Jonathan Chevreau Stars as Financial Storyteller
Senior Journalist Embraces Creative Writing Projects
Feb 18, 2009
Jonathan Chevreau is the personal finance columnist for the National Post, Canada’s third-largest English daily newspaper.
Jon has 8 non-fiction titles to his credit, including financial self-help books like The Wealthy Boomer: Life After Mutual Funds. That project spawned The Wealthy Boomer blog where online visitors can view up-to-the-minute business blogs and podcast interviews. Online traffic service Alexa ranks Jon’s blog among the top 18% of all websites.
Propelled by Jon’s previously masked passion for creative writing, Findependence Day is a fictional parable that follows the struggles of a debt-burdened couple who are introduced to a timely concept called guerrilla frugality in chapter one. Findependence Day is as entertaining as a romance novel while teaching people serious lessons on how to transform everyday money challenges into wealth creation opportunities.
Jonathan Chevreau on Writing Business Articles
When asked to describe his process for creating newspaper columns and blogs, Jon revealed that he partitions writing assignments into distinct input and output phases. Input involves daily emails, phone conversations, in-person interviews including those podcast on The Wealthy Boomer blog. Jon also covers speeches, seminars, announcements and other special events. For the output phase, Jon writes 4 or 5 drafts before publishing the final deliverable.
Jonathan Chevreau on Writing Personal Finance Novels
Jon points out that synergies do exist between how he writes non-fiction pieces and the processes required to script a story like Findependence Day. In creating the novel, Jon applied many of the same inputs as he does writing as a journalist for his day job. Novel writing is more exhaustive, however. That’s because Jon had to pull together insights gained over 16 years at the National Post.
Findependence Day demanded more than a year of hard work that saw Jon sacrifice all his vacation time. While relishing the exuberance that he and his family experienced since the novel’s official launch in November, Jon remembers how long and hard he had to toil. Accelerating to 7 days a week last summer, Jon wrote tirelessly night and day to deliver the final manuscript by the contract deadline.
Inspired by Writer Malcolm Muggeridge
Jon credits Malcolm Muggeridge for secrets that helped him excel at a vast range of non-fiction and fiction writing projects. Writer in residence for Western’s Journalism School where Jon completed his graduate studies from 1978-9, Muggeridge both exposed the brutality of Stalinist Russia and was the journalist who made Mother Teresa famous.
Muggeridge taught Jon to maintain a healthy separation between a day job involving journalism, which he likened to St. Paul the disciple mending his nets to earn a living while the sun was shining, and his personal devotion at night to researching and then communicating truth to people through personal writing projects.
Findependence Day Brainwave
As for the original idea for Findependence Day, Jon explained that in the spring of 2007 he was doodling around with the notions of financial independence and the American Independence Day holiday. Inspired, the seasoned journalist creatively concatenated the two word groupings into the compelling title Findependence Day. Jon registered the URL name FindependenceDay for both .com and .ca domains, then started to visualize the book’s storyline in greater detail.
Structuring The Business Novel on Real Life
Around 2001, Jon crafted the foundation for an unpublished practice novel based on literary agent Evan Marshall’s The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing. Some of those elements are present in Findependence Day, with ongoing clashes between a hero, an adversary, a trusted friend and a love interest over a 22-year timeframe.
One of the story’s conflicts dramatizes the real-life hijack of Jon’s early Wealthy Boomer discussion forum. Another obstacle to the protagonist’s financial independence is a stock market crash, in a chapter that Jon uncannily scribed before the global financial meltdown. The winners in Findependence Day are in doubt until the last pages which heightens the suspense and enjoyment for pleasure readers.
Findependence Day Television Series or Movie Next?
Pointing to the cast of the television series Friends who made $1 million each per episode in 2002, Jon mused about what would have happened if he had pursued another more lucrative dream, namely television and movie script writing embellished by acting and producing roles.
Even now, Jon scripts and performs online video interviews at the Wealthy Boomer blog with celebrity guests like Wealthy Barber author David Chilton. By using internet television or creating website podcasts, Jon can craft his Findependence Day novel and potential sequels into interactive chapters, television series episodes or even a full-length movie. With chapter titles recalling the Eagles’ Take it to the Limit, the Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want and Randy Bachman’s Takin’ Care of Business, the music score for the Findependence Day screen play will be easy to compile.
Canada’s financial storyteller is strongly positioned to deliver more personal finance novels, as well as pursue television and movie script writing projects.
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