Yesterday evening, I had the occasion to sit next to a very prolific, well-published NW fiction writer. He had with him a classic book written for girls, which, given his tough-guy reputation, one would not expect him to have. I asked him what the book was for. He said, “Oh, it’s the structure of my next novel.”
This seemed like something I should have thought of before, using the structure of a simply-written book to structure my own work, and so I asked him if he did this before writing all his novels. He didn’t answer me directly, rather he said, “it allows me to focus on the content.”
Given my own recent struggles with structure, I wonder if this isn’t sage advice for just about anyone.