Writing A Bestselling Series

Writing a Bestselling Series, Chapter 3: Studies

As a young writer, I had a lot of doubts. Perhaps foremost was the problem that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life. Like most teens, I spent a lot of time . . . trying to figure it out.

My father really wanted me to take over the family business. He had a meat company and a small grocery store that was fairly successful, and he was hoping that my brother and I would open satellite locations.

I had teachers who tried to interest me in their own fields—which included mathematics, science, law, and sociology.

My grandfather had worked in the mafia, and taught me a bit about how to live a life of crime. (Seriously, he was a real piece of work.)

I even had one odd experience where I was visited at my school by recruiters for the federal government. I was called to the principal's office at the age of 15, where I was introduced to two gentleman from the CIA, one from the Secret Service, and one from an agency that did not want to be named, along with a couple of folks from the national and state departments of education. I was rather baffled, but one of the CIA agents said, "Did you know that you can join the CIA when you're only sixteen? You wouldn't be a field agent, of course, you'd work in a think-tank, where you would debrief agents, think about what you heard, and the notify us of any issues relating to national security." I really didn't feel qualified for the job. It all sounded crazy to me. I was surprised that half a dozen people from Washington had flown across the country to see me, but apparently I have an unusual brain, and they thought that my "gift" could be of use.

I knew that I was more interested in the biological sciences, and by my mid-teens, I was leaning strongly toward studying medicine.

But then there was my English teacher. She asked me to visit her after school when I was sixteen, and said, "You're a writer, and you don't even know it yet. We need to get you prepared." At the time, I was a bit surprised and told her that I planned to become a doctor. She warned me, "You don't understand: you can't just keep this buried. Someday, it will just start coming out of you, and you won't be able to stop it. We have to start working on extra classes, on your writing skills, to prepare for that day."

Well, I did a few extra creative writing assignments, but not a lot. I did start writing more, but mainly in nonfiction. In fact, when I was sixteen, I wrote two "books." My brother was studying wildlife biology in college, and I took an interest in that, did some research, and wrote a field guide to the mustelidae family of mammals—minks and weasels. It was only a couple of hundred pages. Then, feeling inspired by that, I wrote a little book on the history of the development of nuclear weaponry in the United States, which was of a similar length.

But fiction writing was a bit tough to crack. I began reading books on writing, things like Strunk and White's Elements of Style, but I felt that all of the books that I was reading weren't really helping. It was as if they were offering a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, but none of them really showed the whole picture. I kept looking for books on story structure back in the early 1970s, but didn't really find anything.

And my study method was spotty. I was working a lot after school in my parents' store and meat shop, often getting in forty hours a week by working nights and on the weekends, so that was a distraction. Then there was the fact that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

In fact, I have to admit that I began to wonder if there was anything that I could do. I began to have a lot of health problems. As a young teen, I developed manic depression. By the time I was thirteen I would have suicidal fits, followed a few days later by states of high energy and excitement. I knew that I was sick, and my parents knew that I was in trouble, but at that time I know that my mother was troubled at the thought of having a son who was mentally ill. My father figured that "it just runs in the family," since both he and his father had struggled with the problem.