You Can be a Millionaire

(if you had a million dollars)

I am a firm believer of self-help guides. Seriously… I know most out there are flinching at these lines. But I know there lies at least one reader somewhere deep within the savanna all dressed in leaves and waiting for the rich experience and direction pointer to inner peace (try wearing an ant infested leaf and you’ll know the pleasures of inner peace!) and that is whom I target with this post- your guide to be a SELF HELPER

I wanted to write in his native hoiyaare hoiyya hoola hooo tongue, but google transliteration is yet to scale. So I settle for the next closest language of evil, uncivilized, indecent masses.

Self-help books can be classified in a million ways, the most popular of which is the classification based on requirement. However, since they all scream the same thing, classifications don’t even really matter.

The biggest stumble block is the misunderstanding of the nomenclature. Quite obviously, ‘self help’ means helping one’s self… NOT YOU. If I were to help you by writing instructions down, it certainly is not YOU helping YOURSELF (assuming you and I are different people- a very valid and highly probable assumption)! Once you open your eyes to this, you will understand the beauty of the WORLD OF SELF HELPERS.

The first is the easiest part- filling the pages. Although you COULD try this step after you decide on WHAT you actually wish to write about, it is not the least advisable, as you might easily go off track and write something that correlates. This way, people would understand what you are trying to say, and that alone is enough to kill your recurring income.

Coming to the contents, put in a great degree of philosophy. Add anecdotes and examples of popular figures like Socrates and Pliny. Do a little research to make sure these guys are dead, so they won’t question the stories you make up. If you need to write anything current, make sure its either something that happened to you (I was on the bus…), or a friend with a comfortably ambiguous first name (My friend Tim…). The best feature about the anecdote-manufacture process is that you can comfortably ‘put scene’ about the one eyed dragon you preached to during your rock climbing session up mount Everest, while Tim can always play the guy who walked into the women’s room and came out with the black eye!

Try to be the nice guy. Repeat alternate punch lines like ‘Honesty is the Best Policy’ stolen form your grandson’s kg books.

Ok, contents done. Its time to challenge Webster and Oxford. Think hard and come up with two random disconnected words. To make this easier for the scratchie at savanna- what comes to your mind when you think ‘bubble gum’ (word 1). Look out at the roads (word 2) and come up with a good permutation:
Word 1: Blue, Strawberry, Chewy, Juicy, Headache, Wrapper….
Word 2: Cow, Tramp, Cycle, Garbage….

Now work them out. Make sure there is no repetition. Chewy Garbage sounds pretty good…

This is where you choose the genre. Take a trip to the bookstore and look at which shelf is not yet bursting out already. Choose any genre. Make sure you don’t pick any of the books there and SELF HELP your competitor authors.

This is where you have to actually get creative. Make an acceptable story to fit the new word you came up with. It doesn’t matter if you sound stupid- that’s the aim.
Since the general perception is for self help books for self-something, and since you cannot write something obscene (actually you can, but not here…), pour in gallons of self-pity. Make the reader wallow in his own tears, all along reinstating that the reader is the greatest person to have ever lived, and being a no-good, disgusting piece of trash is OK.
The story should roll along the lines of you having a dead end job, sitting on a lump of garbage called life, and once you start chewing it with pleasure your entire idea bout the world would change (Chewy Garbage)
Put it up on the back cover- it’ll add to the philosophical view.

Oh yeah- now pick a name. Make it as flashy, cheap and marketable as possible.
Load it with stuff life “Think, Life, Success, Freedom, Happiness, Rich” etc which are strictly non quantifiable.

All set. Now get an equally dumb publisher, hit the streets, and now you can Think and Grow Rich.