TONY WILLIAMS is a best-selling author, speaker and philanthropist. He has been an author for over 25 years during which he has written over 40 books and as a speaker, given over 700 talks. He founded the Maguskid Educational Charity. www.maguskid.org
Magic
I believe in the magic of the human spirit. I was born and raised in Wales, land of myth and magic. This mountain, The Devil’s Leap (left) was perfectly framed through the half-glass of my grandparents’ kitchen door. My grandmother told me the missing piece is where the Devil’s foot landed when he was chasing Jack the Giant Killer. Roald Dahl was born in Wales, JK Rowling went to school there and JRR Tolkien used Welsh (with Icelandic) as the basis of his fictional language Elvish in The Lord of the Rings. These great writers gave us magical stories. We need more magic in the world.
Learning the Craft
For many years I tried to get my writing published, but failed because I did not have the skills or experience. I got a book out of the library which showed me how to sell a story to a magazine, which I did. My writing career was still not taking off, so I travelled across to the other end of the world to New Zealand to start anew. New Zealand is a very practical country and it was there I learned the crafts of story and writing by trial and error, working as a freelance writer. My first book was published and I became an author. Fizz: The Wildest boy in the Universe is the humorous tale of an alien child who has been thrown out of every school in the galaxy and as a last resort is sent to go to school on Earth.
Mastering the Craft
I discovered that publishers paid advances for non-fiction books before you even wrote them! I wrote a wide variety of non-fiction books in many different styles on many different subjects including: true crime, war, business, sport, biography, ghosted autobiography, profiles, law, humor, cultural, encyclopedic, geographic, invention, plays and educational, amounting to 40 books. This served two purposes. The first was to put food on the table for hungry mouths. The second was to do a full apprenticeship as a writer the same way that great artists like Leonardo da Vinci learned a broad range of skills from mixing the paints to preparing the canvases and finally as Da Vinici did, painting an angel in the corner of a painting. Through this type of variety, and often having to meet tight deadlines, I gained mastery of many aspects of the craft of story and writing.
Speaker
When Fizz: The Wildest boy in the Universe was published, the publisher sent me out to schools to read parts of it to schoolchildren. I enjoyed visiting schools, making the students roar with laughter and empowering them with knowledge. I have visited over 700 schools, from big, city schools to small, country schools, sometimes a half hour’s drive down a gravel track or a plane or boat ride to an island, inspiring over 100,000 children. This gave me a bird’s eye view of education and led to devising The Path to Greatness, founding Maguskid and researching and writing books that filled in the missing basics of education so that every child has equal opportunity to have a great start in life.
“Where do you get your ideas from?”
Like most authors, this is my most asked question.
I have never lacked for ideas. I get them from the thousands of books I have read, and from looking, listening, experiencing, and watching documentaries. Ideas constantly bubble to the surface of my mind. In total, from outside sources and my own imagination, I get thousands of ideas every year. I know this because at one time I used to write them down on memo notes, which I bought in packs of a thousand and I bought several packs a year.
Why do you write?
The other question I get asked most is, ‘Why do you write?’
The answer is that I want to create magic in the world.
In fiction this is to create excitement, laughter, fun, hope. In non-fiction it’s to empower people with knowledge. Only knowledge can fix the problems of the world. By giving people knowledge which they can use to solve their problems, do we make a better world.