THE WRITER’S FIRST FANTASY

Choosing the right designer for the appropriate attire to accept your Nobel Prize for Literature was a bit of a hassle. And the flight to Stockholm seemed never-ending, even in first class. And let’s not even get into your acceptance speech. After Faulkner, Morrison and Steinbeck, the literary world believed it had all been said and you blew them away!


But placing the gold medallion on your mantelpiece threw off the color of your living room and you’ll have to get a new carpet and curtains. Good thing the prize came with $1,000,000.


Now where to put the framed Pulitzer Prize and your National Book Award? The cover of TIME magazine and the New York Times Book Review already clutter your studio wall. Time to upsize?


Oprah was wonderful. Leno and Letterman were funny and it was such a thrill to dump Imus’ invitation.


Hollywood went into a frenzy bidding for the movie rights and it was so nice that Steven Spielberg dropped in make his own personal pitch. But when Martin Scorsese knocked on your door in the middle of it!


Happy enough now?


Problem is you never will be until you dream that first dream—the 'Golden Fleece' of the writer's quest: being read.


Instead of fantasizing about yourself, the writer, imagine being the reader. Getting published, first and foremost is not about 'good writing', but good reading.


Dream all you want, but a writer who is not a reader will never be either.

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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.

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