Fiction Writing Lessons

Successful novelist David Morrell shares some of his latest book on writing at Backspace. In an excerpt from THE SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST: A LIFETIME OF LESSONS ABOUT WRITING & PUBLISHING, Morrell sets us depressingly straight about becoming rich and famous as authors. Then he lets us in on the key to becoming a successful writer, the answer to the burning question: Why do you want to writer? But this goes deeper than the apt response of "because I have to" or as I say it, "I can't not write!"

In what Morrell calls "self-psychoanalysis", he advocates digging into your psyche to discover what you most fear, often a childhood trauma you're unknowingly trying to work out (or work out of your system) through your writing. Therapists who work with children from alcoholic, abusive, codependent (or dysfunctional, if you prefer) backgrounds are quite familiar with this behavior. We attempt to repair the damage through relationships we have for the rest of our lives.

One method for discovering what your trauma might be is to examine where you mind goes when your brain's on idle ... daydreams. Pleasant and horrific. This type of research has its advantages: it's right at hand and very inexpensive (a factor that universally appeals to writers). Morrell says, "Day-nightmares are messages from your subconscious, hinting to you what that ferret is about. They’re disguised versions of your secret. They’re metaphors for why you want to be a writer."

Download the whole article in .PDF or print out the text.