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Since every literate person can write, most people think they can be writers. Interestingly enough, we all can speak quite well, but few of us would deem ourselves ‘speakers.’ However, this prevalent belief encourages beginners to say the oddest things that make professional writers want to cringe (or preferably strangle them with a thin wire). If you find yourself saying the following, please stop:

1. “I can write a book in a weekend.”

I’m certain you can mutilate a couple hundred pages with words; however, that doesn’t mean that anyone will want to read them. Yes, I know there are prolific writers who can write a book in two weeks (Voltaire supposedly wrote Candide in three days). Usually they are professionals who have mastered a style and understand the craft of writing. Have you?

2. “I can write those ‘trashy’ books and make tons of money.”

Bwahaha! I love this one.

Many new writers see a 200-page romance or mystery and scoff. These things are so easy, they tell themselves. I can write this in a day. I doubt it, but maybe you can. If you do, will anyone pay you to read it? That is the difference. Those who sell in these genres usually have a passion for the craft that translates onto the page. Hate romance? Think mysteries are ridiculous? Believe sci-fi is for loonies? Then don’t write it, editors and especially readers can tell.

3. “If this crap gets published, I bet I could get a contract in six months.”

Define crap. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Don’t be arrogant and think the world should concede to your every taste (that’s what critics are for). Every writer is not meant for every reader. Just because you don’t like a book doesn’t mean it’s not good. It’s just not good for you. I don’t like okra; however, that doesn’t mean I need to start an anti-okra campaign. Diversity is what makes life interesting.

Okay, okay you’re not talking about taste. You’re talking about horrible, poorly written books. Yes, I know there are some truly bad books out there. Here’s the hard truth. Some bad books (poor grammar, poor structure and poor execution of a plot simpler than a fairy tale) get published. I have plenty of dents in my wall from an effective toss. However, these books are probably ‘placement’ books to fill a hole in a publishing list. Usually, these books sink and their authors are rarely heard from again.

Unfortunately, the existence of these books convinces people that getting their book published should be a breeze. Sure, and every person with a dream to sing will become the next International Idol. Is it fair? No. Do they care? No.

4. “I can write better than that.”

If you can, shut up and write. Nobody wants to hear about it. It’s as annoying as listening to someone explain what they would do if they ruled the world&ndashwell you don’t. Next!

5. “I’d write, if I had more time.”

You’ll never get more time; steal it. That’s what the rest of us do.

6. “I have the perfect book already written in my head.”

Sure, and I have the secrets to the universe taped to the bottom of my shoe. People who say this remind me of the naked emperor walking down the street trying to convince his kingdom that he’s clothed. You’re fooling no one except yourself and you look ridiculous.

Writing is work. Writers make it look effortless because that’s our job (imagine the disappointment you would feel seeing a dancer straining to leap off the ground).

I encourage anyone with a desire and passion to write fiction to do so. Write with meaning; write with truth and skill. Write because you must, not as a path to riches and stardom. It may come; it may not.

The real writers (beginner and pro) don’t talk about it; they do it. Be one of those.

Over the years, many people have asked me to look at their writing. “I need to know, do I have talent or not,” they say. “Then I’ll know if I should pursue writing or stick to accounting.”

Their request is seriously flawed, I’d reply. Anyone can become a better writer. When I taught English Composition at various colleges, I saw irrefutable proof of this. Students who submitted hackneyed, half-dead writing to start with turned in lively, well-written essays by the end of the semester. Likewise, I’ve seen plenty of writers whose work seems plain and unimaginative get assignment upon assignment from magazines while others with dazzling wordcraft skills can’t get published anywhere.

According to Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck, I was right to question the query about talent. Dweck’s book, Mind-set: The New Psychology of Success, reports research showing that in education, the arts and business, people who believe talent is fixed and inborn do not fully develop their potential and do not recover easily from setbacks.

Those who believe talent can be developed, regardless of apparent starting point, not only achieve more but also prompt greater achievement in their children and staff.

Her best news: You can change your mind-set about talent or intelligence. In only two months, kids who were taught that the brain, like a muscle, improves with exercise saw

their math scores rocket from F’s to B’s.

Toss out the belief that you either have writing talent or you don’t. Instead, approach getting published as requiring a set of skills that you can deliberately learn. These skills include:

1. Being sensitive to the differences between words. A good dictionary can help with this, if you consult it to learn, for example, whether a “cauldron” is the same as a “kettle” or when a gang member would be said to have “bravery” and when “bravado.”

