That’s what I asked myself before I began writing Some Men Deserve to Die. The most important follow-up question, I found, is “At what level are my writing skills? “ While I had written a number of scientific articles and book chapters during my academic career, I had no experience in creative writing. This required a lot of work to overcome! I wrote SMDTD over five years and the first two to three years involved developing the story and learning and re-learning basic writing principles. It was the hardest thing I had done since medical school. The subsequent years were better, but if I been a better writer to begin with, I could have finished the novel in about three years. As it is, even after years of studying and writing the novel and editing it numerous times, I still have a lot to learn. Writing books in different genres will require additional skills and insight and will be particularly challenging. A third question to ask yourself is “Am I willing to spend the time needed to write my book?” To finish SMDTD, I wrote for one to two hours every morning, five days per week, nine months each year, for five years. I learned that however much time you estimate it will take to write a book, plan on twice that amount of time to complete it. If you are unwilling to spend the time and effort that’s needed, there’s another option: decide on your story and hire someone else to write it for you. There are many publishers that provide this service. If you have additional questions that prospective authors need to ask themselves, please provide them in this blog.
I’ll be posting other blogs about writing and publishing Some Men Deserve to Die. Stay tuned.
L.C. Larsen