'Your Erroneous Zones' was the book that went over the top simply because I believed in it so much.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My second, third and fourth novels were mistakes, essentially.
As for the zone, I always find the zone immediately after I am sure I will never ever find the zone again because it has left me for some other, better writer.
I've had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Randy Susan Meyers and I wrote a guidebook to help authors avoid making our mistakes.
In my high-minded and naive way, I believed the only books worth reading were the classics.
Now that I've had a book published, it is quite validating, but a bit embarrassing.
If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.
Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book.
Every really good book was written a little at a time, over time, in tremendous confusion and doubt.
As a reader, I much prefer to read a book where people embody all kinds of ideas and everybody is making mistakes.