If you found this video, you're probably an influencer, thought leader, a coach,
someone who wants to know the best way to start writing your book. Let's
acknowledge something right up front here. It's not common for somebody who
want to write a book. It's common among a lot of the people that I know because I
like to hang out with speakers and with influencers and with coaches. But in the
general population, most people aren't interested in doing this. You are. Why? The
groundwork for writing your book starts with your why. Why are you writing this
book? What is the motivation for it? And that probably has something to do with
something that you're passionate about. Something that you've discovered.
something that you've experienced that you want to share. You want to get it
from here to there. Where people can access it in a printed
form. Printed or digital. Wherever they consume their books. So, that's the goal.
That's where we want to get this material. Here's another foundational
question. Who is it for? And don't say everybody. I used to think
that way too. And honestly, I still slip into that sometimes. I want my book to be
enjoyed by everybody, right? It's really hard to sell books to everybody. Let's
get clear about who your tribe is. Who are the specific people that are going
to benefit from your book? Now, I want to shift to another form of motivation. I
know this about human psychology. We are motivated by both pleasure and pain. It
will be very pleasurable to have your book out, right? But let