They say it takes a village to raise a child … well; it seems it takes a team to raise this author!
To get me to this point, on this day, it has taken the input of many people. Most recently they include my writing colleague and dear friend Vicki Williams; my spiritual “angels on Earth” Jo, Anisa, Elicia and Ross; and my partner David. There is now a new person added to this list; accidental bestselling author, personal trainer and ex-footballer ANDREW JOBLING.
On a recent day away in the beautiful town of Daylesford in the Victorian highlands, while waiting for my friend Vicki to have her crystal ball reading with Elicia at The Empress & Wolf, I wandered into an amazing bookshop. Paradise Bookshop is one of those magical places that is, like the TARDIS, bigger on the inside than it seems from the outside. It’s a heaven filled with the written word; everything from rare first-edition copies of classics to the very latest releases.
As is usually the case these days, I wandered in and was led fairly quickly by my ‘people’ to the reason for my visit; a section at the side featuring a few displayed books on “How to be a successful Writer”. I looked at a few of them but felt strongly compelled to buy Accidental Author by Andrew Jobling. The cover was simple, fresh and classy. Page count was under 200 and the font size medium. The description on the front was compelling: “If an ex-footballer, non-reader, personal trainer and non-academic with no experience or qualifications can write bestselling books then you can too!”; it also reminded me of my own personal trainer. However, the real clincher was the final part of the description: “You will be ready to write your own bestseller before you finish reading this book.” SOLD!
Being a foreigner (not originally from Victoria) and not interested in AFL, I had no idea who he was but just ‘went with the flow’. I wandered though the shop a little more then decided to head to the counter. I purchased the book, complemented the elderly gentleman at the counter on his magical bookshop, and then dropped it off on the back seat of my car before continuing my window shopping.
The next day, at home, I started to read Accidental Author and found it very compelling. Well written but most impressively honest, funny and highly motivating. My ‘people’ had “hit a home run” again. (Oh, a sports analogy … that’s ironic coming from me!).
The one thing that blew me away more than any other was when Andrew shared the simple statistic on page 57:
“Just to put this into perspective for you, I would say that there are many people in the world who would like to write a book. Out of these people, probably no more than one or two percent of them will actually start the process. Out of these people who decide to become an author, only three to five percent of them will end up with a published book!”
Suddenly, the light went on in my head.
So, out of 10,000 people who want to write, only 100 actually start and only 4 become published authors. Then I realised… I already AM a published author… because my story was published in the book BOLD in 2015 … so that makes me one of those 4 out of 10,000! WOW!
So, when combining that revelation with the discussion about Blog’s we had at our WYNDHAM WRITING GROUP last Sunday, the explosion of inspiration resulted in this … my new BLOG… MICHAEL YOUNG: The Author’s Journey.
My immeasurable thanks to all who helped me get here,
Love and Light to you all,
Michael.
16Aug2017
P.S. Stay tuned right here at my Blog for upcoming post about the people and events mentioned above… 🙂
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BOLD: Stories of Older LGBTI People edited by David Hardy.
MICHAEL YOUNG 