2. Recognizing that getting your message across has less to do with what you meant and more to do with how readers understand the words you put together. If no one “gets it,” you must write it differently. Often this lesson is harder for those who feel desperately called to write than for those with a more matter-of-fact attitude toward writing.

3. Being willing to put a piece of writing aside, look at again in the cold light of the morning and rearrange, replace and revise the elements of the piece to tell the story more clearly and more artfully.

4. Having the discipline to learn and apply the rules of spelling, grammar and usage. Yes, when your work is accepted for publication you’ll usually have an editor who’ll save you from major mistakes. But editors prefer working with those who know and follow the standards of professional writing.

5. Being able to bounce back from disappointment. In the writing business, the possibility of rejection never goes away. Successful writers learn not to take it personally for more than an hour or so, then they simply go on to the next publication outlet or the next writing project.

From what I’ve observed, these five skills and attitudes matter much more for success as a writer than anything we’d generally label as talent. Resolve to develop yourself along those lines and you’re certain to get somewhere as a writer. Really!

As a successful author interested in building a business off your book, you must understand the difference between features and benefits. Features are tangible and benefits are intangible.

Features describe what a product is or has based on physical/tangible characteristics. On the other hand, benefits are feeling oriented.

Remember that the reason that people come to the Internet is because they have wants and desires and want to be satisfied. This is the *sole* reason that people come to the Internet. The key for you is to market to people’s problems and present yourself as the only credible solution.

Once you know your market’s problems, you will create a list of benefits that they will experience from dealing with you. You want to distill this list of benefits down to their very essence, which gives you your key benefit. You do this by playing the Which Means What? game with yourself (choose a benefit and ask yourself Which means what? to get down to the base benefit)

Your assignment is to record all the features and benefits that your product will provide to your target audience.

What is the difference between Features and Benefits? Here are some Definitions to help!

Definitions

Feature = What a product IS or HAS

Advantage = What your product DOES

Benefit = How your product HELPS you

Example

Let’s look at the example of a pen. Let’s say you design a new fangled pen using a proprietary ink formula that you have developed.

Feature: Has non-blotching ink

Advantage: Won’t leave blotches of ink and hence smudge marks on a page

Benefit: Saves you the frustration of making a mess by smudging blotches of ink. Saves you the frustration of trying to get your ink to flow properly. (Which means what?) Saves you money since you don’t have to purchase pens as often.

You are now going to create a Benefits vs. Features comparison for your book.

An Exercise:

List every possible feature and benefit that your product offers your target group. Make sure that includes everyone. The key with successful marketing is to focus on the benefits, especially those that make you different in the market place, while meeting your market’s needs.

Remember, the most successful marketers in the world sell feelings. This is because they know the secret to making money from other people: People buy based on the emotional experience it creates for them and then justify their purchase rationally.

Position all the benefits of what your book, product or service does for someone. Then distill the key benefits that you offer the market place.

When you discuss your benefits use lots of subheads and bullets in the copy that you use in order to position them powerfully.

In fact, if you can get testimonials from people you have helped, have them list all of the problems you have helped them resolve and them look at the benefits of solving each of those. Have those writing testimonials for you key on the problems and the corollary benefits.

This is the best way of selling feelings. Focus on the benefits of your book, product and service and let others tell stories about how you solved their specific problems.

Even with a dozen published books to my name, I sometimes need a dose of inspiration when I sit down to write. Above my desk, I’ve posted a paper with various pieces of fiction-writing wisdom I’ve collected over the years. Some of the advice may sound odd, but I’ve found it all helpful. Here it is:

1. Write as if no one’s reading. If you always imagine a reader perched on your shoulder, you’ll be afraid to take chances. At least for the first draft, ignore that imaginary reader and free yourself to write whatever crazy, impossible, lousy things occur to you. You can always fix it later - in fact, you SHOULD fix it later. But you’ll have nothing to rewrite if you’re too intimidated to write in the first place.

2. Show up at the page. Writers write. They sit down - ideally every day but at least as regularly as possible - and write.

3. Don’t polish the turd. If you find yourself spending a lot of time trying to save an idea, a chapter or even a sentence, it usually means it’s time to move on. You’re wasting your time trying to beautify something that, well, just plain stinks.

