This is what my wife did. She is a physician, not an MFA graduate, so she workshopped and wrote short stories for years, and even continued to do so while she

This is what my wife did. She is a physician, not an MFA graduate, so she workshopped and wrote short stories for years, and even continued to do so while she worked on her first novel. By the time she published her novel, she was quite good, and even won last year's (2017) "first novel prize[0]" for "Mikhail and Margarita" (a fictional account of the writing of Bulgokov's "Master and Margarita"). [0]http://centerforfiction.org/awards/the-first-novel-prize/ http://centerforfiction.org/awards/the-first-novel-prize/