I had a good question from one writer after my last post as to how I made the move from short fiction to novels. At first, my reaction was to just say I just kept typing. But then I thought back on those early days and started to remember some of the feelings and the fears and the events.

First, a couple things to remember. Many, many writers don’t start by writing poetry or short stories, but jump right into novels. Nothing at all wrong with that. Nothing. Every writer is different, every road a different path to walk. I’m going to lay out what happened to me, nothing more. If something I say helps you, great, if not, don’t worry about it. Most people think many of my methods are just nuts, so no big deal.

Long story, so settle in. I started out with writing poetry. As it turned out, very commercial poetry, kind of silly poetry, and sometimes kind of nasty poetry. The first poem I wrote was back in 1969 when I was in college the first time. It was early fall so there was no skiing, and classes were boring and I was doing laundry. I had taken a notebook with me for some class and ended up jotting down a few poems about a couple of people who were in the laundromat while I was there. I wrote them all long hand in notebooks. It never occurred to me to send them out anywhere.

Over the next five years, I skied in the early days of what was then called hot dogging, but I wasn’t that good. I skied in the winter and played golf in the summer, working at golf courses in the summer and at the ski lodge in the winter, along with teaching skiing. I also tried to stay in college, pretty much unsuccessfully. For those of you who are history challenged, the reason was to keep from getting shot in Vietnam. I had no interest in school or a degree, just skiing and playing golf. But I also had no interest in getting shot.

I ended up quitting skiing after the winter of 1971-2 and a high lottery number. I headed for Palm Springs to become a professional golfer. I wrote nothing at all during those years in the desert but had a lot of other great experiences.

In late 1974, I decided that school might not be a bad option and headed back to the University of Idaho. There, for some reason, I set up a desk with a typewriter on it and nothing else. I couldn’t type, but for some reason I knew I wanted to try writing and that was my writing desk. I studied someplace else. That was only my writing desk. Weird, huh?

Now understand, at this point, I hadn’t written more than a few dozen poems in notebooks. Nothing else. And I had no idea, none at all, that a person could mail something they wrote, or even make a living at it. To be honest, I had never met a writer, and had no idea any of what I do now was even possible. None. (How I came to the realization that it could be done is a different post later.)

So here comes college, first year Architecture because for some reason the 20 credits of “F” that I had back in the sixties while trying to stay out of Nam just didn’t count toward anything. (It was amazing they even let me back into school, to be honest, let alone into law school years later.) Of course, in freshmen classes, you need English credits, so I signed up for a 101 creative writing class in poetry.

Instructor hated me, hated what I wrote, beat on it regularly. But I held on, writing about a poem a day for most of that fall. About halfway through the class, one of the assignments was to actually mail a poem to an anthology of poetry only from college students. The instructor told us how to do it, how to include a SASE, and everything. I mailed my poem and forgot it until a letter came back in the mail the day before the last class that semester. My poem called “Tasty Morsel” had been accepted in the College Poetry Review. I got paid I think $5.00 as well. Stunned, I went to the instructor and showed her the letter. I was the first student in eight years of her having students mail poems as an assignment that ever sold one of them. She hated me even more after that.

My first published poem appeared in COLLEGE POETRY REVIEW in December, 1974.

I sold over 35 poems and two short stories in the next two years before I stopped mailing out the poetry I was writing.

So, fast forward ten years over the stuff in the last post to 1985, the spring. I was living with my second wife in Lincoln City, working as a waiter four nights a week. Yes, I had a degree in Architecture and had gone to three years of law school. But I was working on becoming a writer so I waited tables. You know the drill. Starving artist and all.

It had been six years since I had sold anything, but I was still pounding away on my trusty electric typewriter, firing off stories. Over the previous year, I had come up with a bunch of novel ideas, mostly from short fiction, but just like the jump from poems to short stories, the jump from 5,000 words to 80,000 words just felt impossible to me.

I think from the spring of 1984 to the spring of 1985, I must have started and halted at least five different novels. Maybe more. I know it was driving me and everyone around me crazy.

Of course, I had no idea as to novel structure or anything else needed to sustain a long story. None. I was reading Lawrence Block’s columns and books and I think it was something he said about just doing it that got me going finally. Somewhere in February of 1985, I just decided to finish a novel no matter what. All my friends cheered.

I sat myself a ten page before-I-could-sleep goal. No missing allowed.

I hit it. Never missed. 30 days later I had finished my first novel.

And suddenly, it didn’t feel so impossible. The book sucked, I’m sure, but I don’t honestly know, since it was destroyed a month later in a house fire. I honestly don’t even remember what it was about.

I do know that two days after I finished the first novel, I wanted to make sure I could do it again, so I started a second novel. And I almost had it finished as well when the fire hit. I think that novel was about a ghost on a golf course. Again, no memory, no record left.

So, how did I make the jump from writing poems to short fiction to novels? Painfully. But the key was to set a goal, not care how bad it was, just finish the goal. 90 plus novels later, I still use that same goal structure.

Have they gotten easier to write? No. Every book is an adventure, every book scares hell out of me before I start. But one thing writing over 90 novels has taught me: I trust the process.

I know that if I sit down, write so much every day, do my best with every line, every word, it will all work out in the end, 80 to 100 thousand words down the road.

Set a writing goal per day. Trust the process.

Cheers, Dean

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