Portable Magic: How to Write and Publish a Great Book

By Roseanne Cheng

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."—Stephen King

 

Do you feel like you have a book inside of you but don't know how to bring it to life? Writing a book is not about having supernatural talent that only a lucky few are born with—it's a process you can learn and even enjoy!

Imagine not only finishing the book you've been wanting to write, but putting together a publication path for that book which will help you meet your unique goals and dreams.

Whether your book is fiction or nonfiction, Portable Magic will walk you through the creative process step-by-step, from idea to outline to completion.

It's time to check writing a book off your bucket list. Let Portable Magic help you discover a clear, concise, and concrete method to help you create a writing and publishing process that will ignite the creative spirit in YOU.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evergreen Authors
• Release date: May 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781954108110

Book preview

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Introduction

When I was in 8th grade, I entered my Stephen King phase. I think most book people have a Stephen King phase, and now, looking back, 8th grade might have been a bit early, but that’s a subject for another day I suppose. My first book of his was Christine, which if you ask me is a masterpiece often overlooked. I moved on to The Shining then Pet Semetary (I might have needed therapy after that one), and on and on from there. I couldn’t get enough. My friend David and I would talk all things Stephen King at recess and swap paperbacks from the public library, careful to hide them from the nuns at Catholic school who probably would not have approved of our reading choices.

What I’m trying to say is that Stephen King’s books were my first literary obsessions. Books had the power to take me away from my own life, and into the life of someone else. I didn’t know much during those years, but I knew one thing: I wanted to do what Stephen King did. I wanted to write books that made people stop and take notice.

I wanted to be a writer.

While I loved Stephen King, I never wanted to write horror. I just didn’t have any ideas for stories that would compete with the master himself. Besides, by the time I was in my early 20s I had discovered Jane Hamilton, Wally Lamb, Anne Patchett, and Michael Dorris, among so many others. I will never forget the first time I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and sobbed, wishing it would never end.

I could do that, right? I had always been called a good writer by my teachers. How hard could it be?

I completed my first manuscript when I was 19 and still in college. It was a 26,000 word novella called Getting to Kelsey. The story revolves around a girl whose father dies when she’s young. She takes a job as a summer camp counselor and meets an older man who owns a bookstore in town whom she convinces herself is her father. She makes up this whole story in her head about how her father never really died, and that she’d found him, and that she was going to reveal herself to him and they would live happily ever after. She does reveal herself to him, and it turns out he’s not her father, of course. But what she discovers through that journey is that her father lives in her heart, and she doesn’t need him with her physically to feel his presence.

Not bad, right? I had lost my father in junior high school and this book felt very close to me. I, obviously, was Kelsey. Writing that book was painful and cathartic and an ultimately wonderful experience.

Then I set out to publish it. I went to the library and checked out Writers Market 2000, which was what I thought I was supposed to do. I sent out a bunch of query letters to agents in New York City, expecting to be the exception to the rule that a first-time, unknown writer has a minuscule chance of landing an agent, let alone a book deal, no matter how good her book is.

Thankfully, I got offered a $20,000 advance for Getting to Kelsey within the first few weeks of sending out my first query letter. I couldn’t believe it. The book was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 12 weeks that winter.

Ha ha HA! I’m kidding. Of course that didn’t happen. I got no less than 30 rejections before I gave up querying and put the manuscript in the bottom of a drawer somewhere. Convinced my writing career was over before it started, I took a real job as a business analyst at a high tech company.

It was the summer of 2003 when I picked up Stephen King’s On Writing. The book had been out for awhile, but it had been some time since I’d read any of his books. It had been some time since I’d read any books for pleasure. I didn’t have time to read books about writing. (I was too busy being miserable in my corporate job.) The way I saw it, you either were a writer or you weren’t. I wasn’t.

But this was Stephen King. The master. So I gave it a shot.

It wasn’t until I read On Writing that I fully appreciated Stephen King, the artist. Until then, I’d seen him as someone with a unique superpower for churning out books, over and over again. The stories were amazing, no doubt. But early in his career, he’d gotten lucky. He had his one bestseller, Carrie, and it was smooth sailing from there on out.

That’s what it means to be a successful writer, right? Land one great book deal, and the money, inspiration, and success just flow. 

After receiving so many rejections for Getting to Kelsey, I’d resolved myself to the fact that I’d never attain King-level success. And that meant failure.

What’s the point of writing if you’re not going to be a superstar, right?

If you haven’t read On Writing, consider this your homework assignment. Read. That. Book. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll appreciate just how much dedication Stephen King has to his craft.

Best of all, you’ll be out of excuses for not living the writer’s life.

The biggest, most honest aha moment for me was that I was equating success with an end result. I wasn’t concerned with the process. I had no process. I thought of a story, put the words down, and hoped upon hope that someone would see those words and provide me with a six figure advance and movie deal.

On Writing made me take Getting to Kelsey back out from the bottom of the drawer. I re-read it with new eyes. Want to know what I discovered?

The reason Getting to Kelsey didn’t get picked up by an agent and publisher was because it needed work. A lot of work. Did it have promise? Sure. Could I have workshopped it to make it better? Absolutely. The characters were underdeveloped. The plot had obvious holes. The ending was weak. But the truth was, I didn’t want to do all that work. When I re-read that manuscript I realized that it had served its purpose for me. I lived out a character and story, however flawed, that I wanted to write. I felt good when I finished it, but I was ready to move on.

I know now that book made me a writer, despite it never being published.

In the years since Getting to Kelsey, I’ve sort of stumbled into the writer’s life. I’ve published five books to date, not including the books I’ve ghostwritten. I’ve worked in indie publishing and marketing for the past seven years, working with hundreds of authors and wannabe authors who struggle with the same issues around creativity that I do.

How do I know if my story is any good?

What do I do with my story after it’s done?

Where do I even begin?

I’ve found that being a writer is a lot like Stephen King described in On Writing. It’s reading and writing a lot. It’s immersing yourself in the written word. It’s understanding voice and character and tone. It’s understanding the business side of creative work. It’s finding the very delicate line between understanding the business of being a writer, honoring the process of writing the book, and having the confidence, maturity, and tenacity that this career requires.

It’s not easy. You probably know many people who’ve said they want to write a book, but never do. Maybe that person is you.

I get it. Writing a book is an intensely vulnerable process. It requires time, energy, space, and connection. In a world where we are constantly on the move, constantly distracted by any number of things, even sitting down and brainstorming an idea can feel overwhelming. And let’s be honest–why make time for that when you can watch reruns of your favorite TV show on Netflix?

Sometimes when I meet with people who want me to write their books for them, they have resolved themselves to the fact that they simply don’t want to make the time and space for the work. Writing a book is hard, they have realized. They would rather pay me to do it.

That’s cool.