Nothing matters until you’ve finished your first book. Anyone who gets you there is a hero. The single most important tool I ever found for learning to write was a series of twelve double-sided tapes called “Let’s Write A Mystery” by a guy named Ralph McKinerny. His whole process was to tell you the basics while writing a book right alongside you on his tapes (all of which sounded like 1950’s science teacher lectures.)
The book that Ralph writes during the process is included in the box with the tapes. To my tastes it’s maybe the shitiest book I’ve ever read. If he’d wanted to, he could have shown off the talents that helped him write dozens of successful novels. And yet, somehow, his willingness to write crap right there in front of you, all the while telling you to stop worrying about whether your stuff is good or not but just get your damned pages out, somehow that’s what helped me write my first novel and prove to myself that I could be a writer.
Ralph McInerny was a theologian who wrote books I never bothered to read and who had largely opposite values to me (he once wrote a screed protesting Barack Obama speaking at Notre Dame.) He died in 2010 and I never met him. He was the best writing teacher I ever had.
Les vieux maîtres de sort aiment raconter que la magie a un goût. Les sorts de braise ressemblent à une épice qui vous brûle le bout de la langue. La magie du souf e est subtile, presque rafraîchissante, un peu comme si vous teniez une feuille de menthe entre vos lèvres. Le sable, la soie, le sang, le fer… cha- cune de ces magies a son parfum. Un véritable adepte, autre- ment dit un mage capable de jeter un sort même à l’extérieur d’une oasis, les connaît tous.
'I totally saw this coming,’ Reichis growled, leaping onto my shoulder as lightning scorched the sand barely ten feet from us. The squirrel cat’s claws pierced my sweat-soaked shirt and dug into my skin.
The way of the Argosi is the way of water. Water never seeks to block another’s path, nor does it permit impediments to its own. It moves freely, slipping past those who would capture it, taking nothing that belongs to others. To forget this is to stray from the path, for despite the rumours one sometimes hears, an Argosi never, ever steals.