Remarks delivered at Orangeville Toastmasters on April 8, 2002, and revised various times since.
Mr Toastmaster, fellow members, welcome guests:
When I was younger, a libertarian writer and acquaintance of mine, Roy Childs Jr, died, too young and, as his obituary said, "with several great books still inside him".
It scared the heck out of me that such a thing could happen. That was when I vowed to write all my great books before shuffling off my mortal coil. Because you know what they say: you can't take it with you.
I know that each and every one of you has one or more stories to tell. I know, because I've heard parts of them in your speeches here. But - and I'll probably say this again - a speech is not a book. Book length treatment of your story allows much more detail. Could your story become a book?
Of course it could! There are many bestselling books that tell one person's story and condense the wisdom that that person has learned.
Consider the rewards of being a bestselling author: recognition and remuneration.
Although my books have not been bestsellers on the New York Times list, my Java Cookbook has become one of the bestsellers within my computer book publisher, and they're planning a series of books in the Cookbook format (which I didn't originate, but was the second really successful one). People in bookstores talk to me about it, and programmers on the Internet contact me with book questions and ideas for more books. I've even had some requests to speak at conferences. It's fun to be known!
And the money is useful. People buy your book, and a bit of that money funnels through to you every few months. ;-) It sure beats working for a living.
How can you turn your story into a book? There is a way, but, as the song says, "Lord, you know it don't come easy".
I can tell you the six steps to writing a book. In accord with the dogma of using mnemonics to help you remember it:
I OP WES.
It stands for
Every book begins with an idea. Tell your own story, disguised or not. Tell about your plan for success, and how it worked for you. Tell what you have learned. Talk about the basic themes: love, conflict, war. Include all three with an off-beat location or time and you could have the next Gone with the Wind or the next Star Wars.
The idea is only important insofar is it helps you to write the
outline, but it must be exciting, at least to you.
Let's face it: if the outline doesn't really excite you,
you're not actually going to write a book on it. Period.
The outline stage is where you find out if your idea was large
enough to make a full book. Whether factual or fictional, the main
points or main steps in your book need to be written down in a few
pages, in the order you will write the book. To give some reference
points, an 800 page technical book should have around 25 chapters,
each going into one main topic in detail. An 800 page novel can be
divided into anywhere from three to thirty chapters.
Of course you don't have to start that big. Sir Charles G. D. Roberts,
widely acknowledge as one of the main founders of Canadian Literature,
started his career with a book of poetry that is only 114 pages, but went
on to write The Haunters of the Silences and other works that
inspired the next generation of writers like Jack London.
The proposal stage is where you find out if your book will sell.
To get a publisher interested, you have to submit a plan for your
book. This includes your outline, a schedule of when you can actually
write the book, and a couple of sample chapters to prove that you can
write. You can either
send this to publishers yourself, or you can hire a literary agent
to do so. The former is more common for non-fiction, the latter
for fiction, but both methods can work. An agent who knows a
particular subject area will find the best publisher, and may give
you an edge in getting accepted and/or a better deal. Will an agent
cost or pay? That's is an endless debate in writers' circles, not
one I can resolve today.
Send a good enough proposal to enough publishers and the offers will
come in. Pick one. Negotiate a good "advance" - what they pay you up-front
to fund the writing - and a good "royalty" - the percentage of the book's
cover price that comes through to you. Then cross your fingers,
sign it... and start writing!
"The art of writing", it has been said, "consists of applying
the seat of the pants to the chair -- and writing."
Writing is the hardest stage because, as I said, a book is not a
speech. You can write a Toastmasters speech in a day or less, and you're
done. A book has usually to be written dragged out over months or
years. That means you need a little something called
"stick-to-it-iveness". You can't buy stick-to-it-iveness. It surely
doesn't come in a bottle :-) You either have it or you have to
develop it. You may be like me in that you need to write a little
bit every day. Or you may be like others who write better in bursts
of passion. Whatever it is, you set a schedule when you did your
proposal. Now stick to it!
The Editing stage should be called Revision, but then my acronym
wouldn't be pronouncable.
The writer isn't made who writes a best-selling book in the first
draft. Actually there was one, a certain Cyrano de Bergerac,
fictionalized by Edmond Rostand, who had Cyrano say "My blood
boils to think of altering a single comma!". But in real life,
we write and rewrite.
Which reminds me. We who live in the computer age have a tremendous
advantage over the medieveal monks who toiled with quill & quire,
and the generations immediately before us who put marks on paper
with a typewriter.
We can edit it, and edit it again, and not have to re-type or
re-write it. It doesn't matter if you use Word Perfect, FrameMaker,
Microsoft Word, or whatever. What matters is
that you continue to improve, until it's good. Then improve it again and,
if need be, again, until it's the best it can be.
Or until the publisher demands that you turn it in because it's past due.
So now your books' written, edited, and published. You think you
can just sit back and wait for the royalties to roll in? :-)
Yeah, right.
You have to help the publisher sell the book. This can mean
book tours, those dreaded but necessary occasions when you go out
on the road speaking and signing books. It can mean getting friends
to write reviews... Of course you should never ask your ENEMIES
to write reviews... They probably will anyway!
Whatever it takes to help the publisher sell your book, do it.
Do it willingly and willfully.
And then, of course, start all over again, with your next book.
So there is my six point plan - IOPWES.
Get an idea. Expand it into an outline. Send a proposal.
Write the book. Revise it. Sell it. And start anew...
So will you write a book? You can, with this plan, and I
challenge you to turn your story, your ideas, your wisdom
into a book.
If you follow this plan, YOU can get your book published.
As to whether it will actually become a bestseller or not, of course,
there is no guarantee. By definition, there have to be a lot
of almost-bestsellers for there to be bestsellers.
So let me leave you with
the words of Earl Woods - father of the golf great -
"Time is an accumulation of nows. There is no tomorrow, there
is no yesterday, there is only now. It behooves all of us to
live our lives one unique day at at time."
Do your best for your book, every day, and it will do its best for you.
Mr. Toastmaster.
Outline
Proposal
Writing
Editing
Selling
SUMMARY