Why are you writing a booki? Statistics indicate that 85% of people would like to write a book. Many people want to explore the "writing muse". I teach a writing class called "The Writer's Eye-View", and it is consistently sold out with a waiting list. It is such a joy to see people discover their unique writer's voice.
I tell my students and my clients that the number one reason for writing a book is that it is an act of love. Far too often, especially in the non-fiction field, I am hearing authors says that they want their book to help them grow their business. In other words, they want their book to be a glorified business card. It's perfectly fine to create a book that enhances your business and your expertise. But if the love you have for your topic does not come through in your book, the book will be dry and uninspiring.
Do you love the topic you're communicating about? Are you committed to it? Are you passionate about it? If your motivation is cynical or if your passion is not readily evident, your readers will greet your book with cynicism. Readers are intelligent and can tell when a book is merely lukewarm, or even worse, manipulative.
Your book is part of your service to the world. Your readers want to be inspired, informed, and enthralled. They want to feel that you love what you write about. Your book and your life purpose are connected. Don't separate the two. Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, your book is connected to the deepest part of yourself. The most important piece of advice I can give to a writer is: first and foremost, fall in love with what you are writing.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Yes, but first you have to write the book
OK, I'm going to talk about one of my pet peeves in the publishing business. There are so many thousands of authors who want to get published, and they do their homework in talking to agents, publishers, and marketing professionals, all of whom tell the fledgling author that he/she has to develop a platform and a marketing strategy for visiblity to ensure that the book will sell.
This is all well and good. They are right about that. You DO need to consider your marketing strategy, and your platform, and you DO need to do a gimlet-eyed assessment of your competition. BUT I have found that when authors get all caught up in stressing about their "marketing plan" before they've even written the book, they're putting the cart before the horse.
Yes, you need a marketing plan, but first you have to have something to market. You have to write the book! That means that you have to spend time thinking about your content, and about how to create that content to be as compelling as possible. You need to actually get into writing the book itself. Without your actual book, having a marketing plan won't sell books for you, because you won't have a book! Yes, you need to know who your audience is, what your "market" is--but to captivate that market, you need great content, written to a high standard, which will stick in your readers' minds.
This is all well and good. They are right about that. You DO need to consider your marketing strategy, and your platform, and you DO need to do a gimlet-eyed assessment of your competition. BUT I have found that when authors get all caught up in stressing about their "marketing plan" before they've even written the book, they're putting the cart before the horse.
Yes, you need a marketing plan, but first you have to have something to market. You have to write the book! That means that you have to spend time thinking about your content, and about how to create that content to be as compelling as possible. You need to actually get into writing the book itself. Without your actual book, having a marketing plan won't sell books for you, because you won't have a book! Yes, you need to know who your audience is, what your "market" is--but to captivate that market, you need great content, written to a high standard, which will stick in your readers' minds.
Why do so many people want to write a book?
Why is writing a book a dream so many people seem to have? What is behind the reported statistic that 85% of people long to write a book (but only a small percentage will actually publish commercially)? What is it that draws people to fill up creative writing classes, listen to teleseminars and webinars on how to write a book, attend writing workshops, and buy books on the art and craft of writing?
In the non-fiction world, some would say that they want the book to help them build their business--the "book as business card" philosophy. Or they want the book to establish their expertise in a field. Fair enough--if you're an expert and you believe the world can benefit from your expertise, then by all means write a book. Or they want to use the book to get speaking gigs, or the other way around--to use the speaking gigs as the basis for a book. Again that's OK, and can work well if the speaker/author actually has something to say.
When it comes to fiction or poetry, the book as business builder is seldom the motivation. Instead it's the desire to explore our creativity and to tell the story we feel is inside us waiting to get out. Some dream of cracking into the mass market fiction bestseller market similar to Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer. Others want to write a literary masterpiece that will be a critical success and taken seriously by the world's literati.
But whether fiction or non-fiction, are these the REAL reasons so many people want to write a book? As an editor, writer, and teacher of creative writing, working with so many different kinds of authors over the years, I have detected another reason often lurking below the conscious threshold. It's an almost archetypal yearning for leaving some kind of creative legacy of one's life. It has to do with what the great developmental psychologist Erick Erickson called generativity--the desire to pass on something of value to the next generation.
Erickson originally meant generativity to apply to bearing children and then our children having children so that we become grandparents, etc. But there can also be symbolic generativity, and this is the idea of the life legacy. When words come out of your head, your heart, and your soul and end up in print, there is a sense of something permanent and concrete, something that has your name on it, something that people who never knew you will pick up, read, and say, "ah yes, I find value in that idea", or "I love this story, I couldn't put this book down."
With so much going on in the world today that makes us feel powerless, with all the political and financial shenanigans taking place on the world stage, and hundreds of thousands of people dealing with employment issues, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, the fallout of Wall Street's greed, the preoccupation with celebrity along with the struggle to make ends meet--it's difficult for many to feel any kind of "generativity". But turning to our stories, turning to the memories, knowledge, expertise, intuitions and characters that present themselves in our heads as potential words in a book--there's a form of generativity we CAN access! Someone somewhere will read our words, and by our printed words we will be known. The true love of writing books is ultimately not about market at all; it's really about meaning.
In the non-fiction world, some would say that they want the book to help them build their business--the "book as business card" philosophy. Or they want the book to establish their expertise in a field. Fair enough--if you're an expert and you believe the world can benefit from your expertise, then by all means write a book. Or they want to use the book to get speaking gigs, or the other way around--to use the speaking gigs as the basis for a book. Again that's OK, and can work well if the speaker/author actually has something to say.
When it comes to fiction or poetry, the book as business builder is seldom the motivation. Instead it's the desire to explore our creativity and to tell the story we feel is inside us waiting to get out. Some dream of cracking into the mass market fiction bestseller market similar to Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer. Others want to write a literary masterpiece that will be a critical success and taken seriously by the world's literati.
But whether fiction or non-fiction, are these the REAL reasons so many people want to write a book? As an editor, writer, and teacher of creative writing, working with so many different kinds of authors over the years, I have detected another reason often lurking below the conscious threshold. It's an almost archetypal yearning for leaving some kind of creative legacy of one's life. It has to do with what the great developmental psychologist Erick Erickson called generativity--the desire to pass on something of value to the next generation.
Erickson originally meant generativity to apply to bearing children and then our children having children so that we become grandparents, etc. But there can also be symbolic generativity, and this is the idea of the life legacy. When words come out of your head, your heart, and your soul and end up in print, there is a sense of something permanent and concrete, something that has your name on it, something that people who never knew you will pick up, read, and say, "ah yes, I find value in that idea", or "I love this story, I couldn't put this book down."
With so much going on in the world today that makes us feel powerless, with all the political and financial shenanigans taking place on the world stage, and hundreds of thousands of people dealing with employment issues, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, the fallout of Wall Street's greed, the preoccupation with celebrity along with the struggle to make ends meet--it's difficult for many to feel any kind of "generativity". But turning to our stories, turning to the memories, knowledge, expertise, intuitions and characters that present themselves in our heads as potential words in a book--there's a form of generativity we CAN access! Someone somewhere will read our words, and by our printed words we will be known. The true love of writing books is ultimately not about market at all; it's really about meaning.
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