Quote of the Week...from W. Somerset Maugham

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.                                   W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham, the twentieth century British author who wrote Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge, has a good point with the above quote.  I've read lots of books over the past few years...most of them critical successes or very popular...and the literary styles the different authors use in them varies enormously from one book to the next...the range of diversity is even more extreme with short stories.  One important thing, I think, is that regardless how outlandish the story's situation or characters are, there need to be prominent elements of it that give the reader a sense of familiarity and reality...even if the tale is a bizarre fantasy.  Stephen King has claimed that he likes to place ordinary, relatable people as his characters into unusual circumstances...and then let them work it all out for themselves, usually without a specific notion as to where the story will lead as he is writing it.  Others, like Isaac Asimov, would outline their stories at the beginning of the writing process and then go on from there.  You know, I really need to begin writing my own fiction...no harm in trying how different successful authors do it, maybe ultimately "my" style will be a combination of others'.  But the main thing is to begin...and with that I'd like to bring up two related and very pertinent quotes, the first by Anne Lamott and the last by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.  You need to start somewhere.

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

Here's to writing a hundred stories!