How To Write A Book In 7 Months

Since WDS2013 last week, I’ve been asked multiple times how I wrote a book in 7 months. After explaining the process to about 10 people over the course of  a day, I thought I’d share it here.

Keep in mind that the techniques I used here apply to any project creation, not just writing a book. Want to build a statue of yourself with ice cream sticks? You can do it (using most of the info below)!

1. Start Now

How many times have you said “I’ll start my project when I’ve finished X? When things in my life are less busy? When the time is right?”

Well, I’ve got news for you geek: the time will never be right. If it’s a personal project, it’s always going to take the backburner to whatever other thing you have going on. In my case, writing a book was secondary to my day job, because the day job is what pays my rent and feeds me. Thus I always had an excuse not to do it.

One day, five months into the year I had to write a book, I started writing. Just like that. I wrote a few pages, and that was that.

Start now. You can do it.

2. Small Steps Regularly

Twice a week, 15 minutes a day: that was my rule. A book is a HUGE time investment: it doesn’t get done overnight. By breaking it down into laughably easy chunks, you turn it into a small time investment. Once you’re used to that, you can progressively increase the time. I ended up doing twice a week, 1 hour a day by the end.

I would also write on the same days at the same times. If you exercise at the same time, on the same days every week, your body gets used to it. There’s an actual physical and chemical change that takes place, and prepares your body for what’s to come. Your mind works the same way.

I always wrote on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at precisely 8am. At 7:59am, I could be browsing Facebook, or watching a Tekken match video, but at 8am my laptop was open and I was typing. It became easier over time too, and I noticed that I would naturally get more creative at those times. Pretty cool how the body and mind work.

3. Give Yourself a Small Success To Get The Ball Rolling

Sometimes, even 15 minutes is daunting. I find there are some days when it’s incredibly hard to write. I sit at my laptop and feel completely unmotivated. Perhaps the call of Facebook is just. too. damn. strong… argh I need to check my status now!

Well, those days are the hardest days to deal with, and you need to give yourself a small victory to power through the lethargy. When I moved out on my own 4 years ago, I discovered what I like to call the Dishes Dilemma. 

The Dishes Dilemma occurs when your sink is full of dishes. They need to get done, and you know it’s time, but you really don’t want to. In fact, you’d rather do anything else. Get on Facebook, play a videogame, read the paper, watch a cartoon, bum around on Youtube watching baby and dog videos… When these moments strike, it’s incredibly hard to motivate and do what needs to be done.

You know it’s not much work. You know you’ll feel very satisfied when you’re finished. But it doesn’t matter: you still can’t get past that first step. So you sit on the couch, and struggle internally, and then you’re tired and it’s too late or someone needs help and… the dishes lay there. Forever. Gathering bacteria. And you feel worse.

Just thinking about it gives me that crappy feeling in my stomach.

Ugh.

To break free, I give myself a small victory. I say “alright man, one dish. Clean one dish right now. Go!”, and I get up and clean one dish. I know it’s a trick I’m playing on myself, but I play along with it. And I clean that one dish. Then two, then three, and all of a sudden I’m doing the dishes and kicking ass.

You can use this for writing a book as well. When my routine was broken because of travel or illness, I would have a lot of trouble starting up again. Instead of my usual 15 minutes of writing, I would tell myself “3 sentences, point form, and I’m done.”

I’ll give you one guess as to what happened once I started.

4. Build a Rough Table of Contents

I didn’t know precisely what I was going to write when I sat down, but I usually had a vague idea. I started off by creating a table of contents, based on what I thought needed to be in my book. Whenever I sat down to write, I shot a quick glance at the table of contents, picked a subject, then ran with it until I was done.

The best part is, because it was a draft table of contents, I was constantly adding to it as I wrote. For instance, as I created the chapter on Grooming, I realized it needed to be divided into Clothes, Smell, and General. All of a sudden, my one chapter had turned into 3, and my table of contents changed to reflect that.

To give you an idea of how awesome this is, I initially started by listing 8 chapters: the final version of my book contains 35.

5. Don’t seek perfection

I feel like this one goes hand in hand with the first point. People avoid starting now because it’s not the perfect time. Once the timing is resolved, we agonize over the first word, the font, whether or not you’re going to do it in word, or some other inanity. If it’s not perfect, we can’t commit to it.

That’s just a terrible excuse. The problem with perfect is it doesn’t exist: everything and everyone is flawed somehow. To fight this perfection, you have to start with the idea that “it’s going to be ok”. As time goes on, you can backtrack and clean up the parts that you feel need work.

Plus, as you write, you’ll get better. 

Knowing that, you can forgive yourself for the early chapters that aren’t so good, and come back to fix them later. Otherwise, you’ll end up like my friend.

He and I agreed we were going to write a book this year. I procrastinated from July to December, before finally rolling into gear and writing like a boss. When he realized I was writing, he began asking me all kinds of questions about his book.

“Do you think people will read this? Would they prefer this type of storyline, or this type? Should it be a 1st person or 3rd person novel?”

He asked me questions all the time, and mulled over and hemmed and hawed and debated constantly about every detail. I simply wrote, and told myself I’d ask questions later.

When July came around, I had finished my book. At the time of writing this post, my friend hasn’t even started.

6. No rewrites during the first draft

This could be personal preference, but I find I work best when I don’t look back. I sit, I write, and I power through and get as much content done as possible. If I notice something missing that needs work, rather than go back and fix it, I make a note of it in my list of changes, and address it in the second draft.

In this way, I never get stuck in a particular section of the book. I’m always looking forward to the next part. It also gives me permission to make mistakes, something we perfectionists rarely allow ourselves.

Knowing I’m going to go back over it later means I’m free to be as creative as possible, without getting mired down in the details of the perfect word.

7. Set A Deadline

Finishing is so hard, I wrote an entire post on it a few weeks ago. It’s so easy to agonize over the last part of the book, and leave it unfinished. Luckily, I had a deadline to work with: if I didn’t finish by July 5th, I would lose $1000.

Knowing there is a final date looming over your head will make it much easier to stop tinkering and tweaking, and finally accept that “this is the final version.”

What 7-month project are you working on? Also, did you notice my post had 7 points, to match the 7 months it took me to write a book?