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.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)