When I wrote my first book, Think Like an Entrepreneur: Transforming Your Career and Taking Charge of Your Life, I used my newsletter and blog posts to create my book. I set a deadline and then worked towards it week by week.
Setting a deadline is very important. Otherwise, it’s easy to put off writing and let other things get in the way.
So here’s what I recommend:
1. Get clear about why you want to write this book.
Is it for business or a personal project? What do you want to say, and why? Save yourself a lot of frustration and determine your real reason for writing this book before you begin.
But if you’re not sure about your topic, there’s an easy way to get ideas. Do you get the same questions over and over from your clients? Is there a specific thing they need help with?
Survey your contacts, clients, friends, newsletter subscribers – get an idea of what their biggest issue is. What is the one problem they want solved? Make that the topic of your book.
2. Take your topic and use mind mapping software (or draw it out on a pad) to figure out related topics.
Get your topic down to smaller pieces, and use those small bites to write your posts.
For instance, in my book I wanted to talk about using an entrepreneurial mindset to manage your career. So I took my original idea, and mind-mapped sub-topics. I could talk about having a success mindset, how to handle stress, how to be more creative, etc.
When I wrote my book, I decided to have 5 main headings, which lined up with my 5 steps for entrepreneurial thinking.
They were: creating a vision, trusting my intuition, using my creativity, making decisions and taking action.
After I was finished writing, each post could fit under one of those headings. Having an overall plan kept me organized.
3. Stay focused on your goal and on your deadline.
It will be easy to get distracted or get frustrated if you feel things are moving too slowly. Create a schedule for your posts, otherwise, it’ll be easy to go off on a tangent and write about things that have nothing to do with your book. Not to say you can’t write other posts, but keep the end result in mind.
Set up a schedule to blog daily or weekly. It’s up to you and your timeline. But you’ll want to have a certain number of pages when it’s all done, so be mindful of how much content you’ll need to have when it’s over.
(Writing fiction or a memoir? Your process will be different, but you still have to have some sort of structure or you’ll never get it done. Use mind mapping to set up your plot and/or chapters.)
The advantage of blogging your book is that you can build an audience as you’re writing. You can get feedback and interact with your readers as you go.
Copyright © 2015 – 2017 Deborah A. Bailey
