Have a book in you? Have a half-digested meal in you?
Well, you can keep the meal, but how about letting the book out?
Your Humble Narrator is doing another one of his book groups over the next two Saturday afternoons. It’s a sort of crash course in how to write a non-fiction book or memoir.
I’m delighted to say that these have been rather successful in the past. Indeed, I will be handing around some copies of books published by previous students to show that it really works: you can get your words into print.
If anyone reading this fancies learning how to get non-fiction books published, drop me an email as soon as you can, and I will save you a seat – but be quick, please – we start on Saturday September 13. It’s being run by Merecl, the creativity lab spin-off of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and costs HK$3,200, which is about US$500.
If you can’t get to Hong Kong, apologies. We’ve been experimenting with the technology to be able to offer these professional training courses long distance, but we’re not yet confident of being able to provide genuine value, so at the moment, it remains a turn-up-on-the-spot course.
The syllabus is below:
- How reality outsells fiction
- Hidden truths about the non-fiction market
- Hot trends in biography and memoir
- Key decisions in choosing a subject
- What you need to know before planning the book
- Non-fiction story structures that work
- Selectivity and story focus
- How to drastically lower your research time
- Essential writing techniques for non-fiction authors
- Producing the text quickly, efficiently and painlessly
- Getting a book contract after writing just one chapter
- Schedules that will get the book completed on deadline
- Dealing with your editor
- Ensuring that the book is a hit
- Publishing and promotion
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Other news: In response to requests, we have added two features to this website. You can know link to any page, instead of just the front page. For example, if you are mentioned on a particular page, or have a favourite piece you want to forward to someone, each page has its own address in the address bar.
Second, we have added a search-this-site box, powered by Google, so you can find specific references easily -- there are literally hundreds of postings not listed in the columns at the sides of the main page.
