conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing a Novel about Tom, Borderlands with the genre: Reference, Writing, Research & Publishing Guides.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Tom the author is the acclaimed author of over a dozen popular novels. He has also edited 14 science fiction and horror anthologies, including the successful Borderlands series. His novels have been translated into six languages.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing a Novel
  Lee has three homes—an apartment in Manhattan, a country house in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. Lee spends his spare time reading; listening to music; and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. He is married with a grown-up daughter. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise.
  Writing has two halves—the mental and the physical. I had always done the mental stuff—the daydreaming, the "doing narrative"... I started doing the physical side when I needed a job.
  It was "Killing Floor"—the first Jack Reacher novel. It was a thriller, a suspense novel, a crime novel, a Western.
  I worked exclusively in entertainment—theater, and then television. Both indirectly helped enormously, in terms of understanding deadlines, and most of all in understanding that the audience is king.
  I underestimated two things: how patient publishers were prepared to be, in terms of slowly building a career; and how nice everyone in the business would be.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me two more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was mostly by accident. I was helping my husband with his grammar in a novel he had written—his first attempt—and discovered I loved the work. I thought, "Maybe I should try this myself." And so I did.
  It was a romance. I loved reading romance novels and I was by nature an extremely romantic person. I still am.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I was helping my husband with his grammar in a novel he had written—his first attempt—and discovered I loved the work. I thought, "Maybe I should try this myself." And so I did.
  It was a romance. I loved reading romance novels and I was by nature an extremely romantic person. I still am.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'I write outlines in order to deceive editors into buying my stuff'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I write outlines in order to deceive editors into buying my stuff. They are a separate prose form that has nothing to do with my work. If my characters aren't surprising me, I'm in trouble.
  Economically, the best thing is getting a check for a million bucks. The worst is going bankrupt. I've done both.
  Spiritually, the best thing is discovering the actual potential of human beings. When you do that, there is a sense of escaping from a web you did not know had captured you.
  Intellectually, the best thing is being interested. The worst is when you are not. I've never written anything that didn't absolutely fascinate me, but I have tried and it's soul hell.
  Discipline and time management are absolutely crucial. When it's going well, I can do 10 pages in a day. Twenty, when I'm white hot. But usually I am not white hot. Usually, I am struggling. The morning, the empty page, the awful sense that my career is over. Day after day. The key for me is to sit there all day, no matter what.