Painful Reasons why you Shouldn’t Write A Book?
When I tell friends that published a book, I get one of two responses: ‘cool, tell me more’ or ‘I have always wanted to write a book’. If you always wanted to write a book, but haven’t, then I have some insights to share.
To start with, ask yourself why haven’t you written a book. For most people the answer is simple: it is too hard. This is the same reason you haven’t done many of the things that you desire, like: lose weight, start a business, climb Mt. Everest, or whatever. After spending virtually all of my non-work time writing a book, I can verify that it is very time consuming. But without sacrifice, you will never accomplish great things. Let’s face it, publishing a book is a great accomplishment. If it were easy, everybody would be doing. I found that I had plenty of time once dropping TV and social media. You’d be surprised how much time most folks consume passively consuming media.
What to write about?
The next hurdle is the topic. I knew the type of book that I wanted to write, but struggled for over a year to pick a specific story line. Youtube has lots a great videos around self-publishing, but I feel most of them gloss over this detail. Don’t even think about writing a book without a good story line. If the story is bad, people won’t read the book and you’ll quickly get bored with writing about it. This true whether you want to write fiction or non-fiction.
Without something compelling to write about, it would be better to spend time on other things. First and foremost, the story should be interesting to your target audience. It doesn’t matter how passionate you are about something, if nobody else cares. Since I struggled with this phase, I suggest coming up with several ideas. Brainstorm the plots, write a quick summary of each idea, and ask people in your target audience which they would prefer. A little extra work up front could save you countless hours of heart ache.
Motovation
If you have decided to write a book and you know the perfect topic, the next biggest struggle will be motivation. The general rule of thumb is to write 500-1,000 words per day, everyday. That is a great starting point, but don’t obsess over those numbers. However, making some progress everyday is important. The last thing you want to avoid is getting deep into a project and then abandoning it.
Keep the momentum by finding different tasks to do. I guarantee that regardless of how good you are at writing, there will be days that you simply do not want to write anything. On days like that, review a previous chapter, do some more research or simply watch a video about self-publishing. But most of all, do something, even if it 30 minutes to proofread. Finally, set goals. Most books have roughly 10-20 chapters, so set a goal to knockout a chapter per week or maybe every two weeks.
Inspiration
Last, but not least, the dreaded writer’s block. Listen to interviews from hundreds of authors and they will universally admit to suffering from writer’s block. My advice is to not worry about this at all. When it happens to you, go do something else. When struggling for ideas, I take walks in the woods. Let me tell you, I walked countless miles writing my first book. Whatever you do, find a quiet place to brainstorm. It is important to block out distractions from family and technology. A good outline of your book will help with topics for specific chapters too. But if you run into a complete wall, review your outline with some close friends. Maybe they can help fill in the blanks.
Hopefully this post has scared off most people. Writing a book is very rewarding, but it is not for everybody. However, if you can over come these challenges, it can change your life. I hated anything to do with reading and writing in school (Overcoming Hatred of Writing), but now I’m a publish author! Just from an ego and self esteem booster, it has been worth my time.
