Why Non Fiction is Easier Than Fiction

Thinking stuff up is hard. You have to have characters, action, thoughts, sub plots, and so on. Get the hero up in the tree and then get him down. Sounds easy which is why everyone goes to the movies and thinks they can do better. But rarely do.

Non fiction is easier and much easier due to the Internet. You just have to make it interesting and not bore the reader to death, the old "and then they did this, then they did that" school of writing.

But readers and publishers assume the author spends hours, days in libaries or searching through trunks looking for something new. Well, here is the dirty little secret--there is nothing new. You are not going to trip over Davy Crockett's diary lying wide open on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. Somebody already found it. And put it on the Internet.

The key is finding it and, again, not boring the reader to death. The University of Texas and Texas A&M made my year when I found their sites and their first hand accounts, all without leaving my study.

Just go through the stuff, find the timeline, find the characters and put it in your own words. Find little facts that amuse you and hope they amuse the reader. Maybe it will work and maybe it will not but the fact that the leader of the Texas forces at the battle of Gonzales came to Texas because he didn't want to take Latin in college intrigues me. Or that Santa Anna invented Chiclets.

But so what you say? What does this have to do with personal finance? Getting rich? The lesson is that you have to get the small things done to achieve great things. To get rich, you have to spend less than you make, start to save a little, then invest a little, then invest wisely. Get started and keep going not matter how small or trivial something seems NOW. It will grow. The only way for it not to grow is to not get started doing the little things.