Someone or something has prompted you to write a book.
Perhaps:
- You’re an aspiring novelist and you’ve got an idea, a concept for a great story.
- You’ve got some special expertise and have a burning desire to share it with others.
- You’ve had an amazing, life-changing experience that you want to share with others.
- You want to leave a written legacy of your life for your children and grandchildren.
- Someone keeps telling you, “You’ve got to write a book!”
Whatever your motivation for wanting to write a book, you can do it. As long as you have a reasonable ability to collect your thoughts, express yourself, and put words together in an understandable way, you can write a book.
Begin here:
- Determine your purpose for writing. Using the bullets from above or merely as a prompt, write down your purpose for writing.
- Decide who your readers will be. Answering this question is not meant to limit your audience, but to focus on who your primary audience will be. Is your audience: your family, female readers who enjoy mysteries, members of a particular religious persuasion, readers interested in WW2 history, etc.?
- Describe succinctly what you wish to communicate. Try to do this in one or two sentences. How do you want to impact your reader? Are you trying to inspire, inform, entertain, motivate, etc.?
- Devote time to brainstorming your content. Don’t skip past this step! Give yourself time to thoroughly think through your topic. Many people do this best while walking, hiking, or sitting in a quiet place in solitude. If you’re writing a non-fiction book, mind-map your content. You’ll use this mind-map later to create an outline. If you’re writing a piece of fiction, story-board your book. This will help you outline and develop your story.
- Discipline yourself to write. Commit to writing regularly and for long enough periods of time that you can make good progress and not forget where you are in the development of your story or theme.
Follow the above five steps and in no time you’ll be deeply engaged in the writing of your book. Along the way, if you get stuck in any way, consider hiring a writing coach. A writing coach can help you progress faster, help you get unstuck, and coach you in getting your book published and to market in the quickest, simplest, and least expensive ways.