4. Make bad things happen to good people. Novels are driven by conflict, and that means bad things have to happen to your characters - these people that you’ve created and have grown to love over the course of your novel. Your main character can have a happy ending, but along the way, he or she has to deal with sorrow, disappointments and possibly even danger.

5. Murder your darlings. That sentence you LOVE? The sex scene that you’re sure will win you the Pulitzer? The pages that moved you to tears? Be prepared to kill them. In a novel, it’s the piece as a whole that matters - not so much the individual parts. Sometimes your best writing will have to see the sharp end of your editing blade to make things work.

6. Let Sean Connery write your sentences. As James Bond, he’s a man of action: things are not done to him, he does them. That’s how you should structure your sentences. Jason did not get stabbed by Susan - rather, Susan stabbed Jason. The weapon was not found by police - the police found the weapon. Writing in the active voice keeps things moving…and your readers reading.

7. When in doubt, pick one, any one. At some point in your story, you’re likely to face a fork in the road. Should Marianne get in the car? Or should she take off running down the road? Should she slap the guy? Kiss him? Reveal that she’s always secretly loved him? When you’re faced with a decision you can’t seem to make, just make it. Pick one, start writing, and see where it goes. If it doesn’t work out, you can always cut it and try again (see #5).

8. Keep your friends close and your reviewers closer. It can be helpful to get feedback as you go, but choose your readers carefully. Giving your precious pages to someone who is frustrated at their own inability to write a novel is like handing them a loaded gun … pointed right at you.

9. Rewriting is writing. You may have heard the old saw that “writing is rewriting,” but I like to flip it. Rewriting is just as valid a form of creativity as your first draft. Sometimes it takes more than a polish - it takes reaching into your gut and daring to make whatever changes need to be made, no matter how extensive they may be.

10. Skip and go naked. Be free. Have fun. Through the hard and often lonely work that is writing, remember to feel the joy. Unlike money, fame or even publication, it’s the one payoff that’s guaranteed.

My publishing journey has been unusual enough that friends and publicists alike have suggested I write about it, especially the part about being a man writing love stories in a woman’s genre. But it’s not just the genre. The whole publishing and agency world I encountered was dominated by women. Sound interesting enough? Okay. There’s just one little hitch. Now that I’m sitting in front of the keyboard, I find that there’s not much to tell that’s dramatic. Most of the women editors treated me fairly, and I worked well with the ones who gave me room to turn in.

If anything, being a man may have given me a certain advantage, you know, from a novelty standpoint. Not only was I a male engineer (of all things!), with no detectable writing credentials, daring to show up with a love story, but I was touting it as a love story unlike any other, one written of love at a higher level. Well, at least it made them look up from their keyboards. Even from clear across the Internet’s vast ether, I could feel their skeptical smiles.

I did have advantages related to temperament. Women have always been my epitome of beauty, and I have long admired the feminine spirit and disposition, the nobility of her biological calling, the sophistication of her romantic instinct. As a result, I have always worked well with women. Plus I am grateful. Everything I ever learned about romantic love at a higher level I learned from a woman.

The other advantage I had was acquired: I had studied love stories for decades and I knew the intricacies and jargon of the genre. At one point, an editor who was intrigued by my sample chapters started an e-mail conversation that escalated to a phone discussion. I knew this was curiosity bringing opportunity to my door. She was a Romance novelist as well as a Romance editor, so I was nervous as I dialed her office number. I could tell that she was surprised then delighted to meet a man who could discuss nuances of love story plot and characterization ranging from risk factors in portraying heroines as less than physically perfect, to pet theories for best lead up to denouement. I knew before the conversation was over that she would offer a contract. Not only did I address some reservations she had about my characters, but I had done so in the professional jargon she knew. As a result, she knew she could work with me for the editorial portion of the project.

With all this said, let me offer an opinion based on what I experienced. To the question about whether the bar is higher for a man writing in this genre, I would say yes, at least in a certain sense. If you are a man who writes mediocre romances, then I think it will be harder for you to get published than a mediocre woman writer. But if you are a man producing material that matches the top ten percent of the genre, then the reservations that woman editors naturally have about you won’t matter. You will get the consideration you deserve. Know the audience you are targeting. That counts for a lot. And be sure you can defend the theory you have chosen for how you spun your characters and how you wove your plot.

(Article Submitter)… It’s an amazing time saver. Also it will help you stay organized. Let’s look at article marketing or submission in general.

