Michael Collings (who is one of my favorite people in the world, I love hearing him share his thoughts on writing, literature, and just about anything else that’s on his mind) made a very important point about genre on Facebook in reply to my last post.  Here’s what he said:

There is nothing that says a novel can’t be legitimately cross- or multi-generic.. Dean Koontz has been blending psychological terror, supernatural horror, thriller, romance, adventure, historical, science-fiction (especially alternate history), and fantasy for years, and the results are often immensely enjoyable novels that speak to wider audiences than would otherwise be possible.

 This is a really important point.  Genre is by definition a “loose category of composition,” with the emphasis on loose.  They are arrived upon by experimentation and the resulting convention that follows.  They are not static, concrete concepts; they are certainly not boxes or molds into which stories must fit.  Just as Michael remarked, many of the best stories successfully adopt and employ conventions from multiple genres into a cohesive whole.   

So what does that mean?  It means that genre should not be an omnipresent driving or defining guide for either writers or readers; however, knowing the genre in which you’re writing can be important for a few reasons.  

When you’re composing something, whether a written story or a painting or a verbal statement or whatever, awareness of your audience is a rhetorical necessity for effective communication.  The conventions of a genre give us rough guidelines we can use to shape our message for better effect.  Fantasy readers tend to appreciate the impossible presented as plausible, whereas readers of courtroom thrillers are more likely to engage in a story predicated upon a more literal representation of reality as we experience it.  That tells us as writers that if we’re trying to reach Terry Pratchett fans we’d be better served to write stories that are more Pratchett-like than Grisham-ish.

Pratchett-like > Grisham-ish?  Not exactly a scalpel of a compositional tool, is it.  And you know, it’s a wonderful thing that it isn’t.  The moment we come up with exact recipes for narrative is the moment stories stop being told, because we’ll have all relevant perspectives already.  (This will never happen, by the way, so long as a single human being exists.)  So why is genre talked about so often in publishing?  Look at it from an agent’s viewpoint.  If you pitch a story, she wants to know that you have crafted your novel so that it will be attractive to a wide and, hopefully, partially established and identified audience.  If you can’t lump your book into the very loose conventions of established genres, what is she supposed to think?  This story is for older military men who are now pacifists and prefer their symbolism to trend toward fauna, particularly the large predators of the Russian steppe.  Think that will excite her?  Nope, no more than, “There’s something in my story for everyone.”  If you tell her your story is psychological horror, not only can she assume that readers of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Ira Levin, and Edgar Allen Poe may like it and fans of Louisa May Alcott or Helen Fielding probably won’t, but also that you’re familiar with the ideas and tastes of these readers.

This is, I believe, a much more important function of genre.  Yes, it’s important to be able to pitch your work so that an agent or editor will buy it, and that requires being able to tell them where stores will shelve your book; far more important is reading lots of the same things your desired audience is reading so you’re a part of their discourse community.  Communication differs among groups.  Not just in the languages they speak, but in the ideas and emotions they share and explore, and in conventions they create to commuicate successfully.  

Genres work similarly.  Readers of Brandon Sanderson are likely to have read Tolkien, Eddings, Hobbs, and McCaffrey; they’re also more likely than many others to have read C.S. Lewis, Phillip Pullman, and Lloyd Alexander.  This means that these individuals are conversant in certain ideas, symbols, and systems that most others are not.  If you’re writing for these people you sure better have a sense of what they like and don’t like, what they find interesting or perplexing, and especially what became passe decades ago because Piers Anthony or Marion Zimmer Bradley already did it. 

Here’s an analogy: let’s look at all of literature as a cocktail party.  No matter where you are inside the party you hear the buzz of conversation, and everyone in the room has enough in common that they are talking about the same types of things in the generic: occupations, family, recreation, and the like.  People meet each other, make polite chit-chat for a while, and then move on to discuss very similar things with new individuals.  A genre might be considered the subgroups that form within the room to discuss particulars of these broad subjects.  If you abruptly slide into these conversations, you can’t just use the same old lines you’ve used to board passing partygoers in the past.  Here, you’ve got to listen and learn to know what is going on, especially if you want to make a comment that will mark you as anything but completely ignorant.

That’s what genre allows: it is a tool that helps us take part in an ongoing conversation among a specific group of readers so that we can become well-enough informed to add our own voice in a way that will be appreciated.  If a group at the party is discussing the designated batter rule in baseball, you don’t want to blurt out, “That’s the one where the players skate, right?”  Just the same, if readers are enthralled by the seductive nature of evil in the work of Thomas Harris, you don’t want to give them a book based on the premise that truly bad stuff has no place in fiction and so you’ve written a story about a stolen garden gnome (which could be a hilarious book if written for the right reasons and for people who would appreciate it).       

To wrap up: genre isn’t a rule, it’s a tool, like almost everything else in writing.  Use it to reassure prospective editors that you have an idea what type of person will like your book and where the store can shelve it; more importantly, use it to help you write to better effect for the people that are moved by the same ideas, challenges, and passions that drive you.               

ayarbo wrote:

I have a question…how do you know in which genre you have written when your novel has several elements of many? Can you recommend any books/references?

Books?  Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy and Talking about Detective Fiction by P.D. James come to mind.  There’s also a book… just let me look it up… On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells by Leigh Michaels (which I have not read).  Stephen King’s On Writing addresses the three levels of horror writing (terror, horror, and blood and guts basically), if I remember correctly.  I know more books about writing different forms, such as screenplays or short stories, rather than genres. 

As for your question of how do you know what you’re writing, my suggestion is to distill your story to its essence.  Get rid of trappings or elements that are peripheral, or even central in a purely plot sense.  Every story is, at its heart, simple: what is the central conflict and what, ultimately, is at stake?  I’m afraid I can’t be more specific than that without knowing particulars of your story, but here are some broad guidelines:

Fantasy: The impossible/unexplainable plays a vital role in character evolution and resolution to the story.

Science Fiction: Extrapolation of the hypothetical or possible plays a vital role in character evolution and resolution of the story, and usually in offering an idea or commentary about current life.

Horror: Evil or malevolence find some form of personification or expression designed to challenge readers with their own negative emotions for the purpose of catharsis.

Literary: Commentary on society (mostly contemporary) that fosters ambiguity and develops conflict to its most complex and leaves the reader to supply a final resolution.

Inspirational: Conflict is overcome in a manner designed to validate morality and basic human goodness, often attached to religion and spirituality.

Adventure: Plot driven stories that play heavily on exterior stakes, mostly using a male protagonist who cannot change too severely over the course of the story because substantial capability is required from the beginning.

Romance: All other elements and stakes of the story are subjugated to the fate of one or a small number of potential romantic relationships.

Women’s: Relationships and societal forces challenge and facilitate evolution of a woman as an individual or women as a close group.

Mystery: A story about what is going to happen or why did something happen.

Thriller: A story about will the protagonist survive significant harm or tragedy while trying to resolve a crisis or question. 

And, just in an attempt to helpful, here are some tips about writing for specific ages:

Children’s: The story resolves allowing children to still be children.

YA: The story resolves with children being forced to adopt some adult skill sets.

Adult: The story is not one of the previous, or looks upon childhood or youth with a measure of nostalgia.

Does that help, ayarbo?  If you want more specific feedback on what your story may be just head to my contact page and give me a short summary.

Susanne asked:

What is the difference between Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction?

Consider speculative fiction something of a super-genre, or a category that includes several mainstream genres: fantasy, science fiction, and horror.  Each of these genres then split off into multiple sub-genres (think high fantasy or military sci-fi).  It is called speculative fiction because these stories all have a major speculative element, or something that is not factual in reality.  Fantasy is usually defined by something magical or mystical; science fiction involves something that may theoretically be possible given extrapolation of our current understanding of natural law; horror generally involves some incarnate of evil, whether literal or metaphorical, often a being or entity of some sort (which is what differentiates horror from thriller).   

So, you can think of speculative fiction as the big tent under which fantasy, science fiction, and horror all reside.  I use the term speculative fiction more than most because much of what I write doesn’t fit cleanly into any of the three main genres under the tent.  This is sometimes called a ”slipstream” story, or a story that slips from one genre to another and back.  I find it easier to call my writing speculative because it doesn’t mislead people into expecting something more well defined, which much of my writing isn’t.  If people read some of my stories expecting high or epic fantasy because it’s called fantasy, they’ll be confused and maybe disappointed.      

Next post: an update on my visits to Farnsworth and Jordan Ridge Elementaries.

