From: mdhangton@gmail.com

On Friday, June 13, 2014 7:32:16 AM UTC-4, mumble wrote:
> On 06/12/2014 02:55 PM, William Vetter wrote:
> 
> 
> I don't personally know anyone who just sat down at a keyboard and made 
> 
> it happen.  I /suspect/ that many of those who came generations before 
> 
> us did that, but that's only a suspicion and not anything backed by 
> 
> historic knowledge.  
> 
I saw an except from Mark Twain's first published story in a book about
writing from the 70's and I can't find it now.  I think the Public Library
discarded it.  He was trying to describe a riverboat being untied from a dock
and moving out into the water,
 a very simple action sequence.  I can't describe how clunky it was, but it
was almost unreadable.  That was the point, to show what beginners are like.

> 
> 
> These days there seem to be more "bestselling authors" who have 
> 
> published their first novel and found it to be a grand hit.  

People like Carl Sagan wrote _Contact_, already famous for other things?

>Veronica 
> 
> Roth comes to mind here because I've been reading her first trilogy 
> 
> lately, but she went through a college program for "Creative Writing" 
> 
> according to the author-blurb.  

It is impossible for me to believe that a creative writing course would teach
somebody to be a professional author.  It is meant to a fun course for
students to write pieces in and is structured around exercises that can be
graded.  A lot of the people 
who teach them are authors of some sort, and they may teach the students some
writing techniques.  Being a creative writing teacher is often listed on
authors' blurbs as a sort of resume item.

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