Want to make a fortune? Write a best-seller!

January 31st, 2010

How to become a novelist

Here’s a great money-making idea. It’s easy, you can do it in your own time and the rewards will stagger you. You will become famous, you will get to meet famous people and be invited to luncheons, you will be invited to deliver after-dinner speeches and best of all, you will be rich. Ask Geoffrey Archer and you will understand that it is all possible.

Archer

The British writer Geoffrey Archer was scammed out of his fortune and having no useful training, decided to write a book and make money. Today, he is one of the world’s most-read authors and has never looked back on his decision to write. Of course, he is one of the world’s great story-tellers too. That helped!

What you need to get started

You need to be self-disciplined, motivated and imaginative. You need to read extensively in your chosen genre, current affairs, history, and biography. You must watch films, go to the theatre and observe people, events, fashion and furnishings. If you wish to portray life you will need to become a student of life. You will have to write every day, whether it is a journal, dreams, short stories or poetry and if you have the opportunity, try to attend a creative writing course.

More needs

Read author interviews, and never miss an opportunity to hear authors talk. The Paris Review interviews are indispensable windows into the creative minds of renowned authors. Fascinating author interviews are available on the internet. Read book reviews and join a book club.

Listen

To write dialogue well, you need to listen when people speak. You will learn a lot by going to the sorts of places your characters frequent. Don’t indulge writer’s block and don’t believe the work will write itself.

Qualifications needed

You don’t need formal qualifications – the best school is the real world. Invest in a computer if that’s the way you are going to write or, if like Geoffrey Archer you prefer to write by hand, buy a stack of exercise books and a few boxes of pencils. A good dictionary will come in useful. If you decide that you need formal training, most universities and colleges offer creative writing programs.

The money

It’s impossible to even guess a figure because one book may do better than another. Generally, you are paid a cash advance and if your book does well there will be royalties. Like everything else, it’s all about money. An agent won’t touch your manuscript if he or she thinks they cannot make money out of it. The publisher is like the agent, only about 100 times worse.

I tried it

My book was a thriller, the assassination of a world public figure. The agent liked it, but could I make some changes? I was deep in my fifth round of changes when George W. Bush beat me to it and killed my character. I told you it was easy!

Payday Advance

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Employment, Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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