Sometimes it may seem as if your book is “just not meant to be”

By Dennis Mellersh

As you progress in your research towards your goal of learning how to write a book, you may find yourself asking the question, “Do I really have the capability?”

Such doubtfulness is natural and can plague professional writers when they are faced with low periods in their creativity. Even experienced book writers are not super-creative and super-productive 24/7.

But doubting that you even have the capacity to achieve your overall writing goal can be disheartening.

However, you just need to remember that learning to write well and then applying your improved writing skill to producing a book manuscript is a skill that can be learned.

Every successful writer has had to go through a learning process. This process includes formal academic formal instruction such as creative writing at college or university; on the job training, such as with journalists just starting out in their careers; or with “natural-born” novelists struggling with their early efforts.

Even the most gifted novelists, who may learn to write simply by reading other author’s novels, are often unhappy with their first efforts. There are many stories of well-known authors who tell us that a good deal of their early writing work ended up in the trash can, or was put away on a shelf or in a drawer.

Here’s a bit of brief but significant encouragement for beginner writers who want to write a book, but feel they “may not really have it in themselves” to do so. It comes from the respected novelist Toni Morrison.*

“If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

So, start a new page and keep on in your efforts to learn how to write well. There can be a book in your future.

* "Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931) is an American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved. She also was commissioned to write the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005. She won the Nobel Prize in 1993 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved. On 29 May 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom"
Source: Wikipedia
There is a full Wikipedia article on Toni Morrison at the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison