Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons From a Writing Life Read online

  SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS

  * * *

  Lessons from a Writing Life

  * * *

  TERRY BROOKS

  BALLANTINE BOOKS | NEW YORK

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Other Books by Terry Brooks

  Copyright

  This is for writers yet to be published who think the

  uphill climb will never end. Keep believing.

  This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process.

  Remember how lucky you are.

  * * *

  INTRODUCTION

  * * *

  by Elizabeth George

  YOU ARE ABOUT to take a journey with fantasy novelist Terry Brooks. But unlike other journeys you may have taken with him, this one does not involve elves, fairies, and the like. Instead, Terry is going to take you into his life. More important, from my point of view, Terry is also going to take you into his work.

  I believe that every long-term successful writer employs some sort of game plan when he ventures into the world of novel writing. Please note that I said long-term successful writer. It’s true that there will always be that flash in the pan, that one-off novel that strikes the fancy of publishers, sells a few million copies, and gets made into a successful—or unsuccessful—film before the person who wrote it fades into permanent obscurity, laughing, as they say, all the way to the bank. These types of writers have always existed. In fact, quite a few dubious works of fiction leap immediately into my mind as I write this and no doubt into yours as well. The creators of those largely forgettable and sometimes laughable pieces of prose bang them right out, often with nothing more to recommend their work than a fairly decent idea badly realized, a fairly bad idea decently realized, or a schtick of some sort—author as former policewoman, forensic pathologist, secretary posing as either, weight lifter, beauty queen, seriously abused child, seriously abusive adult come to the Lord, etc., etc., etc.—or an excellent publicity campaign that worked like a charm. What those creators of fiction have in common tends to be that they got lucky. They wrote their novels without an idea in the world about what they were doing and they managed to pull it off. Problem was, though, they could not do it again.

  The difference, then, between a one-off novelist and a long-term successful writer is that the long-term writer can do it again. And again. And again. The reason for this is not a more active imagination, greater creative drive, or better luck. It is simply that the long-term successful writer has a game plan called craft.

  Terry Brooks is just that sort of writer. With more than two decades of acclaimed commercial fiction to his credit, he does not sit down at the word processor, the typewriter, the legal pad, or the index card and hope to get in touch with the cosmos. He goes into the creative act knowing that there will be work involved—work that he is willing to do because he knows it’s essential to the outcome he seeks.

  If your ambition is to make millions, to sell to Hollywood, to see Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts on the screen enunciating your timeless dialogue, you should read no further. If you wish to join the league of one-trick ponies who are nonetheless millionaires because they were able to “get it right” just once, you should read no further. What Terry Brooks has to say in this slim volume will not satiate your appetite for instant fame and fortune because Terry Brooks is going to tell you about craft. And as any craftsman knows, that means work.

  Terry and I have been on the same page with regard to craft since the moment we met a few years ago at the Maui Writers Conference. We both believe that novel writing is an art. We both also believe that that art must be founded on solid craft. For anyone who wants to enter into the rarefied world of the master craftsman, this is the book for you. Terry Brooks will take you on his personal journey from obscurity—no offense, Terry—to bestsellerdom, and along the route, you’ll have the chance to pick up a few pointers from a man who definitely practices what he preaches.

  Here’s the thing about writing: There are writers and there are authors. Writers seek to write, and they seek to write better and better with every book. Authors seek only to be published, and they seek advances to match their egos. Terry Brooks is definitely the former, so you can trust what he has to say about craft. Once you’ve read the book, you yourself can decide which you are at the present time—writer or author—or which one you are determined to be.

  Believe me, Terry will show you that there is nothing easy about writing a novel. And I will tell you here and now: There’s also nothing as satisfying as writing a novel, either.

  Enjoy.

  * * *

  The muse whispers to you when she chooses,

  and you can’t tell her to come back later,

  because you quickly learn in this business

  that she might not come back at all.

  * * *

  * * *

  I AM NOT ALL HERE

  * * *

  IT’S TRUE.

  I’m not all here.

  One of my earliest memories is of sitting in church with Grandmother Gleason, my mother’s mother, and her sister, my aunt Blanche, and listening to them discuss a woman several pews ahead of us. They did this frequently when I was with them, and they always did so in a stage whisper that could be heard by anyone within a dozen feet. The conversation went something like this:

  “Blanche, isn’t that Mildred Evans?”

  “No! Where?”

  “Sitting just ahead of us by Harold Peterson. Look at that hat she’s wearing. Have you ever seen such a hat?”

  “Are those birds pinned to it? They look like birds.”

