Stop Buying Books on Writing!

We all see it all the time, tips, tricks, and magic spells that will help you craft a bestselling book in as little as 30 days and only at the cost of all your mental sanity.

No shade to NaNoWriMo, this event is still one I love to take part in every year, but geez does it take my mind and body a long time to recover from those writing days.

The part about any writing book that always gets to me is that each writer believes that their advice is the absolute best way to write a bestseller, but have you ever just taken the time to look at the author of that book who plans to teach you to be a best selling writer?

Are they best-selling writers?

I am very proud of my home library and have an entire bookcase dedicated to reference books on writing alone, but I will tell you that more than half of these books that are trying to teach their reader how to write a best selling book, haven’t had one themselves and are praying on your innocents (or ignorance) for you to belive them just because they wrote a book on how to do something.

Imagine buying a book on juggling written by a circus clown that has never juggled before.

Just last week I reviewed a writing book on how to write horror fiction. This book was written by an author with nine books under her belt, but not one of them was a horror novel.

What makes her qualified to say she is the best to teach how to write a horror novel? Just the fact that she spent a few hours on a search engine looking up how to write one?

Before you head to the checkout with that writing book in hand, just stop for a moment and give the author a quick search and see exactly what qualifies them to give you advice.

But Barbara, you give writing advice all the time?

I give advice on writing because I am a writer, an author, and I have a degree in Creative Writing. These are my qualifications and make me believe I am qualified to give advice on the subject, however, I won’t write an article on the best way to edit a book professionally because I am not a professional editor.

Always do your research before taking a reference book at face value, just because it hit the shelves of your local book store doesn’t mean it’s the end all be all of a writing book.

It just means they have a dang good publisher and marketing team in their corner.

Bad advice can ruin your writing and in the end, it can leave you with a manuscript that won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.

How You Can Learn to Write a Novel

There are no real rules to writing and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is trying to sell you a book or a course you don’t need. The only true rules of writing are the basic rules of grammar you learned back in high school, give these a brush-up and you’ll be fine.

The best way to learn writing from a book is through reading the genre you want to write in.

Want to write a suspense novel, but you’re not quite sure how to do it without the novel being draggy? Read at least 10 suspense novels and take notes on what you observed.

What parts kept you turning the page waiting to find out what was going to happen next?

Not only does reading in your genre help you, but the things you learn from reading others as well.

I hate romance novels, I find them predictable and boring. However, when I wanted to include a romantic element in my most recent novel I had to go to the experts.

In my novel, I have the King of a realm and his disinherited brother who turned to dark magic to take over the kingdom and steal the love of his brothers betrothed, the King in an attempt to hide his bride sends her to a mortal realm without her magic to hide her from his brother. At its basic level, I wanted my novel to have two guys fighting for the love of one girl, but for adults.

Although I wanted my book to be centered around adults and not lovesick teens the best genre for me to find this trope in was exactly that. YA Fiction such as the Fallen Series (Lauren Kate), Twilight (Stephenie Meyer), and Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins.) Yes, these books have much more to them than their romance, but these novels did it best.

When I was in High School being Team Edward or Team Jacob could make or break a friend group faster than Bella forgave Edward for sending her into a paralyzing depression and leaving her in the woods to die.

Bottom Line

Stop buying books on writing best sellers and focus on books that will teach you something more important such as outlining, or grammar, even books on self-editing can be a great help in grammar wasn’t your strong suit in school.

No book is going to teach you to write the next best-selling novel.

Unfortunately, the best novel you could ever read might never be found on the bookshelves of your favorite store because it takes a lot of money to get it to that point and not all writers can afford it. Editing, cover design, marketing, beta/sensitivity readers all cost a decent chunk of change. This is why I and many other authors advocate for self-publishing, but I’ll have a whole article on that later down the line.

Save your money and save your time, avoid any book that promises to teach you how to be a best seller. (Unless it actually comes from a proven bestseller, not just a proclaimed one.)

Happy reading and don’t stop writing.

With love,

B.K. xo

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