My guess is that most writers become novelists in the usual way. Their muse convinces them to buy writing software. They use it to complete a manuscript. They’re lucky enough to find an agent and an editor who like what they’ve done. That’s not how I did it. The words “Chapter One,” hadn’t even occurred to me when I parlayed several essays that appeared in the Los Angeles Times into a weekly column in the paper’s Book Review section. The editor of the Book Review, Digby Diehl, had established a policy of running a short biographical line at the bottom of each article. I suggested “Dick Lochte is working on a screenplay,” which was the truth. But Digby didn’t like... more
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