Article directories allow you as the author to store your work and take advantage of the traffic that visits them. So Instead of directly searching for other sites to publish your articles, you can submit your articles to article directories.

There are hundreds if not thousands of article directories where you can submit your articles. It can take days or weeks to contact all these directories and fill out each submission form.

For the time you spend submitting to these directories, you could have spent it writing more articles.

When you don’t have the extra hours in a day to contact each directory and submit them by hand, you can use article submitters to automate in part or in full, the article submission process.

The Article Submitter allows you to automatically submit your articles to hundreds of article directories with a few mouse clicks.

Basically all I You to do is input an article criteria into the software, ONCE! Then, the program would automatically fill in all of the required data at each of the submission websites. Pretty AmazingUuseful and ….WHAT a TIME SAVER.

You simply click the submit button and your article is instantly submitted to the directory. Then, you can move to the next directory, go through the list, and by the time you’re finished you’ll have a hundred one way links pointing to your website.

1. Don’t set yourself a writing routine or stick to it.

2. Always make sure that doing your writing is at the bottom of your list of priorities, and even when you are writing, if something else you have to do that day springs to mind, then go and do that instead.

3. If one of your friends comes round to invite you out for coffee, just go, no matter how busy you are with your writing.

4. Whenever you’re writing, answer the phone every time it rings and answer the door every time someone knocks.

5. Always feel guilty for doing your writing instead of doing what other people want you to do.

6. Don’t read any articles about writing, especially if it’s written by an expert.

7. If anyone ever tells you of a simple and profitable way to make money from your writing, don’t believe them and never try it.

8. Never take a writing course to hone your skills.

9. Don’t visit any writing sites on the internet, and never subscribe to their newsletters.

10. Don’t join any writer’s forums or participate in any online discussions.

11. Don’t get your own website to showcase your writing ability and writing services to the whole world.

12. Do everything you possibly can not to get your name known in the writing world.

13. Keep your work secret. Always put your writing away in a draw when you’ve finished and never show it to anyone &ndash especially editors and publishers.

14. Don’t enter writing competitions.

15. Don’t submit articles to paying websites.

16. Never even think about writing a book.

17. Especially don’t consider writing a profitable e-book.

18. They say you should write at least 5 article proposals or short stories every week. If you do write them, don’t mail them.

19. If a magazine or publisher offers specific guidelines for submissions, don’t follow them.

20. If an editor likes your work and publishes it, never offer to write for them again.

21. If you send in a query to an editor and don’t hear anything for a couple of weeks, start ringing them and don’t stop until they make a decision about whether or not to publish your work.

22. If one publication rejects your work, assume that it’s worthless and unsuitable for every other publication and don’t send it anywhere else.

23. Whenever you receive a rejection letter, take it personally and throw your work in the bin.

24. Never ever consider the possibility that, if your work’s written from a different angle, it could be suitable for another market and sold again.

25. And if all that doesn’t make you fail, you can always just give up writing.

Are you running short of ideas for your blogs or articles? Is generating fresh ideas for writing becoming difficult? By following the techniques discussed in this article, you will be a writing power house.

1. Subscribe to a dozen RSS feeds on various subjects you are most interested in. Scan through the feeds every morning or at night and select a few articles for thorough reading. After reading the articles, tag them using your own classification system.

Classifying articles in different categories helps locate them quickly. Use Google’s RSS reader for reading and tagging the RSS feeds. You will have access to your categorized articles from any computers connected to the Internet.

2. Subscribe to a few print magazines and read them regularly. After you finish reading an article, record the main points of the article in a Google note. You will have access to these notes anywhere in the World.

3. Use a PDA and carry it with you wherever you go. Better yet, get a PDA with a camera and cell phone. You will only carry one gadget for all your communication, organization, and content generation needs.

Take pictures of interesting places, events, and moments you come across in your daily life. Use the voice recorder of the PDA to record whenever an idea hits you. Every night, transfer the ideas from your PDA to Google notes and upload your pictures to flickr.

4. Scan through the comments posted by others on the online articles you read regularly. Record interesting ideas, pros and cons of an issue, and strong opinions posted by others in your Google notes. Leverage the wisdom of the crowd.

5. Have lunch with friends at least once a week. Bounce ideas off them on any topic. Mix ideas from divergent topics to create new ideas in you own subjects.