Yesterday L. T. Elliot asked this:

Question: Do you think you’ll always write MG or YA? Will you try your hand at adult fantasy?

Will try, have tried, and have books of which I’m proud, actually (and some of which I’m not).  The first three novels I wrote were all for adults; two were epic fantasy and the third was historical fiction.  The fourth was an attempt at a YA fantasy novel that adults would enjoy, and I think that’s what I ended up with so I hardly count that as writing for children or youth.  The fifth was also for adults (a period thriller/mystery/alternate history/depressingly comical allegory).

The fact is that GDC is the first book I ever wrote for kids.  It’s the first piece of any kind I wrote for kids, and while I like and am proud of it—and genuinely feel children will enjoy the book—I still don’t think of myself as a children’s writer.  I’m beginning to lose that sense of being a writer for adults, but that’s being replaced by a more schizophrenic identify of writer of stories, mostly long, that I hope people will like.  While each story has particulars on who exactly those people are likely to be, that profile doesn’t extend to me as the writer.

This is probably a dumb admission, but I think my skill in writing for children is just catching up to that of my writing for adults.  Again, while GDC is good, I think some of my work for adults is better.  At least, I like it more, and I don’t think that is an arbitrary judgment.  Moreover, I know for a fact that my second children’s novel—you won’t hear the working title until I’ve seen it on a contract, sorry—is better.  It’s as good as anything I’ve ever written for adult readers.  Maybe better.  If you can’t tell, I’m really excited about it, and it more than anything has helped me shed that pigeonholed identity as a writer for those over four feet high.

But as testament to just how erratic is my storytelling bent, having written two kids’ books of which I’m proud, and one that I think has the potential to be intriguing in its distinctiveness, my next novel will be a period allegory about many different cultural mythologies and mysticism, marital traditions, and the notion of love—with an evil angel thrown in!  Think of it as a mix of Louisa May Alcott meets Dante meets Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag with a bit of Neil Gaiman added for spice (all my work has a bit of Neil Gaiman added for spice).   Don’t know what exactly to call this chimera?  Neither do I, but then I only have three chapters finished, and if those tell me anything it’s that this isn’t for ten year olds.  The proposal’s all ready to go, though.  I’m just waiting to see if the contract I’m hoping for comes through, because that will change my bargaining leverage. 

Anyway, long answer to a simple question.  The brief version: Yes, I have written fantasy for adults, and will again, and in the future, hopefully, you’ll be able to read these works.  You’ll also be able to read my work for children and teens, all of the above in just about every genre, and a bunch that I make up as I go.  At least, that’s the plan.  It’s kind of like crossing a hi wire on a rollerblade in which you put a spinning top to stand on.  Whatever happens, should be fun to watch.

A few thoughts on Amazon’s Kindle 2 and electronic media in general, and their impact on publishing writers.

Short version: I’m not hiding beneath my bed in panic (at least, not from the Kindle).

Here’s the deal as I see it. Yes, the Kindle 2 does appear to be the first electronic reader deserving of notice by writers. And that’s all it deserves, notice, like a possible penny on the sidewalk. Whether that penny turns out to be a quarter (wahoo!) or a dome of dried gum (lesshoo), it probably isn’t going to dictate my financial plans for the rest of the fiscal year. I don’t see any electronic platform acting the lethal meteor to good old-fashioned books, at least not in the foreseeable future. Kindle certainly ain’t it. The novel reading public has not transitioned to acceptance of electronic readers; to the contrary, such a transition is in its infant stage. It’ll take a while, and even as people acclimate and explore this new medium, they won’t abandon the old standard. That won’t happen until (or unless) proficiency with the new technology becomes comfort, and comfort becomes preference. We’re decades away from that, at least (I’ve seen this in my crystal ball, which is jet black, so you know it works).

Now, I’m not saying the Kindle won’t have an impact on the market. It will carve it’s own niche, just as audiobooks have. But that niche isn’t going to kill the established body of distribution for published fiction. It’ll just change the shape a bit. In fact, I suspect this is a good thing for all of us writers. Electronic reading will initially be adopted by techies more than lit junkies and recreational readers, so in some ways the Kindle will broaden most authors’ market exposure, not shift established readers from book to electronic format. Book people will be likely to buy our work in book format, so electronic media represents a chance to expand our audience. And a wider readership can only be good. If a few people do transition from book (comparatively profitable for writers) to electronic form (comparatively unprofitable for writers), it won’t break the bank. And the additional readership is likely to generate additional word of mouth, which is the great god at whose table we all wish to feed. Now, if too many readers switch transition to electronic format… Well, ain’t going to happen. I’ll cover that in a moment.

