How I did it: I decided at age 15 that I wanted to be a writer, and have sadly been derailed from it by various circumstances throughout life ... as with many teenage dreams. I never gave up on writing, though, and was fortunate enough to land a position as as physics writer for the About.com network. After two and a half years of writing for them, I was approached by a literary agent who was impressed with my work and was seeking an author to pitch for a project ... a project which turned out to be String Theory for Dummies. I wrote the book in about 5 months - October 2008 through February 2009 - and then edited it for another 6 or so months in collaboration with the For Dummies team and various technical editors.

Lessons & tips: You must keep writing, and always seek out markets to submit your writing to. It doesn't matter if you are writing great stuff, if you're never sending it out and no one is ever seeing it, you're never going to get any of it published. Begin establishing your career early, so that when the opportunity is right for your book, you have an established voice which can be built upon.

Resources: The writing resources on www.sfwriter.com are great, and I also greatly enjoyed the book Guerilla Marketing for Writers, which has just released a revised edition.

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Dec 31, 2009, 04:07PM PST | 0 comments | 5 cheers