Louisa McCormack went to the University of Toronto with me, and we were both residents of Margaret Addison Hall, on Charles Street.
Louisa always had a look of devout professionalism about her.  Always cheery and friendly, and always seeming as if she was just rushing to meet a deadline.
Along the path of life since those university days, Louisa and I keep bumping into each other.  Friends of friends,– you know how it goes.
It didn’t take me long to put two and two together.  Why is this dynamic journalist always writing and always working, but I don’t see her published that many places…????
Louisa is among the most gifted women I know, to say the least. It just didn’t make sense.

I took my daughter with me down to TYPE on Queen, for the launch of Louisa’s new book, the Catch.

Finally, (exhale) although it is not her first, I was thrilled to see Louisa putting her name to her work.
We have all heard the term “ghost writer”.   Well largely when I thought of Louisa, that is what I thought. Many books that we have all delved into that seem to be written by this or that person, have in fact been written by Louisa on their behalf.   So there’s a little secret.   Just because x person says that they have authored a new book on their unique concept or brand or idea,  not so fast—it may be Louisa’s writing that you are reading!
We will never tell, and furthermore, neither will she!

I am very excited about this piece. How does one entice one’s ghost writer friend to, as it were, give up the ghost?

Now the story can take an easier turn. We have all said at one time or another that we wished we could just write that novel that we have in our heads. “Nobody would ever believe that story, you should really write it down…”
I asked Louisa what motivates her, and how she could advise theperfectconnections on this subject. Louisa has condensed some cold hard facts for us and they make sense.
I hope you enjoy what she has to share with you as much as I enjoy having Louisa as a friend.
Try to find a way to meet her, buy her book and read it. Read her blog. Send her a note. She is one of the hidden jewels that we all need to pay much more attention to!

photo credit Jessica Dutton

So thank you Louisa, and thank you my dear readers for letting me share this with you:

1. Buckle up—it’s a long ride. Three to five years of steady work on average, two if you put pretty well everything else on hold.
2. Your book will not come close to paying for itself. A decent advance for a novel nowadays is $10,000 — $20,000. Few books “earn out” their advances. Those seven figure advances you hear about in the news? The literary equivalent of a 47-year-old in Hollywood becoming joyfully preggers.
3. A bestseller in Canadian terms sells 5,000 copies. Believe it or not, that’s a lot. Note to self – buy more books.
4. Anyone can write. Only writers rewrite. You may have toiled over a paragraph until your blood ran to lava, but when it became obvious it was total crud you scraped it all away. That took a hell of a lot of brain muscle. My congratulations on your great shape.
5. Midnight oil is for drama queens. Unless you really are tempestuously brilliant, the best work gets done as methodically as coal mining. You will come to love your dark tunnel, flashlight and jaunty hard hat.
6. There’s no real fun part. You worry when you write it, you worry as it’s edited, you worry while it’s promoted, you fret when it’s reviewed, you’re dismayed by your Amazon ranking, then you start all over again. Well, fun is for kids.
7. There is no point giving up when it dawns on you that you’re not a genius and others may well be so. Non-geniuses are still allowed to write books. And they probably have much better table manners.
8. You can write like an angel, plot like a demon and have the voice of a god, but if your long length fiction is about a contemporary adult female, it’s chick lit and that’s that. Cheer up. Jane Austen wrote the chick lit of her time.
9. Many people will tell you that you should “go on Oprah.” Act like that had never occurred to you. Then feel free to suggest to them in turn that they hit up their fairy godmother for new shoes and check every rainbow for a pot of gold.
10. Anything is worth doing, no matter how much on the cultural wane, no matter how life unaltering, no matter how deep it drags you into your own little world, if you feel like your existence would be somewhat nonsensical without giving it a shot.

www.louisamccormack.com

DO YOU HAVE A BURNING QUESTION TO ASK A JOURNALIST OR AN AUTHOR? FEEL FREE TO CONTACT US AND WE WILL PUBLISH OUR FINDINGS FOR YOU.

Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.

- Dean Koontz