Write fiction with a future

How do you write fiction that will sell in today's highly competitive marketplace?

Lately, in addition to doing my usual soul searching (they call it “inner work”) I’ve been playing with words and their impact on our daily lives.

Since I’m also a writer as well as a publisher, “the word thing” has been going on ever since childhood when I loved to use large words at the wrong times—publicly.

“Competitive” started to hit the drafting board with a thud and I found myself wanting more than ever to eliminate it from my shopping cart.

A far better replacement for my own writing, publishing and promotion philosophy seemed to be “cooperative.”

Recently I encountered a little book with a big message written by Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich: Attracting Financial Success through Creative Thought.

Many people don’t know that it was Wattles’ words that pushed Rhonda Byrnes’ DVD, The Secret, into the limelight.

Basic to Wattles’ highly scientific treatise--not woo-woo or voodoo at all—is the replacement of cooperation with competition in our personal as well as our professional endeavors.

Then and only then do we have an opportunity to get rich.

“Getting rich” has a great deal to do with becoming wealthy of spirit. In the process, it’s highly likely that we will start to collect material wealth as well.

The same philosophy can be applied to the way we write fiction. If you try to “beat” your “competitor” by copying their form, style, even parts of their dialogue and making another version of their work that is just different enough to avoid being sued for plagiarism, you are writing from competition.

The best writing is your own, written from your own experience and developed from that inner core of who you are. Write to give something to people, to share your observations and your unique perspective on life. And then, act.

Action is a critical part of Wattles’ rules. Find the best online direct marketing program available and build your own website; build your own loyal readership.

Read Dandelion author Elizabeth Lucas-Taylor’s blogs about how to write fiction that sells.

Check out Dandelion’s fiction titles.