Let’s Write a Book Together! How Serious Are You?
Just the mere idea of writing a book can be overwhelming when you look at all the different things involved. Nowadays it isn’t as easy as simply coming up with a great idea and writing it down; now you have to think of building a social network and performing, at minimum, 50% of the marketing. That’s minimum, remember, and that’s if you publish with a house. If you self-publish then the marketing is on you 100%. That alone can send many a promising author into a tailspin.
I’ve seen so many wanna-be writers who write the book, pass it around to a few family and friends, maybe do some light editing on in-your-face errors, and then upload it to Amazon for all the world to see, then call themselves authors.
Writing is a craft; and as with any other craft, in order to be good at it you must first learn all you can about it. There is so much more involved than just throwing some words together.
What I’d like to do over the next several posts is take you through the writing process as I’ve come to know it. My novel The Consequential Element is a good example of the kind of work you will need to do to get your novel written, published, and sold.
When I began writing my novels a few years ago, there were a lot of websites that provided wonderful encouragement with little guidance. Today, there are many websites that tell you the necessities of writing a book but still leave questions; such as:
- You must have an eye catching book cover (how and where do I get this?)
- You must have strong back copy (I remember thinking, what the hell is back copy?)
- You must have an ISBN (a what?)
- You must have a strong story arc (hmm? What is the arc?)
- Your first 50 pages are the most important. (Why?)
- You must develop characters that your readers can relate to, sympathize with, love or hate (okay, but how do I develop characters?)
- Make sure your dialogue holds up and keeps the reader’s attention (You write the way people talk, right?)
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