It's One Of The Advantages Of Being

When You Know That Something's Going To Happen, You'll Start Trying To See Signs Of Its Approach In Just About Everything. Always Try To Remember That Most Of The Things That Happen In This World Aren't Signs. They Happen Because They Happen, And Their Only Real Significance Lies In Normal Cause And Effect. You'll Drive Yourself Crazy If You Start Trying To Pry The Meaning Out Of Every Gust Of Wind Or Rain Squall. I'm Not Denying That There Might Actually Be A Few Signs That You Won't Want To Miss. Knowing The Difference Is The Tricky Part.

Listen To The Way People Talk. If Your Characters Sound Real The Rest Is Easy.

I Taught In A Small Teacher's College For Three Or Four Years, At Which Point All The Administrators Got A Pay Raise And The Teaching Faculty Didn't.

Contemporary Fantasists All Bow Politely To Lord Tennyson And Papa Tolkien, Then Step Around Them To Go Back To The Original Texts For Inspiration--and There Are A Lot Of Those Texts. We Have King Arthur And His Gang In English; We've Got Siegfried And Brunhild In German; Charlemagne And Roland In French; El Cid In Spanish; Sigurd The Volsung In Icelandic; And Assorted 'myghtiest Knights On Lyfe' In A Half-dozen Other Cultures. Without Shame, We Pillage Medieval Romance For All We're Worth.

Ordinary Men Live In Fear All The Time. Didn't You Know That? We're Afraid Of The Weather, We're Afraid Of Powerful Men, We're Afraid Of The Night And The Monsters That Lurk In The Dark, We're Afraid Of Growing Old And Of Dying. Sometimes We're Even Afraid Of Living. Ordinary Men Are Afraid Almost Every Minute Of Their Lives.