At age 37, when stuck in hospital, Dr Bob Rich began typing out a large body of text that would eventually become his very first book. In the 40 years since then, he has written and gotten published a total of 18 books, and is still working on his 19th. We asked him how and why he does it.
“Writing is like cooking. A novice cook had better stick exactly to the recipe, or court disaster. With experience, it’s possible to vary ingredients to suit what’s in season, and what’s in the pantry.”Q: Hi Bob, thank you for coming back here to share more of your personal adventures! Let’s talk about your life as an author this time. Why did you decide to pursue writing books?
A: It’s more the writing pursuing me than the other way. Most people watch TV. I haven’t had one of those since 1975. Instead, I watch the stories inside. It’s more fun. Here is what I say about writing:
“A writer is not just a person who writes. Almost anybody can write, which is why publishers are drowning in a flood of manuscripts that no one wants to read. But a writer must write. I can no more give up writing than I can do without breathing. It is something I do all the time. Working at one of my many jobs, talking with a friend, whatever I am doing, I am also observing life and translating it into words. I look at the expression on a face, the movement of a hand, a flower, the scenery, on joy and suffering and squalor and magnificence, and all of it is stored away, to emerge some time later. Everything is ammunition for the machine gun of my imagination. It will become part of some work or another, perhaps a long time later, transformed and hidden and combined with other experiences.”
How did you get started with your first book and how long did it take you to finish it?
My writing career started in 1980, because I was abducted by a bunch of kids who needed one more male in a boys vs. girls soccer game. I was in the middle of making mudbricks (adobe to Americans), and they dragged me away. So, I played in my muddy rubber boots. Predictably, I slipped over and tore a cartilage in my knee. That’s definitely not a good idea.
In hospital, I was so bored I borrowed the office typewriter (are you old enough to remember those?), and wrote an article about making mudbricks for a marvellous magazine, Earth Garden. I’ve had a regular byline column with them since.
After a few years, I thought I could combine my collection of “how-to” essays into a book, and sent off a letter to Keith Smith, the magazine’s publisher. I posted the letter, and checked my postbox. In there was a letter from him, suggesting we collaborate on the same thing. Meant to happen, or what?
I contributed the technical bits. Keith’s part was inspiring essays by other contributors, history and background. We had the book ready in 2 years, in 1986. The fourth edition went out of print in February, 2018.
How did you get that first book to market?
Keith is a journalist by training, and this was his 8th successful book. He had close connections with a publisher, which was bought by Penguin soon after.
How then did you end up writing and selling 18 other books?
Approximately one at a time.
My second book was also practical self-help: Woodworking for Idiots Like Me. It sold about 60,000 copies in the tiny Australian market, because it combines short stories and humour with serious instruction. It’s now out of print, but I sell it in the format of a large webpage.
Then I went to nursing school. In my off-duty times I had a choice: make a fool of myself running after gorgeous 18-year-olds, or do something creative. So, I started writing short stories. The first one I submitted to a contest won a prize, and I was hooked.
But 18 books is not such a big deal. My friend, British/Australian writer Anna Jacobs, has now had her 90th published, and fans keep clamouring for more. Her writing is very popular women’s fiction.
What tips and tricks or techniques, when writing books, did you pick up through writing those 18 books?
Writing is like cooking. A novice cook had better stick exactly to the recipe, or court disaster. With experience, it’s possible to vary ingredients to suit what’s in season, and what’s in the pantry. A chef can cook without a recipe, but if you analyse the process, it’s there, implicit, and you can write it down. And a master chef will write the recipe.
So, a beginning writer needs to craft a detailed plot. My old friend Beth Anderson described this process in detail on this page so I won’t go into it here.
The books I wrote last century all had a plot. It was not set in concrete, but I knew exactly where it was going before I wrote the first sentence. This avoids traps like a story wondering off into a quagmire of loose ends and disappearing people.
Sleeper, Awake was different. My only specification was, I wanted conflict, but without any baddies. Each person was decent and reasonable but… different enough to lead to head-butting. So, Flora Fielding came to me. She is a retired film star who made a fortune, then had breast cancer. She went into cryogenic storage, and invested her money in cancer research, expecting to be woken when a cure was developed. Instead, she found herself in a very different world, 1433 years later. This book won a first prize, and mostly 5 star reviews. I forgive the few who gave it 4 stars.
