Finding Your Fiction
Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction
by Jeffrey Penn May
Finding Your Fiction: Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction
Copyright 2011 by Jeffrey Penn May
All Rights Reserved
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Finding Your Fiction
Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction
by Jeffrey Penn May
Introduction
You are a writer. You have been writing most of your life, writing term papers, developing business proposals, composing letters, email, and Facebook posts. But are you a writer with a capital W? Do you want to become a fiction writer?
Writing a step by step guide that will magically turn you into a successful fiction writer is of course impossible. But I can save you some time. A condensed guide like this one works well for motivated writers who want to focus more on their own writing than reading about how to write.
For example, I avoid excessive examples, and rather than list endless numbers of activities, I list only those I have used successfully. I try to keep it clear, concise, and direct.
But who the hell am I? Telling you how to write?
Among other things, I have won many short fiction awards, I am the author of Where the River Splits, No Teacher Left Standing, Cynthia and the Blue Cat’s Last Meow, and my work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Information in this guide comes directly from my writing and publishing experience, graduate classes and workshops, other guidebook sources, and primarily from my popular Finding Your Fiction workshop sponsored by the St. Louis Writers Workshop and St. Louis Writers Guild. Should you want to know more about me, biographical information is available at the end of this concise book, askwritefish.com, or you can simply Google Jeffrey Penn May.
You could of course enroll directly an MFA program. The “good ones” cost lots of money, and you get instruction from “established” writers. At the very least, they can teach you the basics. But there is no guarantee you will learn anything beyond the basics. Using guides like this one can save you time and money -- a poor person’s MFA.
Guidebooks can help you avoid amateurish errors (professional errors are often hailed as “groundbreaking”). They can give you a strong foundation to build on and set you forth on a lifetime of exquisite misery -- for there is no misery as grand as the struggling artist, poet, writer. Mastering literary tricks and infusing passion into your work requires you to sell your soul to the devil and endure a lifetime of pain, which is of course hyperbole. (It does, however, require some initial talent and lots of hard work.)