WRITING A NOVEL? Part 3

If you read part one, aren’t intimidated by the sheer volume of competition, and still writing, congratulations. Telling stories is what writers do. Set aside dreams of fame and fortune. Those are byproducts for the lucky few. They’re lucky because they kept writing, improving, writing, improving, writing . . . Well, you get my drift. Part two was the starting point. “I never metaphor I didn’t like,” said Mardy Grothe. I agree. So, here’s mine for today. Writing is like swimming naked in a crowded pool. It takes madness or courage to strip naked like that. Yet, writers do that… Keep reading“WRITING A NOVEL? Part 3”

WRITING A NOVEL? DO THE MATH

Part one in a series One million books will be published next year in the U.S. Seven hundred and fifty thousand will be self-published. The average length of a novel is estimated to be 60,000 and 70,000. I decided to thread the needle and use 65K, coming up with 48,750,000,000 words self-published each year. That’s 48 in billions. My 89,342 words face a daunting challenge. Who wants to be a writer? Justine Goldberg, writing in Publishing Perspectives, claims 200 million Americans say they want to publish a book. Wow. Talk about competition. I sometimes feel like Forrest Gump when he… Keep reading“WRITING A NOVEL? DO THE MATH”