Great writing - Charles Dickens

"Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself."

- Great Expectations

Great writing: Jhumpa Lahiri

"...it started to rain. It came slapping across the roof like a boy in slippers too big for him"

Jhumpa Lahiri A Real Durwan (from 'Interpreter of Maladies')

The Automatic Bestseller Machine

OK, so you want to write a book (well, really you want to have a book published and have it made into a film and sit in coffee shops with a posh notebook and be on telly and have people listen to your opinions on things you know very little about and be given awards, and you've realised that to be published you'll need to write something). Fair enough.

Obviously a bestseller (of the Richard-and-Judy-and-featured-in-WH-Smith's-window type) needs a bestselling title. After all, what's the point of spending ages writing something if it's not going to sell a shedload and net you a six-figure advance.

Where to find such a title though? Easy - pick a number from 1-50 then pick another from 1-15. OK, you say - 15 and 10.

Your novel is called The Costermonger's Whore (now get writing). Next!

Let me explain how this works - every single bestseller of the last 25 years, without exception (well, there are a couple...), has had a title made up of a profession or activity (generally presumed to be male) followed by a (generally female) relationship to that person.

So, pick a profession, pick a relationship and send me 10% of your royalties in a jiffy bag.

3..2..1..GO!

1	Acrobat's		1	Aunt
2	Actuary's		2	Child
3	Advocate's		3	Daughter
4	Archbishop's		4	Grandmother
5	Architect's		5	Herbalist
6	Astrologer's		6	Mistress
7	Astronaut's		7	Mother
8	Attorney's		8	Nanny
9	Barrow Boy's		9	Physician
10	Blacksmith's		10	Step-child
11	Captain's		11	Seamstress
12	Chocolatier's		12	Step-Mother
13	Choirmaster's		13	Twin
14	Composer's		14	Whore
15	Costermonger's		15	Wife
16	Courtesan's
17	Devil's
18	Draughtsman's
19	Farrier's
20	Gardener's
21	Goalkeeper's
22	Haberdasher's
23	Harpoonist's
24	Herbalist's
25	Historian's
26	Industrialist's
27	Interpreter's
28	Journeyman's
29	Librarian's
30	Mapmaker's
31	Midshipman's
32	Novelist's
33	Obstetrician's
34	Organist's
35	Pharmacist's
36	Physician's
37	Pilot's
38	Politician's
39	Psychic's
40	Seamstress's
41	Senator's
42	Soothsayer's
43	Surgeon's
44	Surveyor's
45	Tinsmith's
46	Undertaker's
47	Victualler's
48	Volcanologist's
49	Wheelwright's
50	Zookeeper's

Great writing - 'The Thousand Autumns...' David Mitchell

'When shaving, thinks Jacob, a man rereads his truest memoir'

'Her smile is both nettle and dock leaf"

Great writing - The Book of Qualities

'Fear' from The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler

"Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is quite small. He has a vivid imagination. He composes horror music in the middle of the night. He is not very social and he keeps to himself at political meetings. His past is a mystery. He warned us not to talk to each other about him, adding that there is nowhere any of us could go where he wouldn't hear us. We were quiet. When we began to talk to each other, he changed. His manners started to seem pompous, and his snarling voice sounded rehearsed.

Two dragons guard Fear's mansion. One is ceramic and Chinese. The other is real. If you make it past the dragons and speak to him close up, it is amazing to see how fragile he is. He will try to tell you stories. Be aware. He is a master of disguises and illusions. Fear almost convinced me that he was a puppet-master and I was a marionette.

Speak out boldly, look him in the eye, startle him. Don't give up. Win his resect, and he will never bother you with small matters."

Great writing - Song of the Lark 3

"...what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?"

Great Writing: Willa Cather - Song of the Lark #2

"Scarcely anything was attractive to her in its natural state - indeed, scarcely anything was decent until it was clothed by the opinion of some authority. Her ideas about habit, character, duty, love, marriage, were grouped under heads, like a book of popular quotations, and were totally unrelated to the emergencies of human living."

-----

"The wall-paper was brownish yellow, with blue flowers. When it was put on, the carpet, certainly, had not been consulted."

Great writing: Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark

"The frail, brightly painted desert town was shaded by the light-reflecting, wind-loving trees of the desert, whose roots are always seeking water and whose leaves are always talking about it, making the sound of rain"