Quote by Theodore Roosevelt, who knew how to get things done.

By Kevin S. Giles

Believe in yourself and you’re halfway there. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Whether writing a book, training for the 2022 Olympics, climbing a mountain, learning a musical instrument or chasing that long-elusive college education, you’ll need goal-minded diligence. Don’t give up.

Jerry’s Riot tells the story of the 1959 takeover of Montana State Prison by career criminal Jerry Myles and his 19-year-old boyfriend, Lee Smart.

Writing a book is a big, BIG undertaking. Imagine spending hundreds of hours, mostly alone, researching and outlining an idea. Will the idea lead to a story that will sell? The writer bets the farm on that first creative spark and then adds fuel to the fire. Whether nonfiction or fiction (I’ve done both), the ensuing storyline requires confidence that all that research and writing and revising will end up the way the writer envisioned it. And what’s that? A readable, marketable book, worthy of reputation.

You can’t build a house without a foundation. It’s true that someone might be a good storyteller while lacking basic skills in grammar and sentence structure. Those instances are rare – and require finding an editor willing to clean up the mess. Better to write from the ground up.

Have faith. Authors of books complete a few pages a day. Novelists, writing works of fiction, might go faster once they have a story firmly in mind. Authors of nonfiction books spend months and even years researching and interviewing before writing a single word. That was my experience with Jerry’s Riot and One Woman Against War.

Writing isn’t the same as publishing. Accomplished national writers land contracts that ensure publication. The other 98 percent of us write on speculation. To publish, a story must be good, very good. Fiction must be fanciful and engaging and share a secret with readers. If nonfiction, the material must be accurate, descriptive, and move beyond a dry recitation of facts to reveal character in a person or event.

Resist outside influences. Much like television in past decades, social media abounds these days with junk that can burden a writer’s mind. I’m not talking about finding inspiration for stories. Instead, it’s dangerous to let words and phrases from social media filter into a story, unless that’s the plot. Stay off Facebook and Twitter and write from the soul.

Know that a little adds up to a lot. Nobody writes a book in a day, or a week, or often in a year. Keeping with the metaphor of housing construction, writing is brick-by-brick construction. Stick with it.

Write your own story. Well-meaning people will say, “You ought to write a book about _______ (name your topic).” But wait – is the idea right for you? How much time will you invest? After all your hard work, will it sell?

Without writing it’s a crazy empty world. People read for learning and entertainment. Writers are artists. They create. Without them, what a dull existence.

Kevin S. Giles is an American journalist and author whose books have roots in his native western Montana. He published One Woman Against War in October 2016. Two other books take place in his hometown of Deer Lodge: a novel, “Summer of the Black Chevy” (2015) and the nonfiction work, “Jerry’s Riot: The True Story of Montana’s 1959 Prison Disturbance.” (2005