The How to Write Book Blog

I bumped into an old friend recently. Last time we had met, we had spent hours discussing the books we would each like to write. When he saw me walking towards him the other day, he smiled sheepishly. Before I had a chance to even say hello, or how are you, he said “I haven’t written it yet. In case you were wondering. OK?”

Once he had gotten that confession off of his chest he seemed a lot happier, but later over a beer our conversation turned back to writing.

“Actually, it really bugs me that I haven’t written my book yet,” he said, toying with his bottle and reading the label. “Don’t suppose you have any tips?”

Well, it just so happened that I did. Apart from pointing him at a couple of good books, including the Author’s Toolkit, I introduced him to the idea of a step by step schedule. We took a few hours to talk through exactly what he wanted to do. Then I helped him break down the big idea into a series of smaller steps. Then we took the first step and broke it down into smaller steps. Then we took the first of those small steps and broke that down into a couple of steps. Suddenly he stopped me. “I get it, I get it!” He was getting it.

We had created steps so small and easy, that he knew exactly what to do to get to the first bigger step in his list, which would get him part way to getting his biggest step one done, and then he’d be well on his way to completing his goal.

With a renewed fire in his eyes and excitement in his voice, he apologised that he had to act quickly now he could see clearly what to do, and he shot off to get going on his project.

I sat back and finished my beer, and then suddenly thought of a dozen things I should be doing instead, so I soon vanished to get productive too.

What about you? What are you doing?

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