From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   The first time I tried to write fiction was a bit into my second doctoral   
   program,  and I generated a complete novel manuscript that was (you can   
   imagine) a sort of adult juvenilia.  And then I found some of those books   
   about writing fiction and it    
   dawned on me that there were a catalog of things that needed to be   
   controlled.  That was when I thought, "Holy shit!  This is like another degree   
   program."  And then I knew it was ridiculous that I could have ever thought it   
   would be anything else.   
      
   And I was involved in critters.org for a while then and I'd see the different   
   levels there, and it became clear to me that somebody who was older than   
   around 28 would need to spend something like four years doing it full time to   
   have the control to    
   reliably produce manuscripts that were publishable full time.  And the   
   teenagers that write these stories where all the characters interact like   
   people in a freshman dorm are going to take a lot longer.   
      
   Does anybody know anyone who sat down at a keyboard and never went through   
   that process, who had talent from God like Mozart is believed to have?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)