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THE QUALITIES YOU NEED TO PUBLISH YOUR NOVEL In her book about writing, Write Away, the best selling American crime fiction author, Elizabeth George, outlines what qualities a writer needs to possess in order to be published. George says, Here's what I tell my students on the first day when I teach one of my creative writing workshops. You will get published if you possess three qualities, talent, passion and discipline. You will probably get published if you possess two of the three qualities in either combination, either talent and discipline or passion and discipline. You will likely be published if you posses neither talent nor passion, but still have discipline. But if all you possess is talent or passion, if all you possess is talent and passion, you will not be published. And if by some miracle you are published, it will probably never happen again. Some of us are blessed with self-discipline, and I admit myself to being one who is. It's something I inherited from my mother, that ability to do what needs to be done and play later. A lot of writing is simply showing up. A lot of writing is the ability to show up day after day, same time, same place. A lot of writing is being able to put the work first because it is work. A lot of writing is being able to delay gratification. Lots of people want to have written, they don't want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front of a book and their face grinning from the back. But this is what comes at the end of the job, not at the beginning. To reach that end, you have to be willing just to set it aside, knowing that it might never happen at all, but not much caring because it's the writing that matters to you. It's the mystery and magic of putting words on paper that are truly important. If you don't feel that way, you want to be an author not a writer. Writers are people who write. There is no other way. UP
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