  “I think they’re finches.”

  “I don’t think that’s Mildred Walker. I think she’s dead.”

  “Mildred Evans!”

  “No, you’re thinking of Myrtle Evans. Besides, I think she’s dead, too. She wasn’t all here, you know. Everybody said so.”

  By then I had sunk as far as I could into the pew, staring down at my bible and wishing I wasn’t all there, either. Perhaps somewhere along the way, my wish was granted.

  I don’t like to examine this condition too closely, but I know that it is likely that right at this very moment one of my relatives or friends is remarking on it. When I was married, they warned my wife about it. He’s not all here, they would say, leaning close, imparting this information with sad, knowing smiles. Judine thought they were kidding, but that was before she discovered that I only hear maybe half of what she says to me. Her favorite example of my inattention—and there are many—involves reading something to me from the newspaper about which she thinks I ought to know. I listen and nod. I might even respond. Then five minutes later, when the paper is in my hands, I will read the same item back to her as if I was just discovering it. Which I am. This happens all the time. These days, she just shakes her head helplessly.

  My children think it is a big joke. They know me well enough by now not to be surprised when it happens. Dad’s gone away a
gain, they say to each other with a snicker. Joe Space Cadet. Sometimes they suggest I should get my hearing checked, that maybe the problem is I just don’t hear what they have to say. I tell them I don’t want to hear what they have to say because it usually involves giving them money. But these days, as the big six-oh approaches, I suppose I ought to give the poor-hearing argument a little more consideration.

  Actually, my family and friends like me well enough, but they think I am weird. Or at least peculiar. I can’t blame them. I should have grown up a long time ago, and yet here I am, writing about elves and magic. I should have a real job by now. I did have a real job, once upon a time. I was a lawyer for seventeen years, but I quit when I felt comfortable enough with my writing career to think I could make a living at it. Readers used to ask me at autographing events if it wasn’t hard making the transition from practicing law to writing fantasy. I told them there was hardly any difference at all. That always got a laugh. They knew what I meant.

  So what am I talking about when I say I am not all here? I mean that if you are a writer, you really can’t be. Writers are not all here, because a part of them is always “over there”—“over there” being whatever world they are writing about at present. Writers live in two worlds—the real world of friends and family and the imaginary world of their writing. If you were to measure the difference in time spent between the two, I suspect you would find it quite small. Nor is this distinction of real and imaginary meant to suggest that for a writer one is more compelling than the other. It isn’t. Each is compelling in its own way and each makes its demands on a writer’s time. But a writer can’t ever leave either for very long—in the case of the real world, for obvious reasons, and in the case of the imaginary world, for reasons that require a brief digression in order to make sense of them.

  Let’s take a momentary look at writers and their books. That writers live in their writing probably isn’t news to you, but that they do so as much out of necessity as desire might be. I might argue that they do so because that is how writers are built: the writing compels and commands them as if they were little robots. They are not complete without it or happy when they aren’t doing it. Writing is life; you’ve heard that one, haven’t you? Writers need their writing; they need their imaginary worlds in order to find peace in, or make sense of, the real world.

  I am always dabbling in my current book, no matter the time or place, thinking about some aspect of the writing that I haven’t quite gotten right or executed well enough. It doesn’t command my entire attention, just enough of it that I seem constantly distracted. Various dilemmas and concerns steal me away. Sometimes it is a character that hasn’t been fully developed. Sometimes it is a plot element that just doesn’t fit quite the way it should. Sometimes it is something as mundane as a name that needs rethinking. Sometimes it is your basic insecurity attack; I just know that what I have written the day before is dreck and will have to be thrown out. Sometimes I am just thinking ahead to the next day’s writing and beginning to put the images together in my mind.

  But it is always something, as the saying goes. There is never a moment when I am not involved in thinking about writing. I can’t put it out of my mind entirely, even in the most trying of circumstances. You might as well ask me to stop breathing; thinking about my writing is as much a function of my life.

  So when my family and friends discover I am not listening to them or they catch me staring off into space, I can’t do a thing about it, because that’s just the way I am. It is the way all writers are, I suspect. The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can’t tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all.

  Some of this has to do with writers being observers. We don’t become involved so much as we watch and take notes. Much of what happens around us goes into a storage bin in our minds for future consideration and possible use in a book down the line. What we observe is as important to us in determining what we write as what we know. Frequently those annoying distractions we experience are just instances of recording our observations because we think they might suggest, on reflection, further writing possibilities.