Before I move on from the Kindle to electronic readers and media in general, here’s my two cents on Kindle’s text-to-speech option. Having a machine read a story with all the performative skill of Stephen Hawking in the middle of an electromagnetic storm doesn’t count as infringing audio copyright. An audiobook is a performance, distinctive even from reading the text (and less pleasant, in my opinion). A linguistic annunciation of prose is more akin to a well-worn mathematical formula or proof—the answer may make sense, but nobody cares. I’m not certain it even counts as story. I’ve worked with a few students who are blind using the Jaws reading program and trust me, machines will never threaten storytellers with their oratory. Besides, if I buy a book there’s no copyright against my reading it out loud to a friend. Why should a machine doing so in a far inferior manner do so? For those who disagree with me, know that I agree with Neil Gaiman, which settles the argument. If you still wish to debate, do so with him here.

Okay, so why won’t electronic media’s narrative take over the world and save forests everywhere from paper production? Because electronic media, from web journalism to the Kindle, is about ease of access and convenience. We hear all the time how these things are coming to dominate our culture, and in many spheres this is true. But you know what? Some things just can’t be made into a sound bite. Some communicative genres don’t fit certain media well. Try memorizing a phone book as an oral tradition. It wouldn’t work unless you provided mnemonic devices so frequently as to reinvent the genre itself. (For other examples, written alphabets and media development such as papyrus and paper played a part in the separation of poetry from prose. For most of human history they were, by necessity, the same, because the rhyme and meter were needed to aid in memory of the narrative.)

Long narrative is not an especially accessible form, nor are the genre’s contained therein. By necessity, it demands prolonged dedication of time and sustained concentration to read. Generally speaking, such attributes are not dominant characteristics of cutting-edge electronic media consumers. Congruently, such readers are usually not traditional novel readers or purchasers. A book person isn’t likely to simply be a fan of long narrative; they’re likely to be a fan of books–old, familiar, tangible, feel-their-weight-and-substance-in-your-hands books. It is unlikely a computer can match this expectation, no matter how light, or readable, or simple to operate. The media’s strengths do not match the character of the narrative form, and I don’t think that dissonance is going away any time soon.

Also, as Kindle keeps racking up more available titles, writers and publishers in the technological know are most likely to have their work available in this format early. This will define Kindle’s early consumer base, and thus its primary readership and discourse community. Not all genres will thrive equally well on Kindle. As previously said, it will change the market by shaping it, bubbling off its own niche and accreting to the already established cluster that is modern publishing.

For these reasons, among others, I anticipate that most people, at least for the foreseeable future, when they go looking for a good long story are likely to seek out a book.

A few days ago Scarlet Knight (now to be known as Carolyn, who is a very nice lady I met in person last week) asked this:

Okay, Clint I have a question for you, and you can answer it any time. You mentioned that you focus in on a writing area you want to improve on and then work on it until it is better. I am curious about the whole process you take with this. As a writer, I want to improve upon my writing and am wondering the best way to do this. Thanks! =)

This doesn’t seem to need an entire essay, so I’ll answer you here on this post, Carolyn (and who says that’s less rocking than Scarlet?).  So, my basic methodology for improving my writing.  Hmm.  I guess it would go something like this…

I just wrote the methodology I used to improve my writing skill and deleted it.  Really, I got to step seven and realized that what I’d written, while perhaps witty, wouldn’t do anyone reading this the least amount of good whatsoever.  So instead of telling you things I’ve tried, I will tell you what I eventually found worked for me and what I suggest others do.

