Do you ever feel insignificant . . . not even on the map? Sometimes I get introspective, melancholy, and wonder if there’s any meaning in these key strokes as I type t-h-i-s. Do you ever feel like a minnow lost in a sea full of sharks? Well, maybe not sharks but bigger fish than you are? Do you ever feel like, Someday when I grow up, I’ll be . . . but hold on, I’m already grown up? Do you ever feel like you’re supposed to be something—to be doing something—more than you are, but you’re not there yet? I do. Almost every day. Maybe you do too. Sometimes I wonder if life has passed me by. If I was meant for greater things. Things more significant than this simple life I lead. Do you ever feel that way? Sometimes, I admit, I fail to see the significance of each day.…
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See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. #4: If I write it, they will come. Some wannabe novelists have watched Field of Dreams a few too many times. They can hear that mystical voice whispering across the cornfields. If you write it, they will come. Readers won’t be able to get enough of you. They’ll gobble up whatever you write and beg for more. You’ll be famous. You’ll be rich. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration for most of us, but when I was a kid I had this silly notion that if I just published a novel, I’d be instantly famous, and the road ahead of me would be paved in gold. No, I didn’t hear voices (otherwise I’d probably be locked in a padded room by now), but I seriously thought authors were famous people who just kept publishing novels and had no financial anxieties. For proof all I had to do…
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He was going to kill me. He had me in a headlock with one arm and a knife held to my throat with the other, his hot breath tingling against my ear. If I didn’t get this story published, this guy called Novel Writing was going to slit my throat and leave me lying on the floor, bleeding out. But what was I supposed to do to leap from newbie writer (who wasn’t taken seriously) to published novelist? The answer is pretty simple, but I was deceived by many misconceptions years ago. I thought telling a good story and being a decent writer were enough. They weren’t. The publishing world has expectations, and if writers don’t bone up on what those expectations are, their masterpieces, their Great American Novels, will never leave their writers’ caves. Today I’m often approached by many who have written a novel or would like to…
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