Immediate Fiction Read Free

it worked.
    I got out my notes from his class, reviewed them, then started going over my story, line by line, page by page, using what Barney had given us. As I did, a new dimension in my story began opening up. It was Barney's model, his method, but it was my imagination, my characters, my story that were coming to life. I was able to see more revealing ways for the characters to act and more exciting ways to turn the story. There it was! All I had to do was use it. For the first time, I felt I'd really connected. I'd found what was missing—the full use of myself and my imagination in a scheme that shaped my ideas into a complete, meaningful story. It was his method, but it put me in touch with what I had. It drew me out onto the page in a new and exciting way. Plus, I could see how it worked. For the very first time, I knew what I was doing and why.
    I was so thrilled, I called Barney and told him I wanted more than his class lectures and would pay him for his time. "No. No," he said. "Come in on Monday at seven o'clock."
    Monday, I went over the whole thing with him. Damn, if I didn't have it right. I'd found it —finally—and I knew it. "It seems so simple," I said.
    "Simple, yes, but you still have to perfect your craft," he said.
    "But for once I'll know what I'm doing—I'll be working on the right things."
    "Exactly," he said, smiling. "And that makes it happen all the faster."
    It did happen. And it happened fast. At that time Playboy was printing some of the highest-quality fiction around (Updike, Algren,
    Mailer). They were one of the toughest magazines to break into, but they were the highest paying. They bought the second story I wrote with the new model and paid me the highest price they would pay an unknown author at that time.
    I was thrilled at what I'd discovered, but I was also furious that it had taken so long and that I'd been misled and stifled so often along the way. There was no need for any of it. Of all the arts, writing is taught in the vaguest and most inconsistent and disorganized way. My friends who were painters were given all kinds of guidelines and principles (line, composition, color theory, sketch classes). Art classes went way beyond the draw-a-picture-and-we'll-tell-you-what's-wrong-with-it approach, which was what my writing classes had amounted to.
    Because of my Playboy success other writers began approaching me for help. In addition to doing my own writing, I became intrigued with the challenge of how to teach, coach, and help others learn what I'd learned and learn it in a way that wouldn't put them through all the confusion, false starts, and wasted effort I'd been through. Learning to coach others has turned out to be an even more formidable task than learning to write and just as exciting and fulfilling.
    I stayed in the workshop at Northwestern with Barney Sabath, the man who had become my mentor. I wanted to learn what he knew and know it as well as he did, if that was possible. He coached me as I coached others. Eventually, I mastered his approach and went on to teach it myself. After ten years, I left Northwestern and created The Writer's Loft in Chicago, where I've spent the last twenty years perfecting the techniques in this course.
    There's no need for anyone to have to go through what I went through. There's no need for it to take that long. My personal estimate, after writing and working with writers for over twenty years, is that a good writing coach can speed a writer's development by a factor of ten. This means that, with good guidance, you'll develop ten times faster than you would working on your own or with bad coaching. The reason why 99 percent of all writers never publish, why people write for a lifetime and get nowhere, isn't because they don't try or don't work hard or don't write their hearts out or do what the "experts" tell them. The reason they don't make it is because they haven't been given the right tools. The tools they need to teach themselves to