6. Use the time like driving, watching TV while exercising in a treadmill, etc. to think about your favorite topics and try to relate to things you observe on the road and on the TV. When you get an idea, record it in your PDA.

7. Go through all the ideas and articles you have recorded in Google notes and your RSS reader to create new ideas by giving new twists to the old ideas. Combine two or more ideas and change or improve an existing idea to come up with your own idea.

8. Use a variety of online tools like Technorati, Digg, Delicious, etc. for writing inspiration. Every hour, hundreds of new articles and news stories are posted in these sites. Check Yahoo’s buzz log to find out what people are talking about and searching for. Quickly scan them to hit a few gold nuggets that can serve as springboards for new ideas.

9. Using on-line tools discussed earlier, select an issue and jot down all the pros and cons. Search Google to enhance the idea by adding more pros and cons. Once you have collected a dozen diverse opinions, you will be able to write an article based on those facts in a pro-con format.

10. If you are good at using data for analysis and comfortable in the use of a spreadsheet, draw charts in the spreadsheet and look for patterns in the data. Provide you own interpretation to the data. Illustrate your articles with charts and graphs.

11. To generate topics for your article, use overture keyword selector. Select a single keyword and run it through the overture. You will see a dozen or more keywords based on the search popularity. Copy a few selected keywords to a notepad. Now, take each keyword and do a search in online sites like Digg, Technorati, etc. You will see a number of articles. Read them to generate ideas.

12. Ask yourself what if, what else, and why not questions on an issue and search the Internet to find answers from different sources. Create new ideas generated from existing materials, provide step-by-step guide for somebody to practice an obvious idea, or offer benefits of practicing an old idea.

When it comes to meeting deadlines, one way to manage your timetable effectively is to divide the large jobs and farm them out to several freelancers.

Let’s say you’ve been awarded a writing job to write an e-book on childcare with 10 chapters for $2,000 over a 45 day period of time. Bid out each chapter separately among 10 freelancers and allocate, say, $100 for each chapter over a 25 day period. This way you don’t have to worry about the deadline because you’ve given yourself a 20-day buffer and you stand to earn $1,000 for your efforts.

If you are going to handle a project in this manner, then you must be able to rewrite the articles to make sure the entire book “flows” seamlessly and that the same style and tone of voice is consistent throughout.

1. Cultivate a strong talent pool

In many cases, this is the most important asset you need to subcontract work to others. Here are a few additional tips to help you out in this regard:

a) Know how to hire a good coder

There are four things you should look at when hiring a coder &ndash their resume, their samples, their rating, and their client testimonials.

The last two are critical because it is easy to prepare a bogus resume and samples, especially on the Internet.

If you look at those four things and feel you have found the person you are looking for, hire them.

b) Know how to keep them happy

A happy coder always delivers better work than an unhappy one, given the same skill level. You keep your freelancers happy by dealing in a polite and professional manner, paying them on time and understanding them when they fall or falter (and believe me, they will miss a deadline now and then). Give them respect and they will give you their best.

2. Nurture your current roster of clients

Here is the main reason why quality counts &ndash it is quality, more than anything else, that will make your customers come running back to you again and again. Always put a premium on quality. First-class work is sometimes hard to find, especially given a limited budget. If you consistently deliver first-class work, you assure yourself and your freelancers of a prosperous business well into the future.

There is a popular saying in sales which says that “It is eight times easier to get new business from your current clients than it is from cold calls.” In other words, make sure you ask your clients for referrals from people they know or work with who may need the service you provide.

Some freelancers hesitate to ask for referrals because they feel it is unprofessional. They feel asking for referrals is like asking for a favor. That is not the case. If you have faith in your ability to deliver good work you are actually helping your client because of your willingness to provide quality work to their friends or business associates. That will reflect well on them too. It is a two-way street.

Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of .Bookpleasures.com, is excited have as his guest Frank McGee, author of A Song for the World: The Amazing Story of the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen: Musical Diplomats.

Frank has built a distinguished career as a writer and journalist over half a century. In the tumultuous 1960s he covered stories as far a field as Brazil, Indonesia, and Viet Nam. As managing editor of Pace magazine, a contemporary of Life, Look, and Holiday, he worked with thought leaders from around the world.

Norm:

Will you share a little bit about A Song for the World: The Amazing Story of the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen: Musical Diplomats with us?

