My resurrection as a writer of fiction began when something pushed me to attend a writer’s conference spawned by the centennial of the El Paso Public Library. Back in college, I had written a weekly editorial-page column in the UTEP Prospector for three years and enjoyed a senior-level fiction writing seminar course but hadn’t created anything in twenty years. My muse sent me to Waldenbooks a couple of weeks after the conference. I purchased the Novel and Short Story edition of Writer’s Market and figured I was all set. Yeah, right.

I avoided the mammoth task of writing a novel for over three years. In January of 1999, I knuckled down. Writing evenings and weekends, I finished the first draft of A DATE WINS in five months, completed the second draft (hardly more than a line edit) in short order, and squeezed out the first query letters in July.

Around Easter of 1999, I had made room for the resources that would fuel my bullet’s ride to the top of the best-seller lists by clearing a thirty-inch shelf of life insurance agent sales materials. There I placed several hardback and trade books, plus the latest editions of Writers Market, Jeff Herman’s market tome, and The Writer’s Handbook. My library looked good!

Let’s see how my library is doing today. Let’s walk over to my six-foot tall writer’s bookcase (okay, it’s only eighteen inches wide) and take inventory. We won’t count those publications that are periodicals like Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market. Okay, 1, 2, 3 … 51, 52, 53 pricey hardbacks and trade paperbacks. Can you believe it? Clearly, I developed an addiction.

...how much better a fiction writer would I be today if I’d invested those blocks of time in writing new pages, in telling stories?

Time for a public confession. I’ve been an “All these rejection letters will cease once I’ve discovered the secret” unpublished novelist. Heck, fifty-three doesn’t include Strunk & White and similar publications, nor any computer software. (I moved almost eight hundred miles back in February. The books we just counted are the ones I didn’t throw away.) This insecure servant of his muse needs to join a twelve-step program!

Today, some four-and-a-half years into my journey, can I say purchasing all those titles did me much good? I don’t think so. Are they essential to my career today? Nope. Am I better off having read them? (You think I read them all cover to cover?) No way. When I looked through my library earlier today, I found just nine books with material I still value. And most of their value resides in yellow highlighting and notes written, then indexed by bent corners or sticky notes.

Let’s say I was just starting out to write publishable, novel-length fiction? What would I purchase, read, and use? Which books do I think would give a neophyte, a fiction-mused soul, a foundation?

Two titles came to mind immediately, both from story tellers, Stephen King’s ON WRITING and Terry Brooks’ SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS. The third title, THE WRITER'S HANDBOOK, surfaced when I rummaged through the shelves this afternoon. This is the annual tome from The Writer Magazine. Yes, I recommend it –- but the reason may surprise you.

“Wait,” you say, “what about Bickham, Bradbury, Burroway, Campbell, Card, Conroy, Goldberg, Maass, Marshall, Stein, Swain, Vogler, Zuckerman, or The Complete Idiot’s Guide?” And, “Why nothing from Writer’s Digest, Chuck?” Please review the prior paragraph: my choices are story tellers whose book on the craft was an aside, not their major work.

Also, if you would, ponder this: Instead of spending the time to research, physically purchase, and read the fifty-three books in my library, how much better a fiction writer would I be today if I’d invested those blocks of time in writing new pages, in telling stories?

You know, p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e. Practice, practice, practice.

How do I explain my how-to-book addiction? It’s a virus I contracted through repeated exposure during sixteen years of formal schooling. The teachers, instructors, and professors placed in front of me, elders I was told to revere and who demanded my respect, spread the virus. They taught me what they had been taught about English and composition. And who taught them? Their gurus were graduates of MFA or literature programs where thinking about written words is given much more homage than writing those words. Most of us were taught to think first and write, well, maybe fourth.

So, what medicine am I taking? September of last year I signed up for twelve house of workshops over two days with Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Kristine Grayson) and her husband, Dean Wesley Smith. They prescribed a short-story-a-week for two years. So, every week I chase a rabbit. Each story is new practice, practice on scene, practice on setting, practice on dialogue, practice on character, practice on genre, practice on ending, practice hero, practice heroine, practice villain, practice minor characters.

Enough of me. Let’s get back to my newbie book choices. They’re listed in the order I would read them if I were an infant newbie today.

