THE WRITER'S JOB

“I write so well, always have, everybody’s told me. So why can’t I get published?"



Because you don’t get it. Because you think a book contract is the grand prize in some “quality of writing” contest.

Grow up. Leave your “academic” mind-set behind and start thinking “publishing.”

You write well? So what? Spelling, grammar, and punctuation skills are a given. “Well-written” on a rejection notice is the most courteous insult in the industry.

Do you believe for an instant that an editor thinks…”This is a ‘well-written’ manuscript and should be a book”?

Not this editor. It’s all about what’s on the page—the words are telling me a story or they are not. On the page, I can feel passion even obsession, plus discipline and control because…

I am being told a story!



Imagine a great book as a gigantic impenetrable wall, its perfectly sculpted bricks laid one after another smooth and tight.

The bricks are the words. The writer is the bricklayer.

The storyteller made the bricks and mixed the concrete that holds them together.

Where did the bricks come from?

Start with an idea, add a vision, then a concept, characters and conflict with a beginning, a middle and an end.

Then lay the bricks.

Tell, then write.

Anybody ever say that you tell well?

Do so and you just might get published.