The Holy Trinity of Success: write like an angel, market like a demon and be a lovely human being. | Jo Hogan Writes

Rule number one: write like an angel

I thought I knew this. I'd read Stephen King's 20 rules for becoming a frighteningly good writer, where he says there are four categories of writers: bad, competent, good and great. Now, obviously we all want to be ‘great', but what does that actually mean? I've always read a lot - a combination of the classics and whatever caught my eye in the train station - but thanks to twitter and @CBBookClub, this year I've read mostly debuts and/or the books that the industry, bloggers and writers rave about. And in case you don't know this already, I have to tell you that the bar on what counts as ‘great' right now is VERY high. Frighteningly high, as in how-can-I-ever-compete-with-that-high. Basically, there's no point in sending your classic ‘fish and chips' MS to an agent who is fine dining on the very latest novels.