Terry Brooks, SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS. What, Chuck, are you nuts? Has magic got hold of your brain? This is a 2003 publication. It hasn’t weathered the test of time, not even seen a trade paperback edition.

Phooey. I’ve read so many books on writing (well, parts of so many), I am eminently qualified to give a writer/reader’s opinion. Mr. Brooks, you will find, used the same technique Mr. King did in ON WRITING. First he put me at ease with several chapters of memoir before telling me what I needed to know. He used his own story to open me up so that I would listen to what he had to say when he listed things I might not like or that looked too much like work. (By the way, the subtitle of his work is Lessons from a Writing Life.)

The attorney on my right shoulder has a question: why Terry Brooks first? Answer: his book is easiest for a newbie. Brooks lays out, in simple terms without tons of rationale or digression, a dozen chapters on craft, including one on outlining. I remember plodding through the first draft of A DATE WINS. I was so lost. If it weren’t for my very hungry muse repeatedly pulling me out of the ditch beside the winding road, I’d never crossed the finish line. Reading Mr. Brooks just before and again while penning that first novel gives a newbie an easy path to travel down.

Then, before sending query letters, I’d read ON WRITING. I’d enjoy the memoir, falling right into Stephen King’s trap, then gobble up his recommendations. Stephen’s words would validate the creativity I’d shown by finishing the first draft, then “Toolbox” and “Furthermore” would help me edit my pile of hen scratch: “Throw out those parts that aren’t the story, Chuck.”

“On Writing,” the third segment, would get me further in touch with my muse, enabling me to find the real story in those words I’d written. I’d also learn how to enrich my characters and quickly begin those scenes I’d left out.

I read ON WRITING when it first came out in October, 2000. Mr. King energized my attitude and put me back on the road. Although he didn’t give me a prize for the short story I sent him, he got me writing again.

Okay, my rewrite is complete. You figure I’m going to recommend the newbie go to THE WRITER'S HANDBOOK to choose the literary agents and publishers to query? Nope. Are you aware that The Writer’s annual tome contains, each and every year, some of the best short articles on craft, ideas and inspiration, professional basics and development (two-hundred fifty pages in the 2003 edition). The book is a bit pricey at thirty dollars, you say, just to have the articles. I bet newbie could spend a hundred dollars on magazine subscriptions and not find as many quality articles. In the 2003 edition is a reprint of Elmore Leonard’s “10 Rules for Success and Happiness Writing Fiction.” There’s more valid and useful direction in his three pages than entire writing books I’ve purchased. Newbie would be encouraged to read an article a week until finished, each year.

Now I said I didn’t purchase THE WRITER'S HANDBOOK for query addresses so you’re thinking a newbie would be a bit thin in the resources department. Well, gosh, you’ve overlooked newbie’s membership in the Romance Writers of America. Let’s tally the assets available to members: the national and local chapter new member packets, the national and local websites, the culled lists of publishers, and the screened literary agents. These are resources I could only dream about during the first four years of my sojourn. Add in local, regional, and national workshops, and I have more power and direction at my fingertips, from one source, than I was able to amass with fifty titles and four years of slaving in the desert of west Texas. A member of RWA for just six months, I feel the dues I’ve paid have been returned many times.

I trust reading this piece will be as helpful for newbie as writing it has been. It’s told me I need to reread ON WRITING. And perhaps you’re wondering what I am going to do with all those “extra” books? Well, gosh, I have these festering packrat genes…. Happy new pages!

After a Vietnam-inspired tour in the U.S. Navy, Chuck Emerson wrote a weekly editorial page column in the UTEP Prospector for three years, graduating with a B.A. in 1973. He managed the El Paso Community College Bookstore, 1973-1976, before entering the insurance business with Penn Mutual, later opening his own agency in 1981. His years as a life and health insurance agent plunged him deep inside the lives of dozens of interesting and complex people. He's now harvesting that character file. Single since the 80's, he's recently found the one. His one child, Stephen, travels the gem show circuit with his wife, Crystal.

Chuck now sees handwritten notes on half of the boilerplate rejection letters he receives!

Copyright © 2003 Chuck Emerson. All rights reserved. Used with permission.