Literary Birthday – 5 December – John Berendt

Happy Birthday, John Berendt, born 5 December 1939.

Five Quotes

1. Nothing can be said, including this statement, that has not been said before.
2. Keep a diary, but don’t just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it colour, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle, and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It’s great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.
3. The mega-selling books by celebrities are not so much books as products.
4. Good reviews will get you a readership right away, but that’s it. The review or the article appears one day in a magazine or a newspaper, then it’s gone. Word of mouth is a continuing phenomenon, much more powerful.
5. Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That’s when things happen. That’s when you find out everything you want to know.

John Berendt is an American author, known for writing the best-selling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar