How to Write a Book: Tips From A Published Author
I composed my first bit of creative writing when I was three years old.
It was a poem for my mother, who was in the process of cooking dinner. The poem said, (sic) "Mommy, mommy, I love you...but only if you don't make stew." This plea for mac and cheese for dinner marked the beginning of my writing career! That was fifty years ago, but it wasn't until last December that I finally sold my first novel.
During that fifty years, however, I saw my work in print numerous times; just never for pay. Did that matter to me? Well, yes and no. Money is always a strong motivator and a delightful reward for a job well done. However, there's a kind of "rush" one gets when seeing their words in a newspaper, magazine or newsletter that is an awesome experience in itself. Hearing someone say, "I read your article in the 'Times;' that was great! Keep it up!" or "I saw you on the news yesterday!" creates a warm, fuzzy feeling like no other. In high school, I wrote a musical melodrama that my drama class performed for the student body. I was in the cast as the "pianney player," and received a standing ovation at the end of the play. I'll never forget how wonderful that felt!
Writing is not a means to an end, it's a labor of love. When I was a teenager, I had a portable, non-electric typewriter, and I'd sit in my bed with the typewriter on my lap, typing a zillion words a minute as stories flew from my furiously working mind down to my fingertips. What I wrote was nothing publishable, but it conveyed adolescent feelings and desires and ideas, and it was a marvelous way to "purge." If you're a creative person, you probably know the feeling: your head is just so full of artistic thoughts that you don't even know where to begin when it comes to putting them down on paper. In that case, do what I did: just sit at your computer keyboard - or grab a notepad - and let the words flow. They might end up being gibberish...or perhaps the beginnings of the next worldwide best seller!
It's also absolutely true that you should try to "write what you know." If you want to write a novel about a pre-teen girl going through the "rites of passage" in becoming a woman, and you're a guy, you might not be able to grasp all the nuances of this experience to write about it effectively. Always work with your strengths. My book deals with 12-year-old kids, and whereas I'm WAY past that age myself, I've managed to retain the memories to the extent that I believe I portrayed my characters convincingly. But if you should decide to write about something relatively foreign to you, research is a powerful tool. With the virtually endless search engines on the web, not a single morsel of information can elude your questing mind.
Writing, to me, is a wonderful pasttime, and a powerful tool. It exercises your imagination, builds your vocabulary, and tests your devotion: if you truly, truly want to be an author, you will do that which is absolutely imperative: you will WRITE. Daily!
About the author:
Suzanne Grace is the author of "Virtually Incredible,"http://www.thevirtualbooks.com, a fantasy novel about four kids who have amazing adventures in a virtual reality gaming facility. "Virtually Incredible" is the first book in a series of three, published by Lasaria Creative.
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