I got one of the best compliments for my writing that I could possibly get a couple of days ago. Not this blog (that hardly anyone reads anyway), but for my real book, the snappily titled Propertastic’s Complete Guide to Hurghada Property and Egypt’s Red Sea Real Estate.
I gave a copy away to a really nice couple from Yorkshire in England who I was showing some property to. They were a lovely couple, but they weren’t the brightest people that I’ve ever come across. Despite that, they had managed to set up a chain of spa centres across the North of England and were in the process of amassing a decent property portfolio whereas me, with my IQ of 142 and who works 10 hours a day, seven days a week for the past 25 years, has achieved more or less, bugger all.
Anyway, I gave them a copy of he book, more as a souvenir than anything else.
I met up with them again a couple of days later and the wife exclaimed to me:
“I really loved your book. I’ve never read a whole book before because I find them all a bit boring and too much hard work. Normally I give up on them half-way through the first chapter, but I read yours from start to finish on the bus journey to Cairo and back.”
“It wasn’t like reading a book at all. It was just like I was sitting there listening to you talking to me.”
It might sound egotistical to be blogging about this at all, but this comment made me more happy than if any academic genius had commented upon the knowledge and wisdom that I had expounded upon in the book’s content. This is because it was exactly what I was trying to achieve - to make a rather boring and, in some respects, rather complicated, subject both easy to understand and entertaining at the same time.
As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I have started to call my style pulp non-fiction.
I don’t know why so many other writers have to write about dry and dull subjects in a dry and dull style. Why can’t people try and get information across to people in as easy and entertaining style? For me it is a lot easier to write like this than it would be to try and complicate matters because it’s just a case of thinking out loud on paper. In this way I really hardly have to think at all – it’s just a question of how fast I can type (which is pretty fast, which I how I managed to churn out my book in just a little over a couple of weeks (OK, so it was a pretty slim book at just 25,000 words, but still).
Are writers worried that their content will seem less valuable because the readers are enjoying themselves while they’re reading it? I really don’t understand.
Maybe it’s because my background has been in writing for the Web – a format where you need to write for people with very low attention spans and keep them entertained to stop them clicking away to someplace else, but I see no reason why the same principles should not apply to writing for print as well. Until I received the comment from my satisfied readers, I thought that maybe I was alone in having these thoughts, but this gave me some confidence in knowing that there is definitely an audience for this style of writing.
So I will definitely be applying it to more topics in the future. Now I just need to come up with some other topics that will benefit from such a writing style – and ones that will enable me to make a little cash from being perceived as an ‘expert’ in some field or other because the money that can be earned from writing is usually tiny, whereas the credibility that can be gained from having a book published can be priceless if leveraged in the right way – which is something that I discovered totally by accident but managed to stave off bankruptcy for a while longer.
Maybe the above has given you some clues as to how you can make a little cash for yourself if you can string a few sentences together. If not, then tune into this channel again tomorrow and I will give you a step-by-step guide to a way that you can make some decent money from your writing providing that you are willing to spend a bit of time on it.
1 Comment
September 28, 2008 at 12:51 am
i love your writing. your blog is written just as she said. “sitting there while you are talking to me”. you definently have a talent!