Books are powerful things. They can help us to find solace in our darkest of times. They can provide us with information about how to do the things that we want to do in our lives. They can sometimes be our best friends. In my own life, books have frequently inspired me to do things that I otherwise would not have thought of doing.
For example, it was a book that inspired me to go on a romantic vacation in Canada. I don’t recall what the name of the book that I read was but I know that it was a fictional story about a woman who had taken a Via Rail Canadian Rockies vacation. She fell in love during the trip and I fell in love with the description of the scenery depicted in the words of the novel. Shortly after reading the book, I planned my own trip to the Banff Canadian Rockies with a guy I had only recently started dating. It was the best trip I’ve ever taken.
I wouldn’t say that books tell us what to do. However, I do think that we can learn a lot from them and that our lives can be inspired by them. The message of the book itself may not even be what inspires us. As long as we take something away, though, I would say that a book has done its job.
Recently, my 8 year old daughter determined that it was time for the family to get a dog. Knowing this was brewing, I decided that it would be a prime opportunity to impart some of the age old parental wisdom. Or at least that’s what I thought I was going to do. She initially decided that the look of the Miniature Schnauzer was what she was excited about, so we started looking for them.
At first, I wanted to find books and online destinations concerning dogs so we could all learn more about the joys of dog ownership as well as the responsibilities. She needed to understand that the bulk of the responsibilities were going to be on her, since her mother and I were bearing the financial aspects of pet ownership.
The more we studied about various dog breeds the more she changed her mind about what kind she wanted us to get. Once we went out to a local breeder’s farm and she got first hand experience of everything from Great Dane’s to miniature schnauzers.
The one breed that seemed to capture her heart was the Pembroke Welsh Corgi. Like Queen Elizabeth II, a warm glowing smile came over my daughters face when she was introduced to the Corgi, and that was the dog we ended up bringing into our home.
If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class then you know that the single most common piece of advice for a writer to hear is that you should write what you know. In creative writing, this basically means that you draw from your own experience to create your characters. However, this advice can be applied more literally when you are writing non-fiction work. It can even be applied to writing short non-fiction works such as ebooks.
When you write an ebook, you are typically writing a short book that provides useful information to someone on a topic that they’d like to research online. When you write what you know, you provide that information without having to do a lot of research yourself. For example, if you already had to settle credit card debt in your life then you can easily write an ebook discussing debt settlement options without having to research what those are.
Writing what you know reduces the amount of effort that you put into the work but still lets you tell people what they need to know about a subject. This is important because ebooks don’t pay writers as well as published print books do. Because of that, you don’t want to take up a lot of time writing them. Nevertheless, you don’t want to get known as an author who puts out bad information so you should only write what you know.
When I was a teen ager, I didn’t really have any ambitions. About the only thing I was interested in were the girls. So as you can imagine, writing a book was the last thing on my mind as the hormones ruled my life back then. So it is hard for me to believe that my teenage son actually did write a book.
He got the idea from the classic children’s book about how every animal poops. You have probably seen that one, right? You know, elephants have big poops, mice have small poops. Now my son’s book is not about poop, but he figured that if a book about poop can be a best selling children’s book, then maybe he could write a children’s book too.
So he did. His book is about getting along with or putting up with a younger sibling. I guess you could say he was just writing about what he knows about. Anyway, he submitted it to a publisher, and it was accepted. It is now in print and is being sold at the big book stores. He has been on all of the local TV stations to talk about it too. It has done so well that we set up a trust for him so he could set the money aside for college.
When you think about writing as a career, most people think of their favorite author. Maybe Steven King comes to mind. Here’s a guy that pumps out books just about as fast as I can read them! And there is good money in this field for him. He could easily retire at any time because he has made millions of dollars from his work. Of course he loves what he does, so he is not going to stop writing. But he is living proof that you can make good money as a professional writer.
But is it just books? Of course not! In fact, most people who are making money by writing are not writing books anyway. It’s much more common to write articles than books. Plus, anytime you are getting published you have to go through an editor first. And what is it that these editors really are? They are writers making money by doing what they love to do: write!
So if you have a certain affinity for writing, maybe you can turn what you like doing into something that makes you money. While a formal education is typically required, it is not something that should hold you back. If you can prove yourself as a reliable and skilled writer you can always get your shoe in the door. Just Google it for yourself and you will see that there are many opportunities to make money by writing.
