My Journey to Becoming an Author 7

Factors that Kill budding Authors

Lack of patience

Well, I don’t know how possible it is for a budding author to overcome this “disease”? Yes, I say this because we all feel excited when we have a new revelation and we want to share it. What you call new may be very outdated stuff to somebody else. So, young authors are often in haste to publish their book. There are occasions one is trying to help him put things in order for better audience attention and he avoids you to turn over to those who are urging him to publish fast.

This is more on the part of inspirational writers, who will likely argue that they got the revelation from the Holy Spirit. The result is that a book is pushed out and within six months the young author is stunned that nobody likes to read the book. I have taken some books from young authors and getting home was not able to go through the first five pages, owing to errors and/or wrong phrases and unsubstantiated statistics ( eg. 80% of Nigerians are poor). And then the young author keeps calling on me to help push the book into the market. Of course, I will not and he concludes that I am envious of his great achievement as a writer. It will take some time before he begins to see that his book was not as wonderful as he felt. This shocker may discourage the young author so that he may never write again

Lack of guidance

One thing is for somebody to lack guidance and another thing is for he to understand he needs some guidance. Our authors’ coach school has been raised to guide young authors and fill in the gap for mentoring which is very essential not only for the author but for every area of life.

He will need guidance in grammar usage, proofreading, research and the best way to publish his book and get the best result. Here is the place of Book Maker which I will be discussing later in this book.

Lack of Finance

The place of money cannot be overemphasized in all life endeavors. One may have a very good manuscript but absence of money can kill it. I have read several instances where an author was published after he was dead; somebody discovers the manuscript after the author was dead. The reason could because there was no money to publish while he lived.

I will be saying more about funding the publishing of your book in later pages.

Misunderstanding the concept called Book Writing

In as much as the focus of this training program is to help an individual write a book or novel we would not have done justice to our subject on book writing if we neglect some very important facts.

When we talk of book writing many people understand it to mean that you must personally put pen on paper and others conclude that they must write on subjects others are writing on. This is wrong understanding of the concept called writing.

The Stenographer - You may use the services of a stenographer, in this case you dictate and somebody does the writing. It may be a story you have to tell in form of a novel or history of an event. Preachers and public speakers can take advantage of this process. An example is that I am not good at posing for pictures like my wife does. Her best pictures are taken when she puts herself together and poses for it but most pictures I posed for are bad. So what do I do? I let the camera man capture me while I am not concentrating on him. In the same way, some people may not be good at putting things down on their own but can dictate to somebody who can. This can be done under a special appointment in special days and time, or the stenographer captures an audio/video message and puts it down as a manuscript. The author can now review what has been done and make corrections. Most of the books by great preachers are done through this process.

Ghost-writing is another process; in this process the author has just the subject he wishes to write on and somebody writes and it is published in his name. There are professional ghost-writers who may want to sell their manuscript and have it published in the name of the buyer. This may sound absurd to some people but it happens in every field of life. Some footballers are bearing the name of their sponsors, likewise musicians. This is one area in book writing which someone may take advantage of.

Excerpt from my new book, My Journey to Becoming an Author