Ginny Porter and Helen Osborne have spent many years in executive positions with the South African Writers' Circle.  Helen is currently chairman of this organisation.

After compiling and facilitating many writing workshops and seminars, it also became obvious that many people, although brimming with ideas, often lack basic writing skills.  To address this, and many of the other questions, that were thrown at them on a regular basis, they put their knowledge and expertise into a book.

Many writers had completed a story or a book and the questions was, 'Where to from here?' Mostly, writers want to know how to get published.

There are many steps, and sorry to say, often stumbling blocks, on the path to publication, and Ginny and Helen have written a book that addresses most of these problems, and which gives authors the best chance possible of achieving that dream - a publisher's contract.

This book deals with the three aspects separately, although they overlap to some extent:

Art - a CD is included in the book, which contains many exercises and ideas to stimulates creativity

Science - the basics of writing.  It advises on format, plot, sub-plot, characterisation, dialogue, how to submit your manuscript, and mistakes to avoid.

Luck - we all need it, but by following the advice in the first two sections, luck won't play such a large part in your endeavors.

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Getting Published... Art, Science or Luck? by Helen Osborne and Ginny Porter, is a fascinating book which, when I first saw it, I intended working through when I had time. Having dipped into it, I now realise that I am going to do this much sooner than that!

It is at first sight a very practical, simple guide to getting published, with a lot of commonsense advice and interactive exercises, supplemented by a very useful CD. If you look at it more closely, you realise that it is very carefully structured and covers a range of issues in a very systematic manner. For an aspiring writer it is an exceedingly useful guide. I suspect that even a frequently published writer would find in it things they didn't know.

The CD supplements the book and judging from the examples of text written by course-goers, is great fun to use with a group. I went through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way a few years ago as part of a group, and from that perspective, find this book to be the perfect sequel - practical, but based on similar principles. But it stands on its own perfectly well, and is a book that is going to be hard to beat. I don't know of another book on this topic in the South African market, and welcome its arrival!

Catherine Dubbeld
BA Hons, M.Bibl UKZN
Campus Librarian Howard College

 

I found your book really positive, easy to read and so practical as a handbook. Wow, you guys have written a winner.

Eivind Gjosund
Motivational Speaker