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The Truth About Writing: An Essential Handbook for Novelists, Playwrights and Screenwriters

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The Truth About Writing: An Essential Handbook for Novelists, Playwrights and Screenwriters (Paperback)

by Michael Allen (Author)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Kingsfield Publications (1 May 2003)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1903988055
ISBN-13: 978-1903988053
Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.8 x 2 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,200,696 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Writing can seriously damage your health - not to mention your relationships, your bank account and your career prospects. Here is a book that tells writers how to survive and prosper while struggling to make sense of the mad worlds of publishing, theatre, television and film. The early chapters help you to clarify your ideas about what you hope to achieve as a writer - money, fame or literary reputation; they also provide a realistic assessment of your chances of achieving those aims. Subsequent chapters provide a detailed explanation of how the modern publishing industry works, and explain the crucial role of emotion for writers of both fiction and drama. Later chapters offer practical advice on how to find the time and energy to pursue your writing career, and provide help on how to market your work in the digital age.

From the Publisher

‘The Truth about Writing’ is a controversial, hard-hitting book which is going to upset some of the literary establishment. It will, however, prove enormously beneficial to writers.

After reading this book, writers will know how to think clearly about what they want to achieve from a writing career, and will be able to avoid wasting their time and effort on the unachievable. What’s more, they will know how to make the most of their limited time and energy.

Here, by way of a taster, are just of few of Michael Allen’s more trenchant conclusions:

As far as income is concerned, most writers would be better off working behind the bar in their local pub.

The desire for fame should be sufficient, in and of itself, to get you sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Serious literary criticism is written in a language called litbabble, which is a form of postmodern, deconstructed gobbledygook. Its practical value, in terms of helping you to write a better novel, is nil.

Unsolicited submissions, from writers who are not represented by an agent, are accorded the same degree of respect as would be given to something left on the publisher’s doorstep by a dog with diarrhoea.

The so-called advance is actually a retrospective.

Most publishers can recognise a bestseller, but only when it was published two years earlier and they have the sales figures in front of them.

Publishing depends, for its continuance, upon a ceaseless flow of mugs, suckers, and assorted halfwits who are prepared to work for a year or more without any serious prospect of remuneration.

The degree of success experienced by a writer will vary according to circumstance, and the definition of circumstance is everything that the writer cannot control, or even influence.

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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A welcome breath of fresh air, 18 Jul 2003

By A Customer

You won't have to look far in the Amazon catalogue to find a host of books for writers with titles such as 'How to write a bestseller in 15 minutes a day', or 'Sell that script for $1 million tomorrow'. Michael Allen, by contrast, makes it clear that any such approach is dream-world fantasy. The most likely outcome of writing a novel, for example, is that you will not only waste a year in writing the thing, but that you will then waste another year, plus a lot of postage money, trying to interest agents and publishers who will mostly treat you as if you were a nuisance.

In short, Michael Allen does his best to encourage you to be realistic about your chances of success. But if you are determined to be a writer, he suggests that you work out exactly what you are hoping to achieve, and he provides some extremely practical ways forward. He also provides some excellent advice on how to organise your time so that you actually get the book (or script etc) written. I could have done without the advice on diet, but that's a personal matter.

Last, but not least, this book is a lot of fun to read. People who work in publishing might not laugh as much as I did, but then, as the author points out, the truth is seldom comfortable.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading, 9 Sep 2009

By	M. G. Murray "Martyn" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are serious about wanting to write and publish a novel, then this book provides both a government health warning and a wealth of tips and insights to guide you along the way. It should be required reading. Yes Michael is a grumpy old man. He is idiosyncratic and opinionated, and once he has a definite idea about something, well that's that. But his ideas on emotion and writing are brilliant and his analysis of the mainstream publishing scene pretty much bears out what I finally realised after 8 years - that unlike the world of scientific publishing, the mainstream business is run by amateurs. So thank you Michael for your book and your marvellous axioms. Long may you continue to be grumpy.

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