MIA conundrum, took 2,500 hours to research/write, then 5,500 hours to edit, over an eight-year period (the nominal wage-slave work year is 2,000 hours). I still find things in it I’d change. I’ve never written a book in less than 1,000 hours. Side note: Danielle Steel says that she writes her books in three weeks. They read like that (from an old Dorothy Parker NEW YORKER review: “I put this book down and could not pick it up.”)

Every writer works from a different POV and knowledge set, from a unique background and experience. Curiously, writers who seek ‘pure’ writing and take menial ‘day jobs’ to feed their muse often lack broader lives. They can’t write credibly about those who have been there, done that, lived large, known emotions ranging from elation to despair or, say, the spectrum from broke to wealthy. Those ‘pure’ writers may have spent too much time with technique, wrestling words onto the page or screen, too little time living. They may be brilliant wordsmiths but they don’t know or understand ‘real life.’  Remember this: if you care enough to write well, no subject on earth is taboo; if you don’t care enough, the simplest and most beautiful concepts can be rendered unacceptable or objectionable to readers.

Many writing failures are MFA students dedicated to the act of writing, not the art of the story. Most are deadening to read, creating material that is banal and boring and teaches us little about life. It parses? So what? Much great writing won’t parse but reflects the way real humans think and speak: in single words, phrases or expletives. Elmore Leonard—fine exponent. Successful? Sure. You dig?

The reverse: those who say they want to be writers but ‘can’t find the time.’ They may live full, exciting lives and have information to convey but don’t get around to writing it down. They discover the tedious, time-consuming, back-breaking, wrist-destroying reality of processing words through the brain and computer and decide that it’s too much work. My counsel is to strike a writer’s balance: don’t fixate on writing as the only task; savor living in the world, to the edge; don’t exist to the exclusion of writing.