WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BECOME A WRITER?

"GRAMPA FRANK!"TM

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BECOME A WRITER?

The first and most important factor, in being a writer, is being disciplined like an Olympic athlete. Next, and almost equally important is having some talent to work with. Third most important factor is not giving up. After that, it is pretty much up to the literary gods..

HOW CAN THE GETTING THERE GO WRONG?

The getting there can only go wrong, if it does and the person is a true artist, if the individual quits and stops producing work. For this individual, the work, is what is most important. And must be done. Nothing else equals the work itself in importance.

For the person who is not a true artist, the getting there can go wrong if there simply is not enough talent there to begin with. In this case, the journey is likely fated to go awry at some point, anyway. And, is potentially devastating for this individual.. One of the hazards of the taking creative chance.

THE COMMERCIAL ELEMENT TODAY

I believe a writer MUST, MUST, MUST in this day and age of electronic media get out there and aggressively and vigorously compete with movies, video-games, sports teams, concerts..., and on...., and on...., and on.... as well as compete with all kinds of celebrities for a crinkle of space in the public's mind. The public community is so inundated with media hype, media blitz... that regrettably it is the work of those in the media forefront who attract the entertainment dollar..., the personal growth dollar..., or the pure pleasure dollar. Quite simply, without publicity appearances, without promotion on an ongoing, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.... almost minute-to-minute basis..., a writer will be buried before he or she comes even close to making a fleeting, let alone permanent wrinkle in the public’s consciousness. Without this, at best, the writer will disappear from the public's mental scenery after a brief splash in the pool.

The reality of book publishing is this: an author usually receives a 10% royalty on the retail price of a book. On a $20.00 book this translates to $2 from each book sale going to the author. In order to make $50,000 on a book retailing at $20.00, sales would have to reach 25,000 copies. This rarely happens. Now, take a paperback book. It gets worse. Say the book sells for $8.00. The writer gets .80 cents a copy. To make that $50,000 for one year's work that book has to sell 60,000+ copies. That is a TALL order. And author royalties on paperbacks are usually significantly less than the 10% received on hardcover publications..

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