~*~ Doing That Book ~ Uniquely! ~*~
Winnie Czulinski
Writer ~ Journalist ~ Ghostwriter ~ Editor -> Publishing-PR Pro -> Bringing Your Stories to Life!
Inspirational rather than instructional: I hope my article shows you that books – and maybe your book – can take a unique path to creation + publication!
📕 A.J Jacobs (1968- ), author of four New York Times bestsellers, walked his book Drop Dead Healthy into being.
When a doctor told him "sitting is the new smoking," Jacobs bought a treadmill, put his computer on top – and wrote his book in approx. 1,200 miles.
📕 Behrouz Boochani, Kurdish-Iranian journalist, wrote his award-winning memoir No Friend But the Mountains while incarcerated as a refugee on Manus Island north of Papua New Guinea. On a smuggled mobile phone, he texted the prose bit by bit to friends overseas.
📕 Ex-POTUS Barack Obama apparently wrote the entire 760 pages of his presidential memoir on yellow legal notepaper with a pen.
In his book A Promised Land, he wrote "I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness.”
📕 Agatha Christie (1890-1976) wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), on a dare from her sis Madge. Christie worked as an apothecary/ pharmacy assistant during WWI and WW2, acquiring a good knowledge of medicines and poisons.
📕 Og Mandino (1922-1996) famous for The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), flew 30 bombing missions over Germany during WW2, became an insurance salesman, an alcoholic, and read hundreds of success-related books to develop his own.
📕 Stephen Covey (1932-2012) apparently was inspired by principles of his Mormon faith in his writing The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1969). Covey also had earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business admin, an MBA and Doctor of Religious Education.
📕 Amy Molloy, bestselling Hay House author, released her 2019 book Peace, Instead of This, via a chapter on Instagram each day. Molloy wanted "to share my experiences while I’m still experiencing them," on a medium accessible to other busy women (and men!)
📕 John Gray (1951- ), relationship counselor, wrote Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (1992) after earning degrees in meditation and psychology by correspondence. Taught yoga by his parents, Gray also assisted Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for several years.
📕 Harper Lee (1926-2016) (To Kill A Mockingbird), worked as an airline reservation agent in the late 1940s, and wrote fiction.
Friends gave Harper a gift of one year's wages – and a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."
📕 Kyle Falcon of Orillia, Ontario (Canada) was at Nipissing University when he became intrigued with the memoir by soldier Will R. Bird – who claimed the ghost of his missing brother saved him from certain death at Vimy Ridge. Falcon went on to write the book Haunted Britain.
📕 Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) had no prior knowledge of scientific theories when he wrote A Brief History of Time (1988). The manuscript had many equations – and after being warned that that would halve readership, he cut it down to just one equation: E = mc2.
📕 John Kehoe spent 3 solo years in Canada's Pacific northwest wilderness, studying various forms of spirituality – to develop a motivational system called Mind Power (title of his first book, 1990). Subsequent books include Quantum Warrior: The Future of the Mind.
📕 Stephen King (1947- ) had worked as janitor, gas pump attendant, and at an industrial laundry.
King threw a draft of his novel Carrie – about a teenage girl with psychic powers – in the garbage. His wife Tabitha pulled it out and encouraged him to finish it.
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📕 Laurel Phelan, author of Guinevere (1994) was a young Vancouver BC/Canada bookkeeper who had strange dreams of being Celtic warrior queen Gwynnefwar in a 5th-century past life, and put them into writing.
📕 J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), Oxford U. 1930s professor, enjoyed publishing poems, writing illustrated letters, and creating elven languages and mythology.
One day marking school papers he wrote on a blank page "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit..."
📕 Robin Sharma (1964- ), author and motivational speaker, originally self-published The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (1997). This 'business fable' book reflects Sharma's experiences after he left his career as a litigation lawyer at 25.
📕 J.K. Rowling (1965- ), single mum, worked for Amnesty International, and wrote on a delayed train and in Edinburgh UK coffee shops. Twelve publishers rejected her manuscript Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone before Bloomsbury took a chance on it.
📕 And here's a mixed bag of ritual-techniques (not necessarily to be emulated) through the ages:
French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) supposedly drank 50 cups of coffee a day for inspiration. German poet/playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) loved to breathe in the aroma of rotten apples.
📕 "Beat generation" author Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) went for benzedrine, which primed him to bang out his famous book On The Road on a single 120-pg. roll of typing paper.
📕 Author Truman Capote (1924-1984) claimed never to start or finish a piece of work on a Friday, and though a chain smoker, never allowed more than three butts in his ashtray.
Poet Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) liked to lie in an open coffin to gather and process her thoughts.
📕 And Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown has been said to don gravity boots and hang upside down. And at his desk? Every hour he would get up and do a round of push-ups and sit-ups.
Now, that's smart. Sometimes you just have to get away from it and work with your body instead of your brain, to make the most of the page or screen in front of you...
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Are you working on a book, or would you like to do one?? Looking for some help with writing, editing, publication options, promo??
Please DM/comment/connect with me!
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