Steve’s Student Blog

The Facts

Best-sellers, as anyone who actively reads knows, are a law unto themselves. One would think that a studying of the yearly list would bequeath some profound secrets. Wrong. The lists appear to be meaningless–Or are they?

No, of course they are not meaningless, that’s the simple answer, although it’s certainly true that every list seems about as mysterious as can be. All of these books, generally speaking, deserve to be where they are. I’m not talking about just the books, of course, I’m talking about the authors themselves. People who just magically seem to end up where they are.

But here’s the thing: it isn’t magic, it’s simply lots and lots of hard work. If the average person who walked in to a book store had even the faintest idea of how hard a bestselling writer had to work to be where they are, they’d probably faint.

What they don’t tell you on the blurb on the back of the book is that most writer’s spend years battling away to even get noticed. Half work a Secondary education job and the other half struggle, their spouses under pressure to earn enough for them both. This may sound obvious, but bear in mind that a rejection letter (the staple of the writer’s life, really) can also be exceedingly harsh. What it’s saying is that all those months / years of hard work you put in might be for nothing. It’s saying that you may just have wasted all that time–

So next time you walk in to a book store have a look around. What you are looking at is not just books. What you are looking at is honour, pride, and a thousand years of grit and determination.