What I learned about the process of storytelling after writing fourteen books.

Being on the inside of an art gives you a different perspective when you look at from the outside. When you have spent many months working to create the same kind of art that you look at every day, you tend to gain insights into many aspects of how that art works.

Writing is a special kind of craft, both limiting and limitless. Unlike with visual media, it is hard to innovate and move past other newer storytelling mediums. Whereas painting took an abstract bent after the creation of photography, you can't write a good book without the same structures that have been with us ever since widespread literacy. 

In other words, writing is difficult to innovate with. And, in the same way, writing hides a lot of its internal workings behind its composition. 

Each author who creates a world or a story does so at great expense. It takes a lot of work to imagine things in enough detail to write stories about them that are good enough for other people to truly enjoy. 

When I read a book, I am in the same position as a car mechanic looking at the engine of a car. Whereas a normal person would just accept that it works without understanding how, my viewpoint on the matter has eternally been changed because I've worked with all the pieces and know how they fit together. 

How does this affect my enjoyment of the written word? It makes me simultaneously more critical and more allowing of mistakes. Some things I can't let slide when I see them, where other people would not even notice. On the other hand, sometimes the problems other people have with books are moot because I realize what the author was trying to do. In any case, I have a view on writing that very few other people have--one influenced by my own exercise of my craft. 

I think, in the end, we learn more when we do more, and that's a good thing.