1) Read.  It seems simple, but this is where you have to start.  You read not so much to acquire skill with language (though that’s vital too) but because reading trains your mind into the method of story and communication.  It also lets you into particular discourse communities.  What I mean by this is that different groups have different versions of language; a teenage daughter and her middle-aged father both speak English (or Dinka or whatever), but they don’t speak the same English.  Similarly, readers of traditional romance novels speak a different language (a symbolic system for communicating thought and concept) than readers of epic fantasy.  It is only by reading within a genre, contemporarily and classically, than we as writers can become fluent in the ideas, values, and shared meanings of our readers.  If you don’t read (and engage in other forms of story consumption), you never acquire the storyteller’s taste.  If you don’t read in the genre in which you’ll write, you do not understand your reader, so you can’t create a meaningful experience for her.  (This all stems from reader response literary theory, which isn’t all that complicated but I don’t have time to cover it here.  Just remember this: your reader will take your text and build their own version of the story.  If the pieces you give them are too alien or old hat, they cannot build a treasured final product.  You need to know your reader to give them narrative material they can build with.)

2) Write.  This seems as simple as #1, but it’s just as important.  To develop skill writing, you can’t spend all your time researching or reading books on technique and composition, or reading, or revising past works.  The fact is, every one of us has a lot of bad writing in us before we reach the well of good stuff.  The only way to get through the bad is to spew it out.  Writing lets you find your voice, which essentially means the style that most effectively communicates your perspective to others in a meaningful way.  You have to search to find this, and so any writing that communicates to others is helpful.  Write letters, and journal entries, and essays, and short stories, and poetry, and anything else you might conceivably show another person.  Any time you write something with the intent of being read, you develop your skill.  With that established, here are some sub-points about writing:

• 2a) Write the form you most want to write.  Mostly, this means novels, as far more writers aspire to be novelists than essayists of short story writers.  You’d be surprised, then, how many spend little or no time writing in the form they aspire to make their career in.  If you want to write novels, write novels and finish them.  Perfecting three chapters can’t make you a novel writer.  Writing one crappy novel, beginning to end, is far better.  Likewise, if you want to write short stories, write them.  Or essays, or poetry, or whatever.  Write what you want to publish, and devote as much time as possible to writing in this form.
• 2b) Write in other forms.  If you want to be a novelist, don’t avoid writing short stories.  Try poetry.  Write in a number of different forms, from 100,000 novels to 250 flash pieces to on-the-fly blog posts.  Write in a number of different rhetorical situations and you’ll learn that each demands something a little—or a lot—different.  This will hammer into you the consideration of your audience and awareness of writing for rhetorical effect. 
• 2c) Use short works to experiment.  Novels are huge investments of time, so I encourage people to try new tactics and compositional choices in short works, such as stories or essays.  Another benefit of this is that a short work can be composed according to Poe’s “Unity of Effect,” meaning everything in the entire piece is in unified service to a single overriding principle or theme.  Thus, if you wanted to explore the potential of short, choppy sentences of description delivered in bunches (as I did in my short story “Modern Woman”), that choice becomes the dominant technique of the whole piece.  This makes it really easy to explore the possibilities of any one compositional element.  By writing a number of short works specifically designed to develop techniques, you can focus greatly on each tool in the toolbox (King’s metaphor), improve it, and then adopt it into your ever-evolving skill, style, and voice.
• 2d) However you experiment with your voice and style, make sure you consciously develop the following techniques: writing across the point of view spectrum (especially in first and third person, present and past tense, with third person close as well as more distant, and with a narrator of some sort—not omniscient); writing with little or no exposition; writing exposition in a way that is enjoyable (much harder to do than most think); writing from the perspective of adults and children, and people of different genders, classes, nationalities, etc.; writing the same scene from multiple points of view; writing a plot in a single point of view where the character is aware of things happening “off screen” as it were; writing a story that cannot be told from a single point of view; write in every different genre you’ve read in and has interested you; write fiction and non-fiction; write primarily dialogue; write primarily word-for-word thought; write primarily action; write both what is going to happen stories (dramas) and why/how did this happen stories (mysteries); write alliteratively; write without using alliteration; write using dialect; write in different time periods; finally, write anything you’ve never written before if it seems different, interesting, or intimidating. 
• 2e) Finally, write in imitation when you are starting out.  If you read someone whose writing you adore, copy it.  Really, word for word if you like.  I liked to try to write as much like them as I could, from diction to theme.  For example, most formally educated creative writers have a Hemmingway/Carver story somewhere in their history (including me, though I’m not a model of advanced education).  I also have Austin and Dickens stories, and even one Joyce story.  What draws you to writers is their strengths, and imitating them will change you in these areas.  You’ll never write like they do—though you may end up writing just as well or better.  You’ll find that as time goes on, you’ll find less and less of other people’s writing so fresh and new that you want to imitate it.  This isn’t because the writers out there are losing their touch; it’s because you’re gaining your’s, and you’re not as easy to impress as you once were.  At this point, your own style will be mature enough that it isn’t affected by the gravity of the larger planets in the system of literature. 
• 2f) Most importantly, don’t ever be satisfied with your writing before you’ve agonized over it.  If you write without really caring about producing your best work, it doesn’t sharpen your skill.  This is the difference between most aspiring writers and those who are destined to make it: whether or not they waste time.  If you write five books, always straining for your very best, your fifth book will be vastly better than your first.  I promise.  If you write fifty books in satisfaction, the fiftieth will, for all intents and purposes, be the first book.  Demand that you improve your skills.

