WRITER'S FORUM

When setting out on a journey is the hardest part of your trip the acceptance of your need to do it? Perhaps it is the moment when, suitcase in hand, you softly close the door behind you. On the other hand, is the difficult bit when you reach your destination and the outcome does not meet your expectations?

This very much explains your journey when you set out to be a writer. You always felt you had a book in you but the challenge is actually sitting down and getting started. Here are a few tips.

There is no necessity to begin at the beginning. You could write an engaging account of something that happened when, as a child, you had a holiday or school experience. Spread your heart-thoughts out on paper (or laptop screen). Once you have done so you can start at the beginning… “It all started when from my earliest memory my parents determined on The Philippines (Eton College) as a way of broadening my horizons…”

There is no reason why you ever have to start your book at the beginning. You can start it where you wish, at the end and then work back if you are more comfortable with that. Many a novel has started with the story’s outcome. This inspires the beginning and the story flows from there. Men who build tunnels often start at each end and meet in the middle. Better to stick to book writing. I confess I am not certain how they manage that.

As those of you, kind enough to visit and comment on my EYE blog you will know that poetry is my thing. I have completed over 300 compositions, I have been penning poetry since I was in my early twenties.

I do not write poetry for its earning potential as it does not have any. I write poetry because it is therapeutic, I feel the urge to do, and it releases the creative side of me.

However, do not be fooled that the verse just pours from my pen: I wish. A poem will start as a one or two line idea. I might be out with friends when inspiration strikes. I jot it down, then, much later I return to it and I create it.

The same principle applies to all creative pursuits including writing. Set your thoughts out chapter by chapter. Feel free to mess about with it as you wish. It is fun and it builds your confidence.

Another tip, do not write with the sole purpose of making loads of dosh. The real reward is in achievement, satisfaction, respect, the mental therapy, the sheer joy of reliving the past. Writing is the most exciting journey of all. If you are paid for it that is the bonus.

MICHAEL WALSH. A published author and professional writer-journalist, Michael Walsh may be Mediterranean Spain’s best-known ghost-writer. Titles completed include Still Running, Mickey Finn’s memoirs of a child convict. The Sins of the Father, Cynthia Paddick. Dieter Rudolph’s Farewell To Hamburg. Swedish author Britt Arenander chose Michael Walsh for her great fiction Lux Divina. Chris Nand’s Return to Devil Island is likely to be filmed. Other titles completed include A Matter of Trust, Swinging Doors, Rutter’s Raj, The Perfect Murder, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, The Golden Triangle. Contact Michael at quite_write@yahoo.co.uk

‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour.’ -　 Mark Twain.

What an empty life it would be if one wrote not for satisfaction but for money. If making money is your sole purpose in writing, I suggest you put your money on the lottery instead. Do not tarnish the noble art of writing by crouching over the keyboard. There are easy ways of making a bob or two.

So why do people write? Why do some people climb mountains, boat or ski? Why do people take courses in art and paint pictures, why do others create beautiful sculptures or compose music, poetry?

They do so because their doing so gives them endless pleasure and satisfaction. When they complete their challenge, they enjoy a sense of achievement that money cannot buy. Their triumph brings enormous respect. With hands in harmony with hearts and minds, they produce something that endures long after they have passed on. This is what motivates people to write.

Writing is inspiring, it is invigorating and it is therapeutically relaxing. Never has it been easier to write. Those who do not have natural flair and experience can engage a ghost-writer for much less than the cost of most other pursuits.

When you have triumphed, it is yours and it is easy enough to share your achievement with the rest of the world. It may be a fictional story, perhaps drawn on experience.

On the other hand, your book could be your memoirs, which is far better than a framed family portrait to leave in the attic. Many will wish to recount their working experiences or tell of their travel pursuits. The successful might wish to inspire or teach others.

How I wish I could read a firsthand account of some of my forebears. Writing and publishing, until recently, was far too elitist and a challenge so formidable that only a select few could undertake to write.

Today, I would guess that, with the aid of a co-writer (ghost), most people have the ability to write a novel or memoir. Those who do write achieve something that a lottery winner cannot buy. Happily, it does not cost a lottery win to achieve their success. Why not climb up on your writer’s podium.

According to Forbe’s List of the world’s top-selling authors, British author E. L. James takes the winner’s rostrum. James is estimated to have earned $95 million from her mummy-porn novel, Fifty Shades of Grey.

She narrowly beat James Patterson whose novels have placed $91 million into his already bulging bank account. Can books like theirs really be so good? Of course not. As one of Fifty Shades of Grey surmised, “It is so bad it is good.”

The titillating yarn is written in amateurish style. Perhaps this gives such books added value. It could be that the content’s flow relates better to the unsophisticated reader’s way of thinking. How many readers today are educated enough to immerse themselves into Trollope’s or Charles Dickens novels? I suspect very few.

Ironically, one of the salient marketing pluses of James book is the book’s unprofessional style of writing. This leads us to wonder aloud, had Fifty Shades of Grey been passed to an academic expert in English literature for ghosting would it have been so successful. I doubt it very much.

Older readers will recall a 1960s parody made at the expense of the BBC. It was a recording of Louis Armstrong’s (Satchmo) rendering of Old Man River.

The ballad’s attraction was primarily the way in which the original and popular song was sung in the lingua franca of the time, place and society. When the parody was released in the 1960s the singer, Satchmo was constantly interrupted by a BBC presenter.

During these interruptions, the singer was constantly ordered to express the lyrics in the clipped (and grammatically correct) form. In doing so, it turned one of the 20^th Century’s most endearing ballads into an audio monstrosity unlikely to have sold a single copy.

