So, You Want To Write A Book

By Tom Poland

 

“What do you do?” It’s a question we ask. The answer reveals a bit of personal geography. It’s a question we get too. When I tell people what I do, the next question is “Write what?” When I say magazine features, columns, and books, eyes light up. If I meet 15 people along life’s byways, 10 say, “I’m going to write a book someday.”

There’s something magical, something alluring about the notion of writing a book. Maybe you long to write a book. It appeals to so many people, it has to be on many “to do” lists. Reasons vary. Many feel their life is so unique they must share their story. Some are bursting to share life-changing events, a son’s suicide, for instance. Some want to share their expertise. And some have no idea what to write, only that “Some day I’ll write a book.”

 

If you can’t get on the cover of Rolling Stone, write a book.

 

Maybe this dream goes back to our early connection with books. We’re required to read them, tested on what’s between their covers, and we move through the grades, propelled by books. And who hasn’t read a book you remember all your life.

When I was a boy I read every volume of the World Book Encyclopedia my parents gave me. I read a series of science books, the All About books my aunt gave me. And then there were The Hardy Boys mystery series.

Great books transport us to other worlds. My favorite books include Deliverance by James Dickey, For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, Burning The Days, a memoir by James Salter, and Out Of Africa, a memoir by Isak Dinesen. Books like these amount to works of art and no small amount of effort preceded their publication.

And that’s the thing. Most people who tell me they’re going to write a book some day fail to grasp how hard it is. They don’t know yet, if ever, that writing a book is a sentence to solitary confinement. No other route to publication exists. There are no short cuts. Night after night you burn the midnight oil. Long days with nothing but a keyboard as your companion. You can’t write a page or two now and then. That won’t work. It takes commitment and there are no guarantees it’ll ever see print. It’s a gamble. Most people shy away when they size up the reality.

I taught a course in a community college, “So You Want To Write A Book.” A lot of folks signed up. For most of my students writing a book amounted to therapy. Just taking my course made them feel better. “Someday,” they say … “someday.”

And those people I meet along life’s byways who want to write a book? I give them this advice. Block out a writing schedule and start making notes. Make an outline, write a synopsis, and most of all research and write on a regular basis. If you intend to run a marathon some day, you’d better be running now on a regular basis.

I’m asked to ghost write books. You wouldn’t believe the offers I get. One woman, a transplant from Up Yonder, insists I write her book, which, she’s sure, will be the basis for a hit TV series. “My book’s about a gal from New Yawk City who comes down here and adapts to you Southerners.” (Trust me, she hasn’t.)

So, you want to write a book. I know you do. You’ve told me. Remember what I’m about to tell you. Be tough. Don’t get discouraged. Writing the manuscript is Act One in the grueling drama of seeing your dream come true. Act Two is getting an agent for fiction or a publisher if it’s nonfiction. Very tough. Act Three is dealing with editors and seeing the manuscript through production to print. It won’t happen in a hurry and it won’t be easy. In fact, it can seem near impossible.

Thirty agents and 15 publishers rejected A Time To Kill by John Grisham. Thirty-three publishers rejected Chicken Soup for The Soul. Among rejected writers’ ranks you’ll find Pearl S. Buck, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Louis L’Amour, Jack London, and Dr. Seuss. Despite the many gatekeepers, bad books make it to print. Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull was rejected 200 times. Too bad it wasn’t 201 and counting.

Here’s my closing chapter for would-be authors. Have something worthwhile to write. Establish a writing routine. Study the publishing world, have an artist’s soul but be a businessman. Let no one influence your writing; it’s your book.

One more thing … if you succeed you’re as close to immortality as people on this green Earth get. Books live on long after their authors go to that big library in the sky. Get your name on a cover and someone in a distant future will say your name and wonder what you were like. And just maybe they’ll think … Someday I’m going to write a book too.”

 

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

 

Tom Poland is the author of twelve books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press released his book, Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It, in November 2015 and his and Robert Clark’s Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II in 2014. The History Press of Charleston published Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia in 2014. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture and speaks often to groups across South Carolina and Georgia, “Georgialina.”