{"id":8581,"date":"2016-07-22T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritelife.com\/?p=8581"},"modified":"2016-07-14T10:35:24","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T15:35:24","slug":"before-you-write-a-book-complete-3-tasks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/?p=8581","title":{"rendered":"Before You Try to Write a Book, Complete These 3 Tasks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overwhelmed by the thought of finally writing that book of yours? <\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve dreamed about it forever. <\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve <\/span>almost<\/span><\/i> started several times before, then convinced yourself you weren\u2019t ready.<\/span><\/p>\n

You worry you\u2019ll be forever trapped in the planning stage, never fulfilling your dream.<\/span><\/p>\n

After more than four decades in this game, believe me, I\u2019ve been where you are \u2014 more times than I\u2019d like to remember. <\/span><\/p>\n

How to eat an elephant<\/span><\/h2>\n

The most well-worn <\/span>cliche (after \u201c<\/span>well-worn <\/span>cliche\u201d) in publishing is that you write a book the way you eat an elephant: one bite at a time. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you envision it as a whole, you\u2019re likely to give up before you start.<\/b><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t give up. Take it from one who knows. The rewards can be worth the work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are three lessons I learned that can serve as your flight plan to get the book inside you off the ground.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. See that elephant as parts, not the whole<\/span><\/h2>\n

An African elephant can stand 13 feet tall and weigh as much as 15,000 pounds. A book can easily total well over 450 double-spaced manuscript pages and more than 100,000 words. <\/span><\/p>\n

Both are daunting when viewed that way. <\/span><\/p>\n

But you\u2019re not eating an elephant. So let\u2019s look at your potential book manuscript.<\/span><\/p>\n

View your potential manuscript as pages.<\/b> These will consist of headers that will include your name, the book title, the chapter number and perhaps chapter title, and the page number. These can be formatted once and inserted automatically thereafter as you\u2019re writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then you\u2019ll <\/span>write a line at a time<\/b>, deciding when to end sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. You may break your book into parts or sections. <\/span><\/p>\n

You may have such elements as a dedication, acknowledgments, an epigram, a prologue or introduction or preface; and at the end an epilogue or author\u2019s note, an index, bibliography, or footnotes. Certain academic works may have even more esoteric components.<\/span><\/p>\n

But you will be responsible for writing these various pages, and one way to keep your head is to focus on them as just that \u2014 daily, hourly, manageable projects broken down to a page at a time. <\/span><\/p>\n

Stay at it and they will accumulate.<\/b><\/p>\n

Before you know it, you will have produced a manuscript. But to do that will require the second prerequisite:<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Make time to write<\/span><\/h2>\n

All right \u2014 let\u2019s get real.<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t say <\/b>find<\/i><\/b> time. You have to carve it out of your schedule. <\/b><\/p>\n

Like everyone else on the planet, you have 168 hours in a week. You have to eat and sleep, and then decide your other priorities. <\/span><\/p>\n

What has to go so you can write? How important is<\/span> this dream? <\/span><\/p>\n

No one can answer that but you, and the answer is in your calendar. <\/span><\/p>\n

What will you sacrifice for the sake of time at the keyboard?<\/span><\/p>\n

Concerts? Ballgames?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dinners? TV?<\/span><\/p>\n

Movies?<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading? (Be careful with that one.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Social media? <\/span><\/p>\n

Face it, you make time to do what you really want to do. <\/b><\/p>\n

Pros <\/span>make time<\/span><\/a> to write. If you want to be one, you\u2019ll do it too. <\/span><\/p>\n

3. Know. Know.<\/span><\/h2>\n

I say it twice because there are two things you must know: <\/span>Know what you want to say and know to whom you want to say it.<\/b><\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t start writing a book just because you fancy yourself an author. <\/span><\/p>\n

Successful writers don\u2019t write because they\u2019re writers. They\u2019re writers because they have something to say. <\/span><\/p>\n

A book must not simply be <\/span>about something<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>It must be <\/b>for the purpose of something<\/i><\/b>. <\/b><\/p>\n

Knowing your message and your audience allows you to write from your passions, and that\u2019s what will draw you to the keyboard every day. That\u2019s what will <\/span>keep you there<\/span><\/a> when the manuscript begins to again look like an elephant instead of small manageable bites.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you can distill your entire book into one sentence and can picture your audience in your mind embodied by one person, you\u2019re ready. <\/span><\/p>\n

Eat that elephant a bite at a time. <\/span><\/p>\n

Which of the points above will you focus on this week? Tell me in the comments section.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This planning approach will set you up for success as you start to write a book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":8607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[546,611,684],"class_list":["post-8581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft","tag-how-to-start-writing-a-book","tag-how-to-write-a-book","tag-write-a-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}