Eileen: Along with being a college business professor and author, you have also facilitated writer’s seminars. You encourage people to follow their dreams. Describe the process you witness with your students where they have gone from a place of uncertainty to where they honor their dreams becoming more confident in their writing and possibly other areas of their life.
Peter: For more than two decades, I was one of America’s most active writer’s seminar presenters, having presented 637 one-day seminars in a 15-state area from Minnesota to Tennessee and Colorado to Illinois. I had two goals at the seminars: to present honest and valuable information that participants could put into practice, and to encourage and inspire them to pursue their dream of being a writer. It was common for seminar participants to have a basic idea in mind for a book or magazine article but no idea of how to get started writing it. There are many different ways to approach writing and whatever works for a person is what they should do. However, if a person does not know how to get started, I believe that they should start by writing nothing, but by getting organized first.
If writing a work of non-fiction, develop a complete outline of topics and subtopics and the order in which they should be presented. Then writing the manuscript will be easy as you simply flesh out the outline.
If writing a work of non-fiction, develop a complete outline of topics and subtopics and the order in which they should be presented. Then writing the manuscript will be easy as you simply flesh out the outline.
If writing a novel, develop a complete storyline, including the story’s ending, before writing your first sentence of page one. This will help you avoid the dilemma faced by one of my seminar participants who said, “I’m writing a mystery and am on page fifty, but I’m stuck because I don’t know whodunnit.” Knowing in advance who “dunnit” will allow you to lace your story with tantalizing misdirection and red herrings that will drive your readers insane.
I often heard from former seminar participants who contacted me with a similar message, “I finished writing my book!” What an accomplishment! Some even added another comment to their message, “and it’s going to be published.” What a dream!
Eileen: Your most well-known and long-lived published work is Skeeter’s Pizza Parlor: A Shoebox Practice Set for Accounting. What inspired you to write this project and how has this impacted your success in life?
Peter: The term, “Shoebox Accounting,” has been used by accounts for many years to describe a person who takes all of their business invoices, statements, check records, and other financial records and just throws them into a shoebox (or drawer, basket, or sack) all year long. Then, at the end of the year or at income tax time, they dump the contents onto the kitchen table and try to make some sense of it.
Years ago, an accountant friend invited me to ride along to visit an out-of-town client, Cliff. When we walked into Cliff’s business, he came running from the back of the store and yelled to my accountant friend, “Do you think I’m going to jail?” Cliff had good reason to ask this since he had not filed income tax returns for five years. Then, we hauled bags and boxes of Cliff’s chaotic financial records to my friend’s car for him to take back to his office to try to make some sense of it all.
That episode gave me the idea to create a college accounting simulation based on Shoebox Accounting, just like Cliff’s situation. Prior to that time, all college accounting simulations had been highly organized, much like the cases at the end of each chapter in the textbook, only longer.
Normally, it takes a long time, and many contacts, to land a publisher. I was extremely fortunate in that I presented my manuscript to only one publisher, McGraw-Hill Book Company, and they grabbed it. McGraw-Hill published it for over twenty-five years for national distribution. Since the editors at McGraw-Hill looked at this as a highly creative project, they asked me to author or co-author three college business math textbooks. This led to my becoming acquainted with an editor in the trade division, who published three of my non-fiction books for the national bookstore market.
Cliff’s chaotic “Shoebox Accounting” system, and my recognizing the potential for a published work changed my life. It took me only sixteen hours to write the material, but over one hundred hours to create the forms and documents to make it realistic for presenting to a publisher.
Eileen: You have a new book just published, Marital Advice to My Grandson, Joel. I have read it and you had me laughing and nodding my head throughout the whole book. What influenced you to write this book and please share the most you have learned about a successful marriage that can also be applied to other areas of life.
Peter: When my grandson, Joel, got engaged, I decided to jot down a few words of marital advice for him based on my vast experience as a husband. Then I thought, why share this wisdom with only one person when I can share it with the whole world. So, I started a blog and listed new marital advice every week. As the popularity of the blog grew, people suggested that the material should be made into a book. The book was published in early 2018 and has received fantastic reviews on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, Goodreads, and other sites. I am pleased to say that readers say they found the information to be spot on and humorous, just as you did, Eileen.
As far as what I might have learned about having a successful marriage, I’d say, simply, that my wife and I were both committed to being in it for the long haul and we stuck with that plan. I think this is a good strategy for success in many areas of life; make a commitment and honor it.
Great questions Eileen and what down to earth knowledgeable answers.