Publicani

Well, I am illiterate, because my native language is Russian, and even though I’ve been in the USA about 30 years, I still speak with an accent. And the longer I stay here, the stronger the accent becomes. I am uneducated. I do have a Ph.D. but in Mathematics, and after my high school I never formally studied anything remotely related to Literature.

Yet, I do believe that Publicani is a good book, mainly because I like it - and it’s not easy to satisfy me - and also because people who I respect have told me they like it.

Here are four quick points on what is absolutely necessary to wright a good book:

1. You have to have a strong desire to write the book

Writing is such a hard job that you better have a strong desire to do it, otherwise you’ll find a million reasons to drop it. I don’t care how many books you wrote and how famous you are, if what you are writing is creative and original, you will feel stupid and miserable and you will often hate what you’ve written.  The only thing that will keep you going is your strong desire to write it.

I wanted to write Publicani because I wanted to make a shot at the cornerstone of the modern psyche that “if something benefits a lot of people, it should be done even if a few suffer a little.” Yes, I was trying to attack the income tax because I believe that income tax is the worst evil facing Americans. Of course, Publicani is an action thriller. It’s a book not about income tax, but about what could happen if a similar idea - something like a brain tax - were to be accepted by society.

2.  You have to enjoy solving problems

There will be plenty of problems with your plot: How did he know about it? She has to be at this place at that time, why? How can he get into the building if security is looking for him? What happened in her life that she wants to do this and how can that event be made relevant to the plot?

You have to be able to enjoy figuring these things out, playing with solutions until you find one that makes sense.

3.  You have to be able to relive the emotions of the point-of-view character

The point-of-view character is the character in the book whose brain the reader is currently renting. To write the scene, you have to feel like this character, you have to have the same emotions as this character, and you - you personally - should be touched by these emotions. If you don’t feel much, you’ll have to rewrite the whole damn scene.

This is also why it is so hard to edit what you’ve written: you have to revisit your old emotions and because you are doing it again, it can feel fake.

4.   Pick your first readers carefully: their reaction can make or break your book

It’s important to have an initial audience who a) loves you, b) is not afraid to tell you if something was boring, c) has enough tact to not give you specific advice on how to correct the problem. I was lucky to get great comments from my wife and children who read and reread Publicani many times.

That’s it folks! What are you waiting for? Go write the book!