Rules of writing your own material

[Mulberry]

@Chard

let’s pretend I’m writing a book about what spells to cast for certain situations. I’m honestly very interested in the subject, however I’m not experienced.

Then stop. Books are written from experience. No experience, no book.

Get the experience first, compile the notes, after you have amassed a good body of work, then get all your notes out, sort them into chapters and start writing something that connects the notes into a cohesive work.

This is the case even if you’re doing a memoir for someone else: you still have to interview them and collect together the content for the work, and that takes a lot of reading a lot of talking and a lot of taking many many notes.

@Chard

I could put each spell with all the instructions in quotations then cite my references, however, that’s sorta like just copying someone else’s work

Yes and you could end up in court a lot. Nobody needs that, not you and not others. People will just google for what they want and skip the book, and you will be at best only talking to yourself.

So consider your audience and why you want to do this in a public way.
Then consider what differentiator you have that will get people to get your book and not go elsewhere. What makes it special and cool?

@Chard

but if I can’t figure out how to do it without copying spells and rituals from other people, it won’t be possible

Don’t copy anything:

1. If you want your own grimoire, then one by one find a spell you like and actually do it, do the work, become a real mage, not an armchair scholar merely surveying what’s known.
   You will probably tweak it to suit, you will a story about it afterwards…there is your experience that you should note in your journal, and that is something new and different to write into a grimoire you can publish.

2. If you want to make a quick buck off collating spells you can find all over the web, it’s been done and you won’t make enough to make the time and money worth it. It’s boring, frankly.

3. If you want to make an encyclopedia, start by looking up all the other encyclopedias (like, grimoire.org) and seeing where they overlap and where they are missing. Become an encyclopedia expert, buy all the encyclopedias and know them all. See what niche yours would fill.

Like, look up knowyourmeme.com as well: that’s an encyclodpedia too, but it’s very in depth with information on names and dates of who started what meme how and when. It covered multiple uses and evolutions of the meme in chronological order. It’s a massive amount of research, but it’s very interesting.

@Chard

I already created a beautiful site, it just lacks information.

You put the cart before the horse.

Here’s a good article about “getting into the corridor”,which is about getting a job but there’s good advice there that applies here:

Why am I having such bad luck in my job search?

It helps to “get in the corridor” for things you want. Like to use a silly example, if I wanted to own a circus, something I’ve never considered in my life before this moment, I’d get in the corridor by (for example) finding a blog or outlet whereby I could interview people who are involved with circuses, and by that one act have vastly increased my “contacts within the circus world” level. And I’d research the history, and immerse myself in all things to do with the practical side, then look …

Now, you’re doing this by being on BALG, but now you need to be patient with yourself and start the hard work of learning the business. And this can take several years. But only after that level of detailed hard work will you have enough to write something that adds to the body of work on magick.

And of course before you can do that you have to define a bit better what you are trying to do and why:
get your business plan in order. Get your “elevator test” on point.