Frank:

Glad to Norm. This is a book about the power of music. It tells the story of four musicians, The Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen. The Colwells were already country and western instrumental and singing stars in their teens, on TV and national radio in the Tex Williams shows that originated at Knott’s Berry Farm, the first theme park in America. They were the youngest group under contract with a major label, Columbia Records.

Herb Allen of Seattle, a true music prodigy, conducted the Seattle Baby Orchestra at age four. He was a xylophone maestro performing weekly on radio from age five to sixteen, a student of classical piano scheduled to enter Oberlin School of Music, and in high school, conductor of his own dance band, “Herbie Allen and his Orchestra.”

In their teens these four musicians made a choice that startled everyone who knew them: they committed their lives to public service. The remarkable story of how this happened, and what their decisions led to, is told in the book.

Here’s a quick rundown: The Colwells went on to perform in 37 languages and dialects, including songs written with locals in the scores of countries they visited. They sang in African villages, the Diet of Japan, and Carnegie Hall. They worked for a full year in the Congo as the country gained independence, lived through revolution and invasion, and made 400 broadcasts on Radio Congo (there’s a quite dramatic chapter, if I may be permitted to say so, about that tumultuous year). They walked through Indian villages with Gandhi’s disciple Vinoba Bhave seeking land for landless peasants.

The Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen began collaborating from their first meeting in Switzerland in 1953. In 1965 they were the musical founders of Up with People, and a decade later literally invented the modern Super Bowl Halftime Show format during America’s Bicentennial Year, 1976. They performed in three more Super Bowl shows, more times than anyone else on record. That’s how many people came to know of them: through television audiences of 90 million at those games. In 1978, at the end of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, their Up with People cast was the first performing company to visit China. And in 1988, before the Berlin Wall came down, the first in the Soviet Union, where they returned three more times. There’s lots to tell.

Norm:

What motivated you to write your book and whom do you think will benefit from reading it? What are your hopes for this book?

Frank:

The seed was planted in 2003. At a gathering of longtime friends a prosecuting attorney from California told us about terrible things youth in her city were facing. “There ought to be a book about what the Colwells and Herb have done,” she declared. That resonated instantly with all of us. We knew the adventures of these amazing musicians were not only history making but topical. Of course I only realized after the research just how profound the story was, an intensely relevant story of courage, and doing something of value with your life.

Who will benefit from reading the book? I think what a great English headmaster said in 1862 would answer that: “Music is the only thing which all nations, all ages, all ranks, and both sexes do equally well. It is sooner or later the great world bond.” Music has the power to connect people whether they’re musicians or not. Some read the book as an adventure story, not a Harry Potter sort of one of course, but a story from real life that also intrigues the imagination.

Here are my hopes for the book. The Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen have been called musical diplomats. Doors have opened to them wherever they’ve gone, because they’ve gone to listen and to learn, to appreciate instead of compare. That sort of diplomacy is needed in the polarized environment of our times. Many NGOs operate on that basis. But if official diplomacy also did, think what a giant step that would be toward building a better world. That’s why I hope to see this book utilized by schools and universities that train public servants and candidates for Foreign Service.

Norm:

Can you explain some of your research techniques, and how you found sources for your book?

Frank:

With this book I was really lucky. The families of these guys kept the letters and photos they’d received from their globetrotting sons. Among hundreds of letters were the personal stories of the struggles they’d faced operating for years in crisis areas around the world, of the sheer grit and sacrifice involved. Then when it got out that a book was in the works, people from other countries began sending photos and documents they’d squirreled away about some historic event. I received emails, letters, photos, publications, and record albums from across the world, Zurich to Anchorage, London to Cape Town, Hollywood to Helsinki. And of course the color of the story and much of the dialogue developed through hours of interviews with the artists, and with music industry people with whom they’ve worked.

Norm:

What challenges or obstacles did you encounter while writing your book? How did you overcome these challenges?

Frank:

I’ll mention just a couple. The first challenge shouldn’t have existed: biographers should portray their subjects with complete objectivity; I was a journalist long before I put on the hat of “author” and well aware of that. As the story unfolded though, with its unparalled global connections, and I became increasingly impacted by the lives and work of these four musicians, I needed to be certain that I let the story speak for itself. They’ve never made claims, and neither should I.

