Is the Life of a Writer, the Write Life for Me?

By Paul Anthony Mills

Ever read an adventure like Harry Potter or that Stephen King horror The Shining or an epic romance novel such as Gone with the Wind and thought about writing one of your very own?

If your answer is yes, then you’re no different than just about anyone who has ever picked up a novel and been swept away by pages infused with a gripping and captivating narrative. This made possible by the unique and creative ability of its author.

Sure, we’ve all written something at some point in our life. It might have been that one-page book report for grade school or that essay for university or maybe you kept a diary or wrote a blog. These are all fine examples of writing, but what they’re not is a novel.

You may love reading them, you may have even promised yourself to one day start writing one, but can you honestly say you’re ready to take on such an endeavor? Do you truly know what it takes to sit down and create your very own?

But here’s the thing, you can’t really know whether you’re ready if you don’t first know what you’re up against.

Which brings us to the title of the first book in my three-book series, Is the Life of a Writer, the Write Life for Me?

Through interesting examples, I will cover such areas as perseverance, curiosity, acuity, ability to tell a story, ability to remain focused, procrastination, etc.—traits necessary to undergo the rigors of starting, staying with, and completing your first novel.

By the end of this first book, you will know whether you have what it takes to create your very first novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796042924

Paul Anthony Mills

Paul Anthony Mills was born in London England, where the streets of London’s east side became the backdrop for his growing curiosity to create. In later years he moved to Canada where he enrolled in Sheridan College’s creative writing program and later at Algonquin College where he studied screenplay writing.

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Copyright © 2019 by Paul Anthony Mills.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-7960-4293-1

eBook      978-1-7960-4292-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/23/2019

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK 1

A Simple Approach to Writing your First Novel

Is the Life of a Writer,

the Write Life for me?

I want to start by stating that the act of writing a novel, has and always will be, subjective. If you write a bad story, but the world loves it, you’re a good writer if you’ve reached the intended objective; which is to bring about emotions, to create empathy and to establish understanding while taking the reader on a journey she can enjoy. So, could you then be, by definition, necessarily a bad writer?

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This doesn’t mean that anyone can sit down and hash out a bad story and later call it good. Only a writer can accomplish this. Because a writer, first, understands the basic principles of writing:

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Add in a solid plot, memorable characters, an engaging conflict, an explosive climax and an ending that brings it all together and you have the makings of a good story.

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It’s basic novel writing 101.

Each of us learned this during our formative years in school. Remember this, now class, for our first project back, I want you to write a story telling me what you did during your school holidays.

When you handed in your assignment, with its dangling modifiers, run on sentences and so many spelling errors, you nearly created your own language, however bad; you were, at that moment, a member in the classification of a writer.

Now, this is not to be confused with great or even good writing. The latter, good writing is something that takes more than a quick 1-page regurgitation of the highlights of your summer vacation; this must be taught. Not to everyone; but it’s possible for a good writer, who first wrote badly about his three weeks at summer camp, where the highlight of his story included how the first fish he ever caught bit him while he attempted to pull out the hook, was eventually able to grasp the basic understanding of grammar. This so he can eventually deliver an error free, concise retelling of that which orbits the hippocampus of his brain where his memories are stored.

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Moreover, good writing is not to be equated to great writing. This is that rare and sought after ability that cannot be learned by even the most astute of students just because they desire it. And contrary to public opinion, it’s not something that’s achieved by accident.

It is, for lack of a better word, a gift you’re born with; a gift, you expand on, through practice and instruction.

If the thought of (holy) intervention merely conjures up images of walking on water and parting seas, you need to know that there are less awe-inspiring miracles born throughout history.

Whenever we hear about people who have accomplished incredible feats, we label it a miracle. Is it any different from when we hear about a man with the ability to create some of the best works in English literature?

Skeptics have, over the years, questioned how anyone of such a modest education could write with the intellectual perceptiveness and poetic power that is displayed in Shakespeare’s works. And if you can deem his abilities miracles, then can you not also consider that he had a gift?

Further, can you not also consider the impossibility of taking someone classified as a good artist and teaching him to be a Michelangelo and instruct him on sculpting David, or painting the Sistine Chapel; or teaching a good musician to be a Mozart and instructing him to compose at the level attained by Mozart by the age of five?

And back to Shakespeare; do you believe it’s possible to take a good, well schooled writer, and teach him to be a Shakespeare and further instruct him on writing such plays as Hamlet, Macbeth or The Tempest, or Romeo and Juliet, or Twelfth Night or The Taming of the Shrew? … I won’t list the rest; I think I’ve made my point. And my point has been leading to this very real fact:

There are about 1,000,000 good and bad published authors in the world each year. That accounts for about 0.01 percent of the world’s population of 7 billion. There isn’t any statistics on how many are bad writers because, like I mentioned at the beginning, writing is subjective.

But I guarantee you, of that 0.01 percent, you won’t find more than 0.01 percent of them, with the gift to be a great writer. That’s just 0.000001 percent.

To put it in perspective, of the 7 billion people currently on this planet, only about 700,000 have the gift.

Think back again to when you were in school. There was always that one person who did with ease, that which everyone else struggled and usually failed at. She was taught by the same teachers as you, read the same books, watched the same films. But for some reason, created beautiful stories while the rest of the class struggled to learn basic sentence structure.

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Instead of making a fish-bite the highlight of her story, she used the bite as a catalyst; realizing, at that moment, a ring caught in the mouth of the fish was just the beginning