Writing a Novel

When I published this little book in 1978, a request by a beginner for a book that might help was nearly always treated with contempt, or dismissed with weary impatience by professional writers/teachers: "You cannot learn to write from
a book!"

It seemed to me that many beginning writers were not asking for a how-to book that would make them "creative," or rich, or famous. They were asking merely for some hints to get them through the daily, terrifying process of facing that blank page.

They needed to know about simple tools or crutches that help many of us get started—like the habit of making notes instead of counting on treacherous memory to retain an idea. They hoped for hints on how to move on from notes: how to create a character, not a stereotype; how to outline a plot (and when to scrap it); when and how to plunge into and through a first draft; how and why to rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite.

I used statements by famous writers on their methods. I laid out my own struggles and mistakes, and told what I had learned from them. I made suggestions—not rules—about the ways most writers, most of the time, successfully combine many elements into a story.

Today many books take a sympathetic attitude toward the insecurities of beginners. But this one holds up pretty well—
I can't think of anything in it I would change.

"Best of its kind."
—San Francisco Bay Guardian

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Literary Lynching (1997)

When I published A Day in San Francisco in 1983, the reaction against it and me was strong, irrational, and long-lived, slowly fading only as the AIDS crisis deepened.

Throughout this emerging tragedy (for me personally as well as for the world), I struggled to keep my balance. One comfort during this struggle was my learning about other serious, truthtelling authors who had been similarly attacked and censored, not by powerful government or religious institutions, but by their own, formerly friendly readership—the literary equivalent of a delusional lynch mob.

I gradually assembled a "support group" of my betters:
Ivan Turgenev, Thomas Hardy, Kate Chopin, George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, and William Styron—all wounded (and, in one case, destroyed) by unjustified, concerted attacks, aimed, not simply at countering a book, but at burying it—and its author. The reputations of some of these authors remain dubious even today, especially among people who take pride in never having read the condemned book!

I ended Literary Lynching with a detailed account of my own experience with a "literary lynch mob" attacking A Day in
San Francisco—and with no hope that any publisher would invite trouble by printing it.

My completing Literary Lynching coincided with the spread of online publishing. Patricia Holt, former book editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, offered to run it, chapter by chapter, in her online book column, where it remained for several years. Now you can download it from this website.

The issues it raises remain relevant. In fact, today it may
be even easier to "shoot the messenger" of unwelcome truths
by online attacks. Conscious or unconscious fear of such attacks chills free expression, discourages authors from
writing about, or even thinking about, important but risky subjects. Self-censorship destroys free speech by suicide.

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