I paraphrased the title, but that’s the rough idea.  It’s a self-help book for wannabe authors by Pat Walsh, and arguably the best of its kind.  I’m recommend this as a great gift to give or get this holiday season.

Reasons I’m raving:

It combines two very important elements.  First, the advice is concise and generally dead on.  I’m not (yet!) a bestselling author, but I’ve been working in the business world for long enough to know the difference between sound advice and a quick fix.  I’ve also been training myself in the writing craft for over ten years now, and Walsh has gathered here much of the advice I had to sift and search to find.

Second, it’s entertaining.  Laugh out loud funny, in many places.  So funny I was tempted to type out excerpts.  But I’d hate to cheat you of the chance to go get it yourself, which you should do if you know a writer or you aspire to the profession.

I bought it through powells.com, as linked to from Miss Snark’s site, but you can try amazon too.  I won’t get any kickback for plugging the book, and I don’t know the author, so my recommendation is unbiased beyond a desire to see writers realize their dream of publication.

Besides, I enjoyed it so much I can’t seem to shut up about it.

Nit-picks on the book: 

He should have included (among the reasons you won’t be published), taking bad advice from writers groups.  This could have fit in around #7, in the category of being careful who you listen to.  He mentions somewhere that bad advice can be given in how-to books, at writing conferences, even (gasp!) from editors.  But in my opinion writing groups are amongst the most dangerous because writers listen to their writing group.  The group can be very helpful, but they are also likely to lead writers astray . . . but I’ll go into the pros and cons of writing groups in another blog.  Right now I’m trying to keep this post focused on the book, despite the temptation to go off on tangents, like this one.  So I’ll just say that I know this is a reason writers might not be published, and therefore should have been included in Walsh’s list.

Another place where Walsh missed the mark is in #22, which begins with the statment “Do not read your work outloud to yourself as a form of revision.”  He then goes on to waffle on the point and note some exceptions to this rule.  He should have stated the rule as something like “Wait until you are working with tightened, clean copy before reading your work aloud for revision.” 

That’s a wordy way to put it, but it’s accurate.  Reading aloud your work, especially if you try reading it in different styles and voices, can be a great way to catch repetition, wordy prose, and bad dialogue.  I believe Mr. Walsh’s advice is warning against treating your writing like a speech which is polished until it rolls off the tongue with precisley the inflections that only you can give it.

Reason #25 is titled: You Do Not Trust Your Audience.  He says, “The ideal contract between author and reader is based on mutual respect and admiration.”  This is definitely a good point, and sounds ideal to me.  The trouble is that the first audience a writer must address is probably an editor.  Do you see a problem?  I do.  There is rarely a lot of ‘mutual respect and admiration’ floating around in an author/editor relationship, let alone trust.  That is like asking a strange dog and cat to hit it off on their first greeting.  They might possibly develop a relationship of trust, but the introduction is a very careful thing.

His advice in #58 to seek contacts and help from unknown (to you, known to the public) authors seems likely to get you into hot water.  I’ll stick with my plan to stalk well-established authors until I ‘bump’ into one at a conference, than wrangle an endorsement out of him or her before I let them up.

Much of the middle of the book is devoted to inside info on the publishing world, marketing, agents, and other bits belonging to the business end of publishing a book.  I found it very helpful, and also encouraging.  Forewarned is forearmed, so if I know where the pitfalls lie I stand a chance of staying out of them.  But wait–that sounds like more praise.  Back to nit-picks.

He repeats himself.  Quite a bit.  In fact, the good news, or fourteen reasons you might be published, is primarily a summation of the reasons you won’t get published turned on their ear.  In other words, don’t make all the mistakes and you might get published.

Still there’s nothing wrong with a summation, and he does include some new information and tell the old with new anecdotes to keep it interesting.  Besides, any writer determined enough to make it through the first 78 snowballs-in-the-face is likely to be a hard-headed individual and may need to hear things more than once.

But lest I digress, and this blog reach monumental length, I will stop.  Just go get the book.  If you don’t find at least five helpful things to improve your writing and assist your writing career, feel free to throw me a rotten tomato.  But please no snowballs, thanks.

 

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