At present I answer about 100 letters a month, and read 300 emails.

Information is power. --Humfrey

Here's a secret: fictive text doesn't necessarily flow easily. Most of the time it's more like cutting a highway through a mountain. You just have to keep working with your pick, chipping away at the rock, making slow progress.

At present I answer about 100 letters a month, and read 300 emails.

Polishing: a useful lesson for the hopeful writer. You say your tormented prose doesn't read as well as mine? Neither does mine, at first!

It would be easier to write a novel without reader input, but I feel the fiction is richer for it.

The biggest fool is the one who thinks he knows it all.