Maybe this analogy explains why so many ’badly written’ novels are voted winners by their readers.

There is life after death, for authors. Thirteen years after her death at the age of 98, Dame Barbara Cartland is to live again. Not quite but 160 of her so far unseen novels are.

The prolific writer is credited with writing over 700 books, none of which I concede to have read. Cartland’s novels sold over 750 million copies. One can likely quadruple this figure as her books will have been passed from hand to hand. It is said that her prodigious output saw 23 of her novels published in just one year.

Cartland’s son, Ian McCorquodale, who by happy coincidence is a publisher, plans to market the series titled The Pink Collection. Money attracts money. Dame Barbara Cartland was Princess Diane’s step-grandmother. It is all good public relations.

The Dame’s novels will almost certainly be ghost-written. It is not rocket science. The production line assembly of so many novels, especially 23 in just one year by one writer, is stretching credulity to its limits. The best I achieved was one 80,000-word book from start to publication in one month. It was not an achievement I would care to repeat.

The trend is for famous authors to scribble their novels’ plots. These are then passed to ghost-writers. Called ghosts because their names never appear on the cover, ghost-writers add content, flair and flow. As an example of this, I doubled the content of a 40,000-word memoir to the complete satisfaction of my client. Is it cheating? Decidedly not.

I cooperate with authors through each chapter. What a good ghost will do is express the author’s thoughts and recollections truthfully. This is not done by cheating. A comment I often hear is, “that is exactly how it was but I cannot express myself as well as that.“

Those ghosts placed with specific authors, like Steven King, Geoffrey Archer, Cartland and many others of their standing, meticulously study the style of their employer. Ghost-writers will assiduously insinuate the author’s ‘fingerprint’ into the stories as they unfold. I hope that you the reader will not spot the fake. In truth, they are all fakes.

MICHAEL WALSH. A published author and professional writer-journalist, Michael Walsh may be Mediterranean Spain’s best known ghost-writer. Titles completed include Still Running, Mickey Finn’s memoirs of a child convict. The Sins of the Father, Cynthia Paddick. Dieter Rudolph’s Farewell To Hamburg. Swedish author Britt Arenander chose Michael Walsh for her great fiction Lux Divina. Chris Nand’s Return to Devil Island is likely to be filmed. Other titles completed include A Matter of Trust, Swinging Doors, Rutter’s Raj, The Perfect Murder, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, The Golden Triangle

Happiness is seeing a client’s book enthusiastically acclaimed. We all know that self-praise is no recommendation.  However, who needs such a sales pitch when you have accolades from readers. Betty Musole’s epic journey began as a child in the Central African state of Zambia.

If we British expatriates think we are deserving of kudos for making the decision to relocate to Spain, then believe me, you need to read Betty’s book.

Determined not to endure African village life, suffer a lifestyle regime that brings with it unrelenting hardship, Betty as a teenager set her feet on making her escape. This could only be through the missionary stations and the educational colleges. These were far more difficult to enter and traverse than are European institutions.

Betty’s book is more than a nail-biter. It is vivid testimony of her will to survive. Why the title? Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing. It is a perfect description of the deceptions of the Church charities to fund the excessive lifestyles of priests and nuns. Furthermore, never delude yourself that clergy, priests and nuns are the epitome of virtue. If so, you are in for a raunchy shock. You can save your charitable donations to fund your own Bacchanalian lifestyle rather than theirs.

One of Betty’s readers writes:

Hi Betty

It is Sue Boulter from the Gibraltar Book Club. I hope you remember me...I often think of you!

I just wanted to get in touch to find out how you and Rino are doing in Birmingham (if you are still there!), and to congratulate you on your book, Sheep in Wolves Clothing. I have just finished it and could not put it down. I thought it was a really fast and fascinating read and what an insight into REAL African life. I have to say. Based on the little information you gave us about your early life it comes across as being very autobiographical to me.

I am amazed at how you have come through such difficult and harrowing times and turned into such a kind, warm-hearted strong young woman. I hope you will take heart from having eventually managed to have this book published and write a sequel on your life in South Africa and perhaps Life in Italy, which I am sure, would be equally intriguing.

If you are still helping with the many issues in your original village, or helping your cousins get a decent education, please let me know how I can make a small donation. It is only when reading a book such as yours you realise how lucky you have been in your life and how easy it is to take things for granted, which for others are only dreams.

I hope that this email will reach you, wherever you are in the World. If you would like to, and have time in your very busy schedule, I would love you to let me know how you are getting on, if not I truly understand.

With warmest regards to you both.” - Sue Boulter.

Well done, Betty. It has been a privilege to bring to life a very unique journey. I believe that your courage, intelligence and tenacity, your virtues and your single-mindedness, would have otherwise set your feet towards a government ministerial post in Zambia. Your going is their loss. - Michael.

Do check out Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing by Betty Musole. Amazon-Kindle.

MICHAEL WALSH. A published author and professional writer-journalist, Michael Walsh may be Mediterranean Spain’s best known ghost-writer. Titles completed include Still Running, Mickey Finn’s memoirs of a child convict. The Sins of the Father, Cynthia Paddick. Dieter Rudolph’s Farewell To Hamburg. Swedish author Britt Arenander chose Michael Walsh for her great fiction Lux Divina. Chris Nand’s Return to Devil Island is likely to be filmed. Other titles completed include A Matter of Trust, Swinging Doors, Rutter’s Raj, The Perfect Murder, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, The Golden Triangle.