novel writing Does Every Writer Have the Potential to Succeed?

[Admin_99]

Since you asked...

Nearly everyone has the potential to write a breakout novel and go on to become a successful commercial author, but precious few finally accomplish the task. Do we know why this is the rule?

Writer conferences, author workshops, books, ms editors, and even the most pointless of MFA programs play a part in a writer's evolution, but none of these provide the overall pragmatic means and method to finish the job (and quite often, not even to start it). If this were not the case, an imaginative and ambitious writer would only have to attend an MFA program at Iowa, for example, and become a published author in due course. But this rarely if ever happens, despite expenditures in the range of $30,000 to $80,000 (Iowa Grad Program for two full years).

Aside from this lack of comprehensive and realistic training, many other factors come into play that hamper the aspiring commercial author, everything from prickly skin to incompetent writer groups to misunderstandings of market dynamics.

Consider. Would you try to build a livable and quite stylish home on your own without an architect and a professional home builder simply because you had the ability to hammer a few boards together with nails? Of course not. You would acquire the expertise and skills before you began. And yet, new writers approach the creation of a thing equally or more complex, such as the writing of a competitive commercial novel, in the belief they can do so because they have a story idea, can type words on a page, and have read a few magazines about writing. They consult with other new writers as ignorant as themselves and proceed to build a house called a novel, but one that will not risk their lives because fortunately for them, it is all on paper.

So what to do?

Ditch your writer's group, utilize the forums found here in every way possible, move on to a good novel development workshop, draft the novel at least three times, then have the first 100 pages (at least) read by a professional with editorial experience. Once done, you might well be prepared to write a publishable novel.