Full-frontal Nudity of the Soul for Writers

To Write Better: Read, Read, Read

How many novels must you read to affect your writing? At least 101 books.

Image of 1947 Royal DeLuxe Typewriter. This model is said to have been Hemingway’s favorite. Now one of mine, too. (Photo by Donald J. Claxton)

Writing a novel? You must read, read, and read … at least 101 novels.

I’m writing a novel. Three actually. I have two first drafts and a third nearing completion to where I can query.

In the fall of 2014, I enrolled in Southern Methodist University’s The Writer’s Path program. The novel tract impassioned me the most.

J. Suzanne Frank directed the SMU program for several years. (But the program ended a couple of years ago now.) I’ve made a quest to get others here in DFW to refer to Suzanne as “Jedi Writing Master.”

Suzanne taught me often that writing a novel is a “journey.” I failed to realize this “journey,” even to produce one book, would take most of my efforts from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021. (I left all the years in there because that display is more dramatic than “2015–21;” and now 2022.)

A lesson about the Human Experience, it’s called “Chronic Pain.”