  The writer Walter Mosley wrote a few years ago in an article that appeared in the New York Times that writing is gathering smoke—the smoke of dreams, of ideas, of the imagination. We collect that smoke and try to make something out of it. It doesn’t happen all at once, but only over time and never on a determinable schedule. We visit our hazy treasure every day in order not to lose sight of it, not to let it evaporate from neglect. At some point in our tending and examination, something substantial will come alive.

  I think this is what writers are doing when that part of them that isn’t here is over there. They are gathering smoke. They are thinking about their writing, trying to make something solid and recognizable out of the ether of their musings.

  Some would say that a writer’s most important work is to chronicle the human condition. I think that it is more important that they explore its possibilities. We don’t find answers so much in what we already know as in what we think might be.

  To do that, a writer has to be able to step outside the real world to the world of the imagination. By doing so, perspective is gained.

  Not being all here, when viewed in that light, finally begins to make sense.

  * * *

  I have decided, on reflection, it is best just to

  remember that sometimes the magic really works.

  * * *

  * * *

  LUCK

  * * *

  IN EARLY NOVEMBER of 1974, I received a letter from editor, writer, and critic Lester del Rey. He was responding to my submission of the manuscript for a first novel entitled The Sword of Shannara. After an opening paragraph in which he apologized for not replying more swiftly to my query letter, he wrote the following sentence.

  Let me say at once that I consider your novel as potentially the best epic fantasy since Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

  Heady words to bestow on a young writer aspiring to his first publication. I didn’t entirely trust them, but I was more than willing to be seduced. I read on. He astonished me by taking time to explain who he was and what his credentials were. As if I didn’t know, a reader of his books since I was twelve. He asked if I was willing to work long and hard to make my book, in its all-too-rough and still-unfinished form, a publishable piece of work. As if I wouldn’t have done anything to see my words in print, on the shelves of bookstores, in the hands of readers.

  I came to Lester’s attention through the efforts of Donald A. Wollheim, publisher of DAW Books, to whom I had submitted the manuscript first. After reading it and ruminating on its potential, he returned it to me with the suggestion that I send it to Judy-Lynn del Rey at Ballantine Books, who had just been hired as editor in chief of the division’s science fiction/fantasy line. I submitted it in time-honored fashion—over the transom, a slush-pile offering, just another roll of the dice in an endless series of rolls by would-be authors countrywide.

  And now this.

  A miracle.

  I agreed to do what Lester asked, of course, not yet fully realizing what that would entail, but not really caring either. I received a second letter in short order, which ran for ten pages, typed and single spaced, with handwritten notes in the margins, detailing what I would need to do in the way of rewrites. It was a substantial amount of work, but I did everything he asked without complaint because by then I would have walked barefoot over hot coals if that was what it would take to ally myself with someone who believed in me.

  I spent the entire next year working with Lester to improve the book. I rewrote sections repeatedly, and each time the story became a little stronger. Judy-Lynn hand-sold the book for a year after that, visiting with sales reps, booksellers, and the media to talk about its importance. She told everyone who would listen, as Lester had told me, that it might be the most important work of fantasy since The Lord of th
e Rings. I have no idea how many believed her and how many thought she was off her rocker, but at least the word got out.

  Then, in an extraordinary piece of good fortune, the Literary Guild agreed to make the book a featured alternate. But the planned format for the book was not hardcover, and the Guild could not discount it unless it came out in a hardcover version. Ballantine/Del Rey was doing only a trade paperback release, so there was no help to be found within house. A determined Judy-Lynn solved the problem by persuading parent company Random House to pick up the book for a small print run in hardcover. The Literary Guild’s selection was assured.

  Twenty-eight months later, in April 1977, The Sword of Shannara was released in trade paperback and hardcover formats. My book, my dream. It did very well—better than very well. It became the first work of fiction ever to land on the New York Times Trade Paperback Best-Seller List, and it stayed there for over five months, most of the time in the top five. It was written up by Frank Herbert in the New York Times Book Review, an extraordinary event. The New York Times almost never bothers with fantasy and even when it does, allots no more than a paragraph. The review for Sword covered half a page. Neither overly enthusiastic nor unfairly critical, it was a balanced, fair assessment of a first-time author’s efforts.

  Thus my writing career was successfully launched.

  But, as Paul Harvey would say, here is the rest of the story.

  The writer Elizabeth Engstrom gives a talk in which she discusses the factors that most influence whether or not an aspiring writer will be published. At the top of her list, she places Luck. With a capital L. Let me tell you about Luck as it applies to the success of The Sword of Shannara.