The other challenge turned into a very great plus. Initially I wanted the book to include story-telling pictures throughout, as we had unearthed great photography from around the world. But an important New York publishing company we were in contract negotiations with made it a condition that they would control the design and format, much to my unhappiness. That contract was not finalized, fortunately, and Many Roads Publishing in Santa Barbara, California produced a picture-rich design and format that greatly enhances the effectiveness of the book.

Norm:

What’s the most difficult thing for you about being a writer and journalist?

Frank:

Well, you’ve probably heard the old saying: “There comes a time in the life of every decision when it’s got to be made.” I translate that to mean that if you’re a writer and journalist you need deadlines. I’ve never relished them, something to do with my temperament I suppose, but it’s obvious that until there’s a deadline, nothing happens.

But deadlines are insignificant compared to the satisfaction, intense at times, of creating something that you know has significance and value. I’m very lucky to be in this profession. I became a photographer in Brazil, moved on to creating magazine photo essays, and then to editing, writing, and publishing.

Norm:

Do you feel that writers, regardless of genre owe something to readers, if not, why not, if so, why and what would that be?

Frank:

I definitely feel writers owe something to readers. Some books have been hinges on which doors of enlightenment have opened. Whatever we read remains forever in the mental landscape of our lives. Whether the contribution grows or withers is up to each individual, but putting it there in the first place is a considerable responsibility, I would say.

Norm:

As a follow up, what does it mean to tell the truth? And what does it mean to tell stories in a work of non-fiction?

Frank:

What a great question, Norm! A wise family friend once told us of an exchange she’d had with her professor at Vassar College. Apparently she had submitted a paper in which she’d stated some opinion as fact. So her professor asked her, “And what else is also true?” The topic of truth has filled countless volumes and will fill countless more. What is truth to one might seem lies to another. But if writers portray what they sincerely believe, we should regard their writing as ethical, even if we are diametrically opposed to what they’re saying. Sounds like we’re describing the religious and political divides of the world here, doesn’t it?

About stories, I think they can make non-fiction immensely readable. My wife Helen, who was an English major, has insisted for years that history should be taught through literature; it would be better absorbed and understood. Currently we’ve been reading historical novels, and I’ve become intrigued with things I never thought I’d care about, as I tended to fall asleep in history class. In A Song for the World, I’ve been fortunate, as there was a wealth of first person information in the letters retained and in the interviews.

Norm:

In the past few years or so have you seen any changes in the way publishers publish and/or distribute books? Are there any emerging trends developing?

Frank:

Many changes, Norm, and all of them contributing to the accessibility of information. Conventional publishing channels still run the Olympic games for writers, but the initial selection process can overlook significant manuscripts. A friend recently sent me an article that appeared in The Guardian. It seems that a writer, puzzled by continuing rejections of his masterpiece, submitted to eight major publishers the first chapters, with surnames and locations only slightly modified, of several Jane Austin novels. He received seven rejections, with standard not the type of book for us explanation and keep writing and good luck best wishes. Only one responder mentioned the plagiarism, which he seemed to find amusing.

I think writers, now as always, need to catch the attention and spark the enthusiasm of someone who will carry the writer’s banner, and will wave it where it can be seen. You’ve heard the axiom: “You can promote anyone but yourself.” But the writer may have to work to find that third person, whether enthusiast, agent, or publisher.

Publishers have long probed distribution channels and are expert at exploiting book clubs, bestseller lists, teacher assignments, library recommendations and more. Of course now the apparently limitless possibilities of the digital world are changing everything from bottom to top.

Norm:

What do you think of the new Internet market for writers?

Frank:

Well just look at us, Norm. Here we are having this conversation online! Our kids think it’s perfectly natural, and it is today, but I grew up before you could say something like that, and I still find it pretty amazing. Someone might read your interview tomorrow in Berlin, or Bangkok, or Budapest. Of course A Song for the World is all about that, isn’t it? Connecting?

Norm:

Is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered and what is next for Frank McGee?

Frank:

Most of all I hope a lot of people will read the book, because what these musicians have done offers real hope for the future. There’s an engaging glimpse of the story at .asongfortheworld.com, and the book can be purchased there.

We’re in the midst of a book tour now and there is information about that on the website. Special appearances by the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen in connection with the tour have caused a buzz in cities across the country.

Next for me is a novel I was working on and set aside to write A Song for the World. I’ll be expecting a bidding war for the publishing rights for that, of course. Many thanks for inviting me today, Norm.