(If this topic doesn't belong here, I apologize. I seem to have a knack for creating topics in the wrong places, even when I'm not new to a forum.
Sorry if this topic is taboo or insulting or something, but the opportunity to communicate directly with the creator of Jack...it's more than I can take!)
This is directed mostly at you, FPW, and to any published authors in this forum.
FPW, I know you're a working physician and yet you're still able to write lots of unique, tightly-plotted, detailed books, and do research for them, etc, and that amazes me. Would you be willing to give some tips about getting a full story out on paper? (or on the computer screen?) Do you run with a beginning and see where that leads, or plan out the entire plot before you begin writing?
Becoming a published author's one of my dreams, and it seems dauntingly difficult to become one by a major publishing house unless you already have connections or lots of money. Or both. A key example is the new fad Eragon, a fantasy book by a 19 year-old which was no better or worse than any other fantasy I've read. But it's the Big Thing with the tweenagers... mostly because the author's parents have their own publishing company. Is it impossible for an unknown person to catch the eye of a publisher? What's it like going through the publishing-house machinery out there? I read Stephen King's autobiography, and I think it was him who said that when he was first trying to get published, he had enough rejection slips to wallpaper his bedroom. Was it also hard for you to get published? How'd you get started writing in the first place?
I appreciate anything you'd or anyone else would like to share.
[SIZE="1"]To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." -- Sun Zi
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[COLOR="Green"]Django: This is the way things are; you can't change nature.
Remy: Change IS nature, Dad. The part that we can influence. And it starts when we decide.
Django: Where are you going?
Remy: With luck, forward.[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
[SIZE="1"]"The thing I treasure most in life / Cannot be taken away..."[/SIZE]