Writing Secrets of the World's Most Prolific Authors

Just finished the book a couple days ago, but hadn't had time to thank you for writing it. In terms of value for time spent reading, this was probably the second most valuable book on writing I can remember reading (I've read about a dozen in the past year).

To the rest of you.

There is no magic bean, and at first I was a bit disappointed I wasn't getting any, though the stories were nice... But you notice some similarities after two of them and if you don't see the pattern after three the author spells it out for you at the end.

I'm being a bit vague but the author has a book to sell of course, though I don't know that he would be upset if I spilled the metaphorical beans.

There is no skipping the fundamentals (and many people "who want to be a write someday" might balk at me mentioning it... as they ignore he fundamental) and while there are still other books that you should read on on writing, if you can read only one... This is in the running.

It is world's easier now to make a living writing fiction when it was back then. The authors mentioned were working class people in an era where you had to get through the gatekeepers to write. If you do what they did... You will get there eventually.

On a personal note to the author (I know we're not friends, but having read a lot of what you post on Booksie and now a book-length work we have one of those one sided parasocial relationships),

It is funny how knowledge seems to fall in your lap when you're ready for it. Over the past few months I've been reorganizing my life around writing. I will not die not having done everything I could to write fiction for a living. I will not bore you with the details, but but let's just say getting my word count up is the next major battle.

This past month I've resolved to start two ongoing  nonfiction writing projects in addition to  my fiction... But I have been slowed, unwilling to sacrifice the 300-1000 words of fiction I write a day to write things that can make me money now.

I can hear you laughing already. "Silly grasshopper."

Well I just wrote a 2500 word  first chapter in two days for a story that I've been fiddling around with FOR A MONTH. Constantly rewriting it, I'm actually happy with it now and my newfound attitude that it had to be done this week or I would abandon it (my profile says I've been working on a novel for a year. 120k words at least have been written, it never made it further then eight chapters, and currently I have a prologue and a short 2000 word story on Booksie to show for it!) That leaves me the rest of the week to write a blog post and a sample for my freelance writers website.

You said in the other thread to me that copywriting doesn't interest you. It doesn't interest me either, something about using people's psychology against them to get them to buy products they probably don't need would make me feel dirty... So I am going for Case Studies (some overlap there sadly, I know, but they utilize story telling skills) and long form "guide" and "how to" posts.

We'll see if that gets me into being paid to write sooner, if I can get my word count up in the next couple of months and keep the attitude of not looking back (as much, I still did one rewrite on this chapter I just wrote bringing the technical word count up to 3500 words in two days). I might even just skip it and start selling stories. Serialization direct to consumers sounds appealing.

We'll see. Let's go for 2500-3500 words /a day/.