Novel Writing Made Less Impossible Introduction: I Have Some Good News and ...

How many times has this happened to you? (ANSWER: Not much unless -- well, we'll talk about that later) You are trying to sell some books and you give someone some writing advice because you believe in paying forward the help you received on your journey. Then some overhearing bonehead smirks and begins the attack: "Where do YOU get off telling someone how to write? I never heard of you." Chances are I've never heard of the other person either so we're on equal footing there. But where I get off is that as of this writing, I've written three one-act plays and more than a dozen ten-minute ones and I have many published articles, I'm in three anthology books, and I have four novels and a short story book in print with one novel and four novellas in the pipeline along with almost 3 dozen comic book scripts either in print or in production.

There are creators who've written a dozen books -- make that dozens of books -- when they speak, I listen. However, if someone's never written a book or a short story or even put pen to paper to write even a haiku (which I've also done), chances are I know more about that process than the other person. Heck, I might know more than the person who only has THREE novels to their credit simply because I've hit that particular trail once more than they have so far. So this brings me to the purpose of this weekly blog entry on writing. I've done it and I can teach you what I know. That's the good news.

Also, I have the attention span of a mayfly and a natural inclination to not follow the rules, even when they're good for me. But I can do this thing over and over again, overcoming those destructive tendencies and I can help you overcome YOUR mental obstacles too. That's good news too, right? The bad news, though? You have to put in the work.

If writing well was easy, everyone could do it. That notion that anyone CAN do it is only an attempt to steal power from the creative community. The fact that not everyone can do it or WILL do it, no matter how much they talk about writing, is what separates the person whose palms sweat when they go two miles over the speed limit versus the driver of the Indianapolis 500 car as the green flag flies. The goal of this weekly offering of suggestions is to get you into the writing mode with minimal pain (save that of the actual physical act of writing itself). When you look at the overall process of seeing print, it's daunting. Heck, it can be downright terrifying!

But so is eating an elephant ... until you realize you can accomplish it if you take it one bite at a time. And what's good about this process is that there is a LOT of help for you out there from online sources as well as books and even other writers. The best news is if you commit to the process, YOU CAN DO IT! If you work hard enough at this, you can't help but make a book happen. There's more good news ... unfortunately, there is more bad news too ... but we'll talk about that down the road.

NEXT TIME: The Only Two Things You Need To Do and Your Ultimate Goal