Question: What made you become interested in writing?
Repeating ‘may I help you’ about a zillion times was a part of the equation. :) But mostly, it was just something that I had more or less always done in one sense or another. I had been a voracious reader of science fiction and fantasy since about the first grade, when my sisters got me boxed sets of The Lord of The Rings and The Adventures of Han Solo. The first movie I can clearly remember seeing was Star Wars (also a sister-assisted venture). For most of my life, if I wasn’t watching science fiction, or reading it, I was drawing pictures with that omnipresent Death Star half-circle in the bottom right hand corner or writing stories.
I remember that I felt frustrated at not being able to find that ‘perfect’ story--you know what I’m talking about. That story that absolutely rings true in every sense as you read it, that makes you laugh and cry and when its over leaves this glowy, satisfied feeling resounding inside you. Nowadays, I have the feeling that everyone’s perfect story is a bit different, but in the effort to find mine, I eventually wrote my first novel when I was nineteen.
It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was terrible. But I tried to hang in there and upon getting involved with the Professional Writing program at OU, I wrote my second novel in an effort to make the perfect story.
It wasn’t, either. In fact, it was even worse. Ditto the third novel. The fourth was at least a little bit better, but it still wasn’t good, much less The Perfect Story.
The fifth novel I wrote, though, all the stuff my teacher had been teaching me seemed to fall together. The book was then called "The Dresden Chronicles, Book One: Semiautomagic." After a fairly light round of editing, it became "The Dresden Files, Book One: Storm Front."
(For the record, I still haven’t gotten the Perfect Story written. But maybe it will be the next one. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. Or...)
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Note: Earliest version of this story that I know of.
