Review: Eight Essentials: Keys to Success for New Writers

So you want to be a writer, huh? But where to start? That’s the big question.

Well, help is at hand! In Eight Essentials: Keys to Success for New Writers, her first real-live, published book, Christine Royse Niles tells the story of how she found the answer, and answers a few other key questions anyone serious about becoming a writer will run into sooner or later.

The style is witty and fun, and in case you’re tempted to think that that kind of all-singing-all-dancing prose drips naturally from Christine’s fingers like honey dripping from one of those odd twizzly things that you’re supposed to serve honey with at posh afternoon tea parties, even though they’re impossible to clean and drip everywhere (and really, who wants honey on their scones? Ugh!), she includes a sample ‘first draft’ of a short story along with its finished piece to prove that she can be just as long-winded and wordy, with occasional weird meanders off the point, as the rest of us.

I know Christine a little from the ’15 Habits of Great Writers’ challenge I did a while back (see my posts on it here), and I know she speaks from long, hard, grit-your-teeth-and-press-on experience. That experience and her sense of fun makes a book of writing tips both really helpful and, in places, laugh-out-loud funny – which is quite a trick.

If you’re thinking of being a writer, in whatever genre, and don’t know how to take the plunge, or have taken the plunge and don’t know how to get from this big, scary pool of water to a place where you can stop splashing long enough to actually get something published, you should buy it. It doesn’t cost much, and it will reap dividends.

Plus, it mentions me, so that’s a bonus right there.

Buy it for kindle (or a kindle app on your non-kindle device) at amazon.co.uk or amazon.com, or get a copy from Christine’s website.