Should You Write a Book?

I get emails all the time from people who want to discuss writing a book. If you've ever thought about writing a book and your query goes something like this ....

"I'm 25 years old and have been traveling around the world with a real life Princess in private jets, limos, being served by private chefs and I even had my own laundry people. I've seen things  you only read about in the fiction books. Every time I mention my story to anyone, they're immediately fascinated by it and insist that I must write a book. I'd be very interested to discuss the possibility of working on a book together with you."

You should not be writing a book. You should especially not be contacting an author, trying to convince the author to "work with" you by doing your writing for you.

There is a secret, quick, and easy test to know whether you should write a book. I can tell you about this test safely, knowing that it will not reduce the literary slush piles of the world by so much as a single page.  If the people who need to take this test stumble across it, they will decide it doesn't apply to them.

For the rest of you who don't need it, here's the test. Grab your query and count the number of times the word "I" appears. If the "I"-to-sentence ratio is higher than 50%, you definitely shouldn't be writing a book.

I get a few emails like the query above each week. Literary agents get hundreds ....for one literary agent's running commentary on the bottom of the barrel, check out SlushPile Hell.