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"We took the bad luck and strapped it around our feet like concrete. We did the worst imaginable thing you could do. We ran away. We just got in his beat-up 1974 Dodge Fury and left."

That's the opening of Willy Vlautin's road novel, The Motel Life. It follows the trail of an alcoholic storyteller and his brother, running from a horrible accident. Like any good pulp fiction novel, these characters can't escape their mistakes, and the freedom of a road novel collides with the punishment of a noir novel.

Today, Vlautin is our special guest, explaining how he structured his deceptively aimless road novel, part of my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
Your book has such an effortless, real-time feel as your characters pinball through the world. How did you outline/plot the journey of Motel Life? How do you manage these seemingly random transitions between settings without losing your readers?

Willy Vlautin:

You know, I guess I just followed my gut on plot. Continue reading...

"He'd applied to eight banks in his senior year at Harvard and was invited to join seven. After working for four years at Pearson Crowell, a bulge bracket investment bank, as an analyst and later as a senior associate, he got into Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. Then he chose Kearn Davis, the sole securities firm that had rejected him as an undergraduate." 

That's a glittering piece of character development from Min Jin Lee's new novel, Free Food for Millionaires.

Lee can masterfully explain the character arc of a complex life in a few sentences, a literary skill that depends on careful outlines. Today, she explains how she organizes her novels in an exclusive interview.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog: 

Your large collection of characters created quite an intricate plot. How did you outline your large novel? Any advice for young writers as they plot their own novels?

Min Jin Lee: 

I outline my work fairly loosely, then revise my outlines as the plots grow more complicated. I keep index cards with biographical details of my characters. Continue reading...

Sometimes I think that novel writing is 95 percent patience.

Don't believe me? Ed Champion points us to an illuminating interview with novelist Jenny Davidson, exploring the dirty, dirty job of revising a novel. If you are evading any of these steps, then you need to take a good, hard look at your manuscript:

"I draft the whole thing (we’re talking about novels here) from start to finish, writing in longhand in little notebooks. Then I type up the draft, including a first edit. Then I edit the hard copy, type in revisions, repeat ad nauseam. This latest novel probably underwent at least 10 revision cycles, each one of which potentially involved two or three or four close copy-edits. At some point (usually more than once), I read the whole thing out loud to myself"

What would happen if thousands of bloggers blogged about the same thing for one day? These people hope they can save the world.

How many clicks until readers stop clicking? Will Sullivan is analyzing newspaper web design, unpacking some simple design tips that could really change the quality of your personal site. Read it and weep:

"I just don’t buy that people are going to work that hard to find your content. I subscribe to Tim Harrower’s old school design belief that anything deeper than 3 clicks and you’ve lost most people (I’d wager my paycheck that by forcing them to click a fourth time you’ve lost 70 percent of the audience. And I’d bet two paychecks that you’ll lose 97 percent for those on slow dsl or dial-up)."

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

"'The funny thing is that if you were a millionaire like some of these managing directors shaking down seven figures a year, you'd have known to push your way ahead and fill your plate. Rich people can't get enough of the free stuff.' Walter shrugged. There was no reproach in his tone; in fact, there was a wistful admiration in his voice, as if he were beginning to understand how the world worked."

That's a bit of clever dialogue and a life lesson from first-time novelist, Min Jin Lee.

She converted her experiences of rubbing elbows with money and power in the novel, Free Food for Millionaires. Lee will be our special guest next week, serving up practical life lessons from her writing career.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog: 

It took you five years to finish this book. How did you survive the rejections and struggles of your difficult first-novel days? How did you balance your day job and your writing career?

Min Jin Lee: 

 I found the rejections and struggles very difficult. After my first novel was rejected, and after I realized that I couldn’t finish my two other novel attempts, I was demoralized. Continue reading...

"As someone who is damn near addicted to the high of writing, editing is such a bore. When you’re done writing, you can convince yourself that you’re brilliant – being high does that to a person. Editing drags you back down to earth and says, in fact, that you aren’t. You can be brilliant, but it will take work. It’s real work, the kind that keeps you thinking in detail about the intricacies of plot, character development, level of detail, setting, show-don’t-tell, and structural word usage."

That's novelist Mur Lafferty explaining how she beats the urge to write without editing. Editing is a crucial skill that we all--especially the flighty, easily-distracted guy writing this sentence right now--need to re-learn.

The Internet simply makes it too easy to publish. We need to learn how to edit before we send our work to a magazine editor, agent, or any kind of reader. That's why I picked Lafferty as our special guest. Her essay, "My Albatross," lays out the basics of novel editing in the clearest form I've ever seen. Read her essay and learn.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. Click here to read the complete interview.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.