Book Review: Get Lucky by Thor Muller and Lane Becker

Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serenditipty to Work for You and Your Business is based on the latest research in the behavioral sciences of the world's most successful and brightest entrepreneurs — the business people who are the risk takers. By now you're probably learning that writing and selling your writing is running a business, and it's one of the riskiest undertakings of a lifetime. One part of the process of becoming a successful, published writer and profiting from your labors is, as I often call it, blind dumb luck. Other successful writers have called it having the right book, at the right time, in the right place. However, authors Thor Muller and Lane Becker are here to show us that we can plan that luck called "serendipity". That is the kind of luck that we draw to ourselves.

You know when luck manifests in a writing career: coming up with a great idea to write about, selling it to editors and agents, falling into marketing opportunities and sparking that essential viral essence: word of mouth advertising that makes your book a best seller or yourself a hot property in demand for providing super content for publications.

The bulk of the book provides insight into eight skills that comprise the makeup of serendipity or luck that you can exploit for your success. These are detailed in separate chapters on:

1. Motion — Breaking Out
2. Preparation — Anatomy of a Geek Brain
3. Divergence — The Garden of Forking Paths
4. Commitment — Burning the Ships
5. Activation — Church vs. Stadium
6. Connection — Needle in a Haystack
7. Permeability — Storming the Castle
8. Attraction — Magnetic Fields

Becker and Muller explain the inner mechanisms of luck and serendipity (slightly different processes at work in our lives). They provide numerous examples from history that you'll recognize (Eureka!) and cite contemporary incidents to illustrate what they mean.

Article Author: Georganna Hancock

San Diego freelance editor, publisher, and writer blogged almost daily for eight years in A Writer's Edge. She helps writers on the path to writing success with critiques, edits and publishing advice.

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