Author Hunter S. Thompson said, “Until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.”
Readers of this book are doubtless hoping to become fulltime writers. Those who succeed will belong to one of the most thrilling and privileged of professions.
These days, it’s among the toughest. If you succeed, your entire life will be that of an Olympian athlete.
Dorothy Parker said in pity, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
A 2015 survey of US professional writers found the median income fell below the poverty line.
The Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society in the UK reminded us that writing is a riskier business than walking a tight-rope across the Grand Canyon without prior training.
“Only The Top 10% reap real rewards. A typical authors' income is 33% less than the national average wage.” These days, most authors write not for money but for poverty.
If you still feel called to follow in this profession, you need to study the writings of masters of our craft. You doubtless follow the latest Pulitzer and Man Booker Prize winners. But you need also to study the classics. They’re all here with extracts from their works.
There’s Whitman, Herman Melville, Hemingway, Scott-Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Faulkner, Ray Bradbury, Goethe, Robbie Burns, George Orwell, Nabokov, Langston Hughes, Kafka, Flaubert, Maya Angelou, Chekhov, Tolstoy (represented by his complete novella, The Life of Ivan Ilych), Jonathan Swift, Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Heller, Douglas Adams, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Scott Momaday, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Anaïs Nin, Erica Jong, J K Rowling, E.L. James and a host of others, in particular, the greatest of all, Shakespeare.
There are special sections on TV, the stage, poetry, comedy – and sex, the most difficult theme to write about without causing acute embarrassment.
To succeed, a prospective writer needs talent, guts, hard work, a hide like a rhino, a resolve to succeed at all costs, an ability to deal with triumph and disaster and, above all, a willingness to learn from geniuses in the field without copying any one of them.
This can be said with certainty: only two things are needed to get a book published: an agent who believes in it and a publishing house that agrees. Leonardo da Vinci noted that accomplished people rarely sat back and let things happen to them. “They went out and happened to things.” So, if you have written a book you think has promise, go out and get yourself an agent. And may your God go with you.
In this 400pp compendium, your guide is PETER DE ROSA, an international bestseller of fiction (Bless Me Father) and non-fiction (Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy).
He’s had a varied career: Catholic priest. Professor of Philosophy. A newspaper columnist for 10 years. BBC Producer in Broadcasting House, London, where he worked with writers like James Herriot and actors John Gielgud and Paul Scofield.
Author of 40 books, including the five Bless Me, Father novels, he also wrote the TV sitcom of the same name starring the top British comic actor Arthur Lowe.
Readers of this book are doubtless hoping to become fulltime writers. Those who succeed will belong to one of the most thrilling and privileged of professions.
These days, it’s among the toughest. If you succeed, your entire life will be that of an Olympian athlete.
Dorothy Parker said in pity, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
A 2015 survey of US professional writers found the median income fell below the poverty line.
The Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society in the UK reminded us that writing is a riskier business than walking a tight-rope across the Grand Canyon without prior training.
“Only The Top 10% reap real rewards. A typical authors' income is 33% less than the national average wage.” These days, most authors write not for money but for poverty.
If you still feel called to follow in this profession, you need to study the writings of masters of our craft. You doubtless follow the latest Pulitzer and Man Booker Prize winners. But you need also to study the classics. They’re all here with extracts from their works.
There’s Whitman, Herman Melville, Hemingway, Scott-Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Faulkner, Ray Bradbury, Goethe, Robbie Burns, George Orwell, Nabokov, Langston Hughes, Kafka, Flaubert, Maya Angelou, Chekhov, Tolstoy (represented by his complete novella, The Life of Ivan Ilych), Jonathan Swift, Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Heller, Douglas Adams, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Scott Momaday, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Anaïs Nin, Erica Jong, J K Rowling, E.L. James and a host of others, in particular, the greatest of all, Shakespeare.
There are special sections on TV, the stage, poetry, comedy – and sex, the most difficult theme to write about without causing acute embarrassment.
To succeed, a prospective writer needs talent, guts, hard work, a hide like a rhino, a resolve to succeed at all costs, an ability to deal with triumph and disaster and, above all, a willingness to learn from geniuses in the field without copying any one of them.
This can be said with certainty: only two things are needed to get a book published: an agent who believes in it and a publishing house that agrees. Leonardo da Vinci noted that accomplished people rarely sat back and let things happen to them. “They went out and happened to things.” So, if you have written a book you think has promise, go out and get yourself an agent. And may your God go with you.
In this 400pp compendium, your guide is PETER DE ROSA, an international bestseller of fiction (Bless Me Father) and non-fiction (Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy).
He’s had a varied career: Catholic priest. Professor of Philosophy. A newspaper columnist for 10 years. BBC Producer in Broadcasting House, London, where he worked with writers like James Herriot and actors John Gielgud and Paul Scofield.
Author of 40 books, including the five Bless Me, Father novels, he also wrote the TV sitcom of the same name starring the top British comic actor Arthur Lowe.
