Renee asked Shane Kuhn:

How did you learn to be a writer and have great success in novels that people want to read and buy?

Shane Kuhn Hi Renee
I believe that I was born to be a writer because that is all I have ever wanted to do and I started doing it at a young age. Conversely, I am horrific at math and still count on my fingers! So, like with singing or painting or the ability to throw a 100 mph fastball, people are given strengths or talents at the beginning. Now, that doesn't always mean it turns into something. We've all seen wildly talented people who never did a damn thing with their talent. And, we've seen marginally talented people do great things because they are hard workers. So, I feel like I was given an ability to write and I combined that with the hard core work ethic my German father bestowed on me. That combination has enabled me to keep working for years, producing better stories and characters. It took me nearly 10 years just to sell one screenplay in the movie business! But I kept at it, like Malcolm Gladwell talks about putting 10,000 hours into something. I have done that. When I sold my first book, I had been working as a writer in the film and tv business, and as a copywriter in advertising, for nearly 18 years. So, it has taken a ton of work and sacrifice (I have no retirement fund) to get to this place. And people are really responding to my work in very positive ways, which is amazing, but for me it is only the beginning. I may write like a wild man, but my heroes are literary giants - Nabokov, Faulkner, Vonnegut, Joyce to name a few - and I aspire to be like them. So, I guess the short answer here is that I was given an ability that I have worked very hard to cultivate and even though I am experiencing some fantastic success, my ultimate goal is to not only write books that people want to buy and read, but to write books that enrich readers' lives like so many great authors have enriched mine.

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