I want to write this statement in the simplest way possible. No bells. No whistles. No tricks or turns of phrase. Now, to write so plain seems a risk. What if the Writer's Workshop isn't impressed? But it's a gamble I am willing to take.

I will share my plan. Not the generic plan I think you want to hear. But *my* plan. My purpose, in other words.

If accepted, I will come to the Writer's Workshop, and labor alongside my fellow authors. From them, I will learn how to craft novels. I want to learn how to write one book every single year. Such productivity is possible. It can be done. Generations of ambitious writers have done so. I already have the discipline, and work ethic, and the drive. What I need is the guidance and the framework that Iowa provides. And the competition.

In my first year, I will learn as much as possible. I will strive to mend what gaps there are in my education. And in my second year, I will redouble my efforts, and create works which (I hope) will endure. I will make the Workshop proud to have accepted me. This is my design. That is how I will spend time in the MFA.

I want to write books for the great mass of Americans. Above all, I aim to be a writer of first-rate popular fiction. Stuff my mother can consume, and can enjoy, without feeling like reading is a chore. I am writing for her, and for the people in my hometown of Lubbock, Texas: for my pal Veazey, who drives trucks, and for my childhood friend Michael, who makes PowerPoint presentations for a living, and for my high school classmate Colin, who graduated from Harvard Law. I want to speak to all kinds of people in all kinds of places. That is the work I most want to do. It is why I apply to Iowa.

As for my own work, that relates to Iowa as well. I understand many, or perhaps most, of your applicants want to write literary fiction. I appreciate the appeal of this art. I enjoy such work. But a lifetime of reading convinces me that literary fiction, although noble, does not affect the dreams of my neighbors and friends. Their well-being and enjoyment is my chief concern.

I want to give them dreams, give them stories. In this ambition, Mark Twain is my North Star. If I craft work that is enjoyed by the academy, so much the better. But first, it must reach the people I grew up with. So I come to Iowa not to write a particular sublcass of fiction, but to write fiction, period.

I am aware my own work--especially my nonfictional work--is occasionally overwritten, baroque, longwinded, and abstruse. When I was learning to write nonfiction, the authors I studied were the prose-masters of the 18th and 19th centuries.

In other words, authors who rejoiced in ambitious sentences, in convoluted clauses, and lengthy periods. People who went to bat for neoclassical allusions and abstruse Biblical references. I revel in such developed architecture. But elaborate prose does not always make for easy reading. So I come to Iowa to repair those defaults in my style.

Why Iowa? Because I visited Iowa when I was twelve, for an Odyssey of the Mind competition. And loved it. Because my friends Clint and Brigitte attended the Writer's Workshop, and they speak well of you.  Because I want to be part of a community of authors; I miss the fellowship of the newsroom. And because I am hungry for the challenge.

McSweeney's publishes my comedy pieces online. A British magazine bought one of my short stories. But I don't know how to write fiction, particularly novels. Aside from my newspaper jobs--and my time at Paste Magazine and Salon Media--I do not belong to any larger circle of writers.

I was a writer from birth. It has been my chosen profession since childhood, and I have labored in this field for thirty years. If I am accepted, these will be the first writing classes I have ever attended.
It has been a point of pride for me.

But everything in life has a price. Including the Writer's Workshop. So I offer you my humility. I am a published writer, mostly in nonfiction. I have a record to be proud of. And I sacrifice this pride to write you this letter. The cost of mastery is discipleship. I come to you as a student. I hope to become a master.