Dec 13 2010
You Should Write A Book!
You own or run a business
or professional practice,
so you’re filled with stories
. . . and people have been telling you for years that you should write a book, right? And, HA!, you laugh it off, right?
But somewhere deep inside, you think you really DO have a story worth telling and that you, well, who knows, you could maybe even be the next John Grisham or Annie Proulx. After all, with 37 trillion boring text books already out there, this would have to be a novel. So, fiction it is.
Maybe at some point in your life, you even got up the nerve to get started?
Somewhere, buried in the back of a drawer, or deeply embedded in some tech thing-a-ma-jig (let’s hope something more recent than a, er, showing my age here, a floppy disk?) you have knowingly and hopefully saved your original scribble, no doubt based on some dialogue with one of your prior six or seven spouses, or long-(almost)forgotten soul mate…or a much hated boss!
And now that you think about it, if you can dig the whole mess out, it probably wouldn’t take much to finish it off, true? Even if you were starting from scratch, you could probably zoom through the first bunch of chapters before your spit even hits the ground!
Oh, just imagine–your name in lights, TV interviews with Charlie Rose and Oprah, book signings where you toss each signature pen over your shoulder.
Have I got news for you, Brothers and Sisters!
First, if you can pull an engaging story together in less than 40-80-hours a week for a year or two, and whip it into presentable format for soliciting agents and publishing house editors, your first name must be Miraculous.
Second, as hard as the plot, character development, storytelling, dialogue, writing, editing and proofreading is…expressing the right words in the right ways…finding a good agent who will find you a publisher is harder still.
You should know that whatever you write will never be good enough for 95% of those you seek to cornerstone your career. EVERY time you send out a query letter or first five or ten pages, you will find errors and weak stuff in your work that sucks AFTER you send it out. GUARANTEED!
“Well, just bypass all that garbage,” you say. “Just self-publish it. Then who needs agents and publishing house editors?” Uh, YOU DO, unless you’re also a marketing whiz with deep pockets, and prepared to be your own full time publicist and promoter as well.
Writing a “hot” news release is a skill all by itself.
Then after it’s written, you need to know when, where and how–and have, yes, the tenacity–to get the right person receptive enough to give it coverage.
Ahh, and then there’s the next release or two or three or four, plus a media kit.
But could be you just want 26 copies printed (to perhaps impress the former spouses and all those stray children…and of course your mother!)
So back to the agents and publishing house editors (assuming you have a day job and would have a hard time adding another full time one to your schedule). These are categories of people who tend to exude creepy-crawly and sometimes pompous attitudes.
They must spend most of their lives locked in closets from the best I’ve been able to determine.
Most avoid having any online presence. Most are so swamped with so much drivel submitted by so many drivelers, that they start to think of themselves as saintly and will only consider work that is 110% (that extra 10% always a brain-tickler) letter perfect in both content and presentation. Exaggerating? I wish!
They use one of about four variations on the same theme for rejection explanations, almost always accompanied by a set of pat-you-on-the-back-of-the-hand encouragement and oh, such humility, that they of course can’t possibly know what other agents might “really relate” to your work so, pat-pat, send your review requests elsewhere (and keep the drivel clutter going!).
Here’s the bottom line:
You want to write a book? Write! Then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. OR just call me and I’ll rewrite what you’ve written to make it better OR I’ll write your story for you – your novel, or your memoir, or your company’s story, or your marketing or branding program, or your news release (which I will get coverage for!).
Click here for some of my latest work.
# # #
302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]
