Writing A Book

Have you ever thought about writing your own book? There are several literary festivals in America that search for book writers. While it doesn’t take many credentials to write a book, it does take several great credentials to be published and sold across the nation.

I’ve looked at the listing of NY Times Bestsellers. For those non-fiction authors who are not celebrities, they often had stellar academic qualifications. Most of them graduated from top schools. There was also a high proportion of authors who earned cum laude or higher. For fiction writers, many of them participated in writers’ conferences and workshops at some stage in their career.

So why write? I have always been a math person and usually avoided the power of vocabulary, words and writing. It has not been until most recently, that I have begun to develop my acumen in writing and language arts disciplines. There seems to be a growing consensus among professionals that communication skills are vital in the workplace. Writing also allows for a clear exchange of ideas.

If you’ve never written a book, but always wanted to communicate your ideas about a subject, then this proposition might help. Set aside two hours a day to write 4-5 pages of a book. Open up your word processor and adjust the layout of the page to be similar to the size of a book. A normal 8.5 by 11 page is about twice the size of a paperback page. Set a goal of writing 200 pages in the next 2 months. Write about whatever interests you. Attempt to outline the core details of the book or even use a voice recorder and pontificate on the contents of your book till you’ve got a solid core plot.

One book that may be of help is the Dramatic Writers Companion. I am currently using this book and have found it be a great joy. It helps develop character, plot, setting, dialogue and much more. It could be used for writing novels, short stories, and even plays. It really can be used as a serious course textbook as well. It has tons of exercises that directly help develop your story and main ideas. It encompasses the main tenets of dramatic writing. With it, you will probably never have writers block while writing your book. Another book is by Francine Prose and is titled “Reading Like a Writer.” This book examines well-known literature and explains the methods of dialogue, sentences, and paragraphs of famous books.