My cousin's writing

My cousin began thinking himself a novelist about five years back. Throughout his life he's been an artist and a musician and I never really thought of him as the literary type. It makes sense; some artists are artists in every category. But he's not scholarly, which is not to say he couldn't write if he wanted to. I just believe that a serious novelist has some schooling in writing.

My cousin doesn't. He's read a ton, sees and analyzes movies. He's got the makings of a critic--both of art and life. He has the background, yet no fiction writing classes.

Is he a natural? Not really. I'm reading a fourth book of his right now. His first was fine, but meandering. His second had a good base (good back story and idea) and a good plot, but the characters were flat. Of course, he writes horror fiction and horror fiction can get away with some flat characters.

His third book I read last summer. It was clear then that he is learning as he goes. The characters were deeper. The plot remained his strong point.

I'm not far enough along in this fourth one to judge. It starts a little slowly, but he does have some character development for his beginning character Mort. I know Mort will not be the main character based on the way the story is going. If Mort does turn out to be the main character I will be awfully disappointed. He is interesting to an extent, but not to read 300 pages about. Mort has just received two boxes from his newly deceased and estranged brother. I'm interested to find out what's in the boxes, but if it's something that ends up killing Mort, I'm likely to cheer for the box creature than be sad for the loss.

So far, okay. I think my cousin has a future as a writer. He has a passion for his genre and I think he brings some new things to it. He certainly is widely read and viewed enough to delve in with both eyes open.

I suppose my only concern is that he'll be published before I will be. Which is stupid. He's older than I am, he has more time to write as it is his only occupation at present. I shouldn't really feel like I'm in competition about it, but I do.

I think he's written five books. I'm on my fourth, he's on his sixth. Maybe the only thing I really wanted to say was that I'm jealous that he has time on his hands to write and not as many responsibilities. I wish I had the kind of life where writing could be my focus and my primary job, whether it brought in any money or not.