Dear Fellow Novelist:

My son gave me "How to Write A Damn Good Novel" by James N. Frey as a gift. I thought that he might be trying to tell me something about my work; because I am a professional novelist (meaning I have had one published, I suppose), I listen to criticism. That is how one really gets to be a professional novelist and I am practicing.

I have to admit I wasn't expecting to learn a whole lot from this book. Call it pride or even high falutin' hubris, but I have a shelf of how-to books, have taken classes in novel writing, have attended writers' conferences and generally immersed myself in any of the how-tos ever created for a writer. Still, if someone-especially a handsome, smart someone like my son was trying to tell me something….

Besides, at the moment I have a bad case of novel-block. Not writers' block, mind you, (which I've never had) but an intense, abiding unwillingness, inability and/or general malaise about starting another novel. I can't tell you if "Damn Good Novel" will help me with that problem (I just finished it), but I can tell you that even if you know your craft reasonably well (or even damn well), I am pretty sure you'll find a new tidbit or new perspective in this book that will make it worthwhile.

Occasionally Frey uses a stale simile of the same sort against which he vociferously warns his readers. It is well worth the ennui you will feel when you spot these in order to find other writing tidbits within: terms like "homo fictus" or "crucible" or "insistence versus resistance." Maybe you haven't yet run into Artistotle's "peripety" yet. You may also remember a concept you've forgotten.

I feel absolutely certain that most novelists-new or otherwise--won't be sorry they read Frey's damn good how-to book.