3) Learn at the theoretical level.  Whether you take classes at colleges and universities (where you must promise never to let anyone dictate to you what is or is not “good writing”) or read books on writing (this is how I learned), take the experience of others and learn from it.  Try to develop a keen understanding of writing, and language, and story, and the business of publishing.  All of these will one day evolve into active knowledge or the knowledge of practice, but understanding the theory and concept is helpful as well.  Don’t every take anything you hear as law.  The only writing rules (with a few exceptions) that are truly sacrosanct are the ones that work for you.  Thus drink deeply of the methodology you hear from others, but only adopt and internalize what you find works for you through experimentation and your own sense of objective.

4) Critique other writers.  While being critiqued is helpful, especially when you start out, training your critical eye is most important.  When you are in a critique group, learn to be honest and astute in your feedback without being overtly critical.  Learn to recognize the difference between what isn’t working and what isn’t your favored style or voice.  When you find something that isn’t working for you, demand that you figure out why.  Don’t take the position that certain things are just bad or good; think in terms of effect.  What compositional choice in the writing produced an undesirable result?

5) Join writing groups.  Associating with people with the same interests is important for reinforcement, encouragement, and networking.  Often these groups sponsor lectures and workshops that can be very helpful.  The more interconnected your approach to developing your writing skill (meaning the more ways you approach your evolution as a writer), the more likely you are to develop.

6) Don’t attach yourself too greatly to any one piece of writing.  Your objective should be to become a master writer and storyteller (even if we never reach this level, it must always be the ultimate goal), not to write the next great American novel.  Never, ever conceptualize your skill and identity in terms of a single work.  Your foremost goal should always be developing yourself and your skill, which will mean moving on from one project to the next.  Don’t devote ten years to perfecting one manuscript, because it won’t happen.  Write ten good manuscripts in ten years, and I promise you the tenth will be better than the first ever could have been, no matter how much work you put in.

7) Set your goals.  Decide what it is you want from your writing.  Then look at all the other options that this will cost you.  You want to publish and make money?  You’ve given up your right to total control of your creative endeavors.  Want to write a niche subject that fascinates you?  Understand that your chances of living off your writing, no matter its quality, is almost nil.  Whenever we truly make up our minds on something we discard other options.  Ours is a culture that values having many options, and likes to pretend that they all are equal.  You cannot do this if you want to truly develop as a writer.  You need to decide what it is you really want, accept that you’ll have to give up some things to get this, and then pursue it with all your vigor and ability. 

Lastly) Defy discouragement and complacency.  The only way we ever stop developing is to give up, either entirely or abandoning the rigor that refines us from a lesser ability to greater advancement.  The moment writing becomes easy, in any aspect, you can be certain you’ve stopped developing.  Don’t aspire to comfort; seek improvement.  Satisfaction in writing should always be “this is as good as I can do right now, so I’ll move on to a new challenge and new learning experience.”  In short, never lose the need to be and do better.   

I hope there’s something in here that helps, Carolyn—and anyone else reading this.  If you have questions or want clarification, please comment.  I can’t stress this enough: I believe almost every single person has the capacity to publish.  Writing skill is learned through work and dedication; it isn’t a matter of raw talent.  I know Stephen King disagrees with me.  Many others do as well.  But I am confident that through good old hard work, the people who read this can develop professional level writing skills.  That’s a promise.  I take comfort in this is because, in the long run, I control my own destiny.  The reason I’ll be successful is I can outwork my competition.  Any of you that can do the same will have success as well.  It’ll be nice to meet and share old stories from the top of the hill.  See you there.