So what’s the secret to writing a good story - the writer might ask himself while touching the keys of his creation; how will his story stir sufficient interest and entice the masses to buy and read his attempts at becoming a Scribe?
Some days, as he started hitting down hard on the letters, the thought of publication never crossed his mind and the tack of the tale never seemed to falter as the story line just flowed, as if it was always there - a vein waiting to be tapped. However on other days, the characters seemed to have a boorish behaviour that started to stem the flow of words, causing disinterest. Then at the times when this writer’s block became large enough it would cause a word-dam with the ideas eventually drying up. During these periods he downed fingers and waited for the dry season to pass.
His absence from the plot was like a holiday and when he returned there was renewed vigor and insight; his revived creativeness became as one with the word-flow once again. This revival revealed the whole word-picture more clearly, the mistakes, the stale characters and new windows of wit opened; steering his fingers to furiously figure the future formation of facts.
He continued tapping letters tirelessly together to form meaning and his enthusiasm caused his thoughts to flow faster than his fingers could forge to the paper. Spelling errors abounded as he accidentally hit the wrong keys in his haste - less he miss the momentary muse of a particular thought.
Then he stopped and it suddenly dawned on him, the secret to a good tale - the scribe’s secret. It wasn’t in the telling of the tale or recording its reoccurring characters in print. The satisfying secret lay within the creation of a story from a thought, from an imaginative occurrence or dream - creating a tale from nothing, and fulfilling an urge that fires an inner flammable idea that once ignited can’t be extinguished.
He wasn’t writing for recognition or reward; he was writing for himself. The self contentment that caresses the soul and the lingering last word of the last sentence in a story - that moment can’t be measured, it needs to be enjoyed and experienced for a short time before it disappears. Until a time when another thought beckons the scribe to search for the elusive mystery of inspiration – to once again find the scribe’s secret.

Someone once said: If your motivation for writing a novel is to make money then perhaps you should try another occupation. Many aspiring authors discover after writing their first story that it isn’t unique and that the world is full of talented people who can write an excellent tale but only a very few actually receive recognition and get published for their efforts. I’m a fiction story writer and through my own experiences I’ve found that completing the manuscript, although a laborious task, is possibly only one of the many steps in the process of getting published.

From my own point of view I believe some of the basic attributes necessary for writers of fictional stories is to have lively imaginations, sufficient enough for them to become one with the characters and the plot - stirring a sense of interest and excitement within the reader, for without those elements the story will lack conviction.
Depending on whether you self-publish your book or are accepted by a major publisher, there are three other important tasks that need to be addressed in the long process towards successful publication that many might overlook or not even consider. They are: Promoting, Marketing and Selling. However, there might be some budding authors out in writers’ world who say: I don’t want to be a salesperson, but when you think of it we’ve all been salesmen or saleswomen sometime in our lives – we do it everyday.
One of the most frustrating hurdles we’ll have to confront is finding someone in the literary world who’ll read our story. If we want to sell the manuscript to a literary agent or book publisher we’ll need to prepare a covering letter and a brief two or three page synopsis to get our foot (or manuscript) in the door, and we’ll need to be enterprising in our selection of words because there’s thousands out there doing the same thing. The words we use will set the process in motion; words that’ll catch the editor’s eye and words that’ll create the first step in the sales pitch – creating interest and wanting to know more.