Nowadays, not only do I have my characters write the plot, but also I enjoy experimenting with new ways of doing things. For example, this is the current start to my so far unpublished series, The Doom Healer.
How long does it take you to write a book these days and what are your writing and marketing routines like?
I am a slow writer, I guess because I need to get it 200% right before anyone else sees it, and because, hey, what’s the hurry? There is only this moment. Past and future are constructions.
My quickest was the biography, Anikó: The Stranger Who Loved Me, which I finished in 3 months. However, that was after a trip to Hungary to visit my dying mother in 2000, then two years of not even being able to look at the material I’d brought back with me. When it was ready, it burst out, and this is the book that has won me the largest number of awards. It’s the story of a woman who survived the unsurvivable, and accomplished the impossible, more than once.
I often have a project I put away, then get out, maybe years later, gallop through it. Guardian Angel was like that.
What advice do you have for new writers hoping to have published as many books as you one day?
As I said, there is only NOW. This moment. This instant. This. Live it to the full, do the best you can right now, and enjoy it. Write what you’d love to read from someone else, then expose it to positive but firm criticism. In my work as an editor, I am as much a teacher as a critic.
Incidentally, I am happy to swap beta reads for reviews, or for beta reads of my current work.
Which items or people help you most when you are writing books?
That just has to be Little Bob who lives inside my head, and does my writing for me while I concentrate on something else.
What about when you’re selling books? Who or what helps then?
You are! For the past couple of years, I’ve been doing lots of written, audio, and video interviews and guest appearances, because I want to be of service to people, and my writing is a tool for this.
How many awards have you won so far and how did you win them?
Oh dear. I don’t know. I used to have a list of awards and prizes for short stories. There were something like 40. But a computer crash has eaten the list.
Some of them are on the welcome page of my writing showcase, bobswriting.com.
Anyway, they are not an ego trip, but another means to an end: of using my words to make this planet a better place.
Is there anybody in the publishing industry you presently look up to, who you would like to learn from?
I learn from everyone, including little babies. At the moment, there is a spider nursing her bagful of babies-to-be inside my compost bin, and I am learning from her.
People I admire? Here is a very small selection:
Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an award-winning poet, and has taught writing. She is the ultimate publicity hound, and writing how to publicise books is one of her specialties. Her way of becoming known is to be of benefit to others.
Victor Volkman has a full time job, which he uses to keep a publishing company going. He makes no money from providing a venue for many excellent books. Tellingly, it is Loving Healing Press.
Joan Edwards taught me about blogging, and is also a person who keeps giving.
Rajat Mitra is a writer from India. I reviewed his book, which is a bridge-building exercise between Hindu and Muslim, and liked it so much that I interviewed him.
Lastly, which of your books are you proudest of, and why?
I am a good daddy, and don’t have favourites among my children. They are all different, and all worthy of love. However, the last one or current one tends to hold me the most, for now. Here is the opening of the book I would be writing if I wasn’t answering your questions.
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Bob is presently working on his Doom Healer series which he has been working on since 2015. “In my unbiased opinion, my hero Bill Sutcliffe should be up there with Harry Potter. I am now seeking a sensible, visionary publisher to take on the first volume.” You can read about his books at bobswriting.com or ask him how you can become a prolific author using the comment box below.
More interviews about other types of careers available here.
Other interviews with Dr Bob Rich:
What It’s Like Being Older Than 70
Then & Now: Age 21 vs Age 77
Interviewer Note:
I don’t normally do reviews but Dr Bob Rich offered me one of his books to read for free in return for a review and I couldn’t resist the one titled Cancer: A Personal Challenge. “This book is for you if you want to reduce your chances of developing cancer” its synopsis read. Having now read it, I am glad I did. The book is full of stories written by those who’ve had cancer, those who’ve looked after someone with cancer, and those who know enough about cancer to tell you what precisely you should be doing for each particular types of cancer. It basically answered all the questions I ever had about cancer, without me having to pick up the courage to start a conversation with anyone with it. There are also chapters on how you can avoid cancer in the first place which I certainly appreciated.
I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, because there’s nothing enjoyable about watching someone recount the hardships of cancer, but I did think of reading it as good use of time. Once again, I’m not a reviewer, so if you want to know more, I would say the best thing to do is go read it yourself. You can buy CANCER: A Personal Challenge here.
Photographs courtesy and copyright of Dr Bob Rich. Interviewer: Sy
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