The Joy of Writing

Somebody, a relative of a friend of mine, just asked me how to write a story. I referred them to a previous ‘Blog’ wherein I told, unintentionally, a lie. More about that later.

The situation in their head was that they would write this epic memoire about the time they had lived in Outer Batchuwalahland, get it published and thus become immensely wealthy.

This is a common thread in the minds of those who do not, currently, write.

Let us suppose you wish to become a sportsperson. You consider the event in which you are bound to excel; you go to the gymnasium and – la voila! You are selected for the next Olympics.

We shall comfortably, because it suits us, ignore the idea that there are thousands of people out there with the same idea, that they have practised their skill for many years and are still merely competent. Yet you, brilliant as you are, shall rise to the top like fresh cream, instantly.

Watch ‘American iLid’ or ‘X-Factory’ and observe how many people turn up for auditions and, ultimately, how many people win – usually one. We, individually, may disagree with the winner in the same way that the commercial market often does, but there can be only one (with apologies to ‘Highlander’!).

Thus it is with writing.

Why is it that journalists are often high up in the best sellers lists? Because they write for a living.

They are practised and polished.

All of us can tell a story but can we write it down? Are we able to be wordmiths and craft a story out of the words at our disposal just as a blacksmith forges a horseshoe or a gate out of iron and fire?

Many of us have stories in our heads. Many.

Having the story does not equal success.

Practise. Nobody ever became good at something automatically. There is no magic key to the skills that people possess. It takes work and dedication to get up there with the hundreds of writers who earn a living.

This is not the same as being hugely successful. Just as there can only be one sportsperson who is ‘The Champion’; just as there is only one winner in song competitions, there can only be one person at the top of the ‘Best Sellers List’.

Suppose you have written our story or memoire—whatever it happens to be. What is your next step?

Find an agent or publisher.

No easy task. It took several years for me to find one. Stephen King worked just as hard to find his first publisher as did many others.

Who does your marketing?

Even if you take the short cut and self-publish—a reasonable route these days with e-books being ever popular, you still have to get people to find you. Look at the lists in Amazon. Not just ‘look at the books on the page you have searched’ but the lists of books.

Thousand upon thousands of them.

You want people to notice yours?

Be assured that, amongst those thousands, there are a high percentage of self-published books; among those self-published books there are a high percentage of books that are only of high quality in the minds of the writer.

In this respect the publisher, or the agent, is a kind of filter that often (but not always) allows only those writings through that are of the highest quality and likely to return their costs.

If you self-publish your book it is likely to be buried under a mass of other books where customers will be unlikely to find it.

Thus, you need marketing. Do you know how?

All this takes time.

Writing a story is not the instant link to riches that people imagine it to be.

You need patience. You need time but, most of all, you need practice, work and dedication.

In the end, few people are worthy of rising to the top. Like Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, et al, there are few that will rise to those heights. People like Ray Owen, RB Clague and Robin Gregory are going up because they have the right approach. They start by writing because they enjoy telling the stories and they let it take them on from there.

I explained this to my friend’s relative. They were unimpressed. I am certain that they think that writing is ‘money for old rope’, as it were.

So I gave them the best tip of all.

Just write. Don’t worry about grammar, syntax, punctuation, spelling, dangling modifiers—all that can be sorted out later.

Just write.

Oh. The lie? Yes. When I gave a short ‘writing course’ on this ‘Blog’ some time ago I mentioned that, at the end, the story developed for the purpose of that course was rubbish and unlikely to be published.

Ultimately, after a lot of work, it is published. Readers tell me that they have enjoyed it immensely.

That, right there, is the joy and satisfaction of writing.