If The Stuff You're Writing Is Not

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open. Your Stuff Starts Out Being Just For You, In Other Words, But Then It Goes Out. Once You Know What The Story Is And Get It Right — As Right As You Can, Anyway — It Belongs To Anyone Who Wants To Read It. Or Criticize It.

So Where Do The Ideas-the Salable Ideas-come From? They Come From My Nightmares. Not The Night-time Variety, As A Rule, But The Ones That Hide Just Beyond The Doorway That Separates The Conscious From The Unconscious.

At Its Most Basic We Are Discussing A Learned Skill (writing), But Do We Not Agree That Sometimes The Most Basic Skills Can Create Things Far Beyond Our Expectations? We Are Talking About Tools And Carpentry, About Words And Style... But As We Move Along, You'd Do Well To Remember That We Are Also Talking About Magic.

A Critical Assumption Is Sometimes Made That [grisham, Clancey, Crichton & Myself] Have Access To Some Mystical Vulgate That Other (and Often Better) Writers Cannot Find Or Will Not Deign To Use. I Doubt If This Is True. Nor Do I Believe The Contention Of Some Popular Novelists... That Thier Success Is Based On Literary Merit -- That The Public Understands True Greatness In Ways The Tight-a**ed, Consumed-by-jealousy Literary Establishment Cannot. This Idea Is Ridiculous, A Product Of Vanity And Insecurity.

Time Slowed And Reality Bent; On And On The Eggman Went.