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View Full Version : How to become a writer


mrbondthefrist
Sep 28, 2007, 07:50 AM
Wondering how to become an author. I have idears for selfhelp books but can't seem to get started and how and who would publish them. Soory about my spelling I was tough the fonix way and cheaded thow most of it.

jillianleab
Sep 28, 2007, 09:15 AM
There's no way to "become" a writer - either you are one, or you aren't. If you have ideas, write them down the way you would describe them to someone one. Once you are happy with what you've written, look for an agent, who will help you find a publisher.

I will tell you this though, no agent or publisher is going to accept you unless you correct your spelling and grammar. Perhaps English isn't your first language, but if you want to be taken seriously, you have to be able to spell.

Bluerose
Sep 28, 2007, 12:52 PM
For anyone who wants to be a writer the only piece of advice I have is "Just do it! Just write!" If you are any good at it, it will find it's own place in the scheme of things. On the other hand you could just write for your own pleasure - at least until your spelling improves.

Emland
Sep 28, 2007, 01:07 PM
My sister is a published author and is dyslexic - so it can be done. She has been writing since she was 9. Just do it. If it is any good, someone will buy it.

magprob
Sep 29, 2007, 09:20 AM
Do you really have something useful to say? Can you organize it into a clear, flowing ideas with continuity? A good word processor will help. Star office works really well for writing. Other than that, writers write so, get to writing.
Also, you need to write about things you know. Here is something I wrote about something I know about:

Laying atop Chiricahua Peak, staring out across the world, I thought about many things but could not stop thinking about the people that lived here before the invasion. Before the machine started it's drive across the Great Plains, grinding up and killing every thing in it's path. First the Buffalo, their main source of food, blankets and all the other things required for survival. Next, the starvation of millions of people. The buffalo carcasses had rotted away and their bones collected for fertilizer. The hides had been packed and sent to the great villages in the east, used as fashionable coats for a Sunday afternoon stroll.
The native people were told to farm but they couldn't make a go of it. Their invaders became successful farmers but the natives were somehow ignored by the machine. They just starved to death. They lay there starving while asking their conquerors for something to eat. What they didn't know was, the buffalo were ordered wiped out by the great white chief from Washington. Ordered wiped out to starve them off the valuable land. Everything after that decision was made, was just a pack of lies. Lies created for the sole purpose of leading a whole race of people to their slow, disgraceful slaughter.
Meanwhile, as the slaughter machine rolled westward, far to the southwest, a brave hunter stood close to the very spot in which I would someday camp. It was a day much like my day, warm and clear for as far as the eye could see. He watched his twelve year old son slowly move with bow and arrow ready, squatting, stalking a wily chipmunk that was sitting on a rock. From a distance, the brave and his wife chuckled at their prized possession, he would be entering into adult hood in a few short years. In a few short years, he would make his first real kill.
As the proud father and mother watched their only son stalk the wily chipmunk, they didn't notice the dark cloud on the horizon far to the east. The dark cloud that was the smoke and the stench of the machine. They didn't notice the dark cloud until it had befallen them. Until it broke loose with a torrent of death and destruction that washed away their homes, their very lives. Within a few short years, their son would kill his first white man. Within a few more short years, their son would be killed by a white man.
I stared into the fire as it slowly died, with the visualization of them crystal clear in my mind. The chill of the night air made me long for the warmth of the tent and my sleeping bag. The soft air mattress let me melt into it, melt into deep oblivion. I awoke two or three times throughout the night to something sniffing about. Ring tail cats, skunks and every other four legged fur ball came to see what this big smelly thing was that had taken over their little slice of heaven. I was just plumb tuckered out and I asked them to please be quite. For the most part, they were.