Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 1 Volume 8 | Page 12

S O Y OU T HINK Y OU C AN D O I T B ETTER (C ONT ’ D .)
NYT B EST S ELLERS L IST
A PRIL 22, 2018
NYT Complete Lists
COMBINED PRINT & E-
BOOK FICTION
1. R EADY P LAYER O NE BY
E RNEST C LEIN
2. I’ VE G OT M Y E YES ON
Y OU BY M ARY H IGGINS
C LARK
3. C AMINO I SLAND BY J OHN
G RISHAM
4. T HE G REAT A LONE BY
K RISTIN H ANNAH
5. R ED A LERT BY J AMES
P ATTERSON AND M ARSHALL
K ARP
COMBINED PRINT & E-
BOOK NON-FICTION
1. K ILLERS OF THE F LOWER
M OON BY D AVID G RANN
2. Factfulness BY H ANS
R OSLING WITH O LA R OSLING
AND A NNA R OSLING
R ÖNNLUND
3. T IGER W OODS BY J EFF
B ENEDICT AND A RMEN
K ETEYIAN
4. E DUCATED BY T ARA
W ESTOVER
5. R USSIAN R OULETTE BY
M ICHAEL I SIKOFF AND D AVID
C ORN
S PRING 2018
Just because you’ve written the most fantastic book since sliced bread, don’t
expect the world to notice. Trust me on this!
While that piece of crap you scoffed at might end up a best seller, your fan-
tastic tome can’t even get past the slush pile of an agent or editor anywhere in
the good old You Ess And A, Jolly Olde’ Englande’, the Great White North or Ti-
bet.
Why?
The reasons are too numerous to list, but let’s try a biggie.
Dumb luck.
There are thousands upon thousands of fantastic stories written by highly
skilled wordsmiths in every genre imaginable that will never see print because of
a multitude of reasons. One of the biggest is just plain luck.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED SO FAR?
You may be light-years ahead of that schlub that got a piece of trash pub-
lished and is making a killing (boy I could name a few), but the one magic ingre-
dient you don’t have is luck.
MAKING YOUR OWN LUCK
There are plenty of masterpieces of literature, non-fiction and fiction out
there in every genre and non-genre. There is plenty of crap. Why? Those people
either stumbled into luck or made their own. How did they make their own?
The only way I know how to make luck is persistence.
 Persistence.
 Don’t give up.
 If you want it bad enough, keep plugging away.
I have a file cabinet full of rejection letters and partial manuscripts. I also
have, or had e-mail files of whatever rejection letters the agents and/or publish-
ers bothered to return. Many of them didn’t. In total, whether they did or didn’t
return something, I have 682 rejections to be exact, last count. It took me 20
years.
How long will it take you?
WHY ARE YOU REALLY DOING THIS?
My suggestion, which I’ve told many, many writers, is do not make a specific
goal of a certain number of months or years, or number of rejections before you
give up. To me, that is a complete fallacy. When I started this passion, that’s ex-
actly what it was, a passion. I got in this because I found my muse, it was easy
and seeing rejection after rejection, not once did I ever set a goal to quit. I’ve
continued making my own luck and writing story after story because I love to
write. It’s as simple as that.
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE
P AGE
4 well worth it. I’ve had a long time to hone my
It took twenty years, but
it was
chops and now it’s starting to pay off. If I hadn’t got these two contracts, I