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Old November 22, 2010, 09:53 AM
Dien Rice Dien Rice is offline
Onwards and upwards!
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 3,460
Default Winston Churchill's secret to writing - and earning - a lot...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Glenn View Post
Thanks Dien,

Great Article.

Winston Churchill also dictated all of his books.

Glenn

This still applies.

Mark Twain Quote -

"the principal objective of each new administration is to make the last one look good."
Hi Glenn,

Thanks for sharing that fact about Winston Churchill - I had no idea that he dictated all his books!

I found an article which seems to give some details about how he "wrote"...

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/lear...the-wilderness

To summarize, he hired secretaries and also a researcher. He would dictate to a secretary, and the researcher would check the facts, and supply him with new facts. Often, he'd discard what he "wrote" the previous day, if he knew (due to feedback from the researcher) that some of it was wrong.

However, by using this technique he was very prolific, and he earned a lot of money from his writing. (This is before he became Prime Minister - he earned even more after he had been Prime Minister of the UK.)

He'd not only use this technique for writing books, but also for writing newspaper and magazine articles (which he also got paid for).

Of course, nowadays you can speak int o a digital recorder or iPod or even some cell phones, then you can get a transcribing service to do the transcription for you.

As for Mark Twain's quote - I agree, I think he's still right!

Thanks Glenn - very enlightening!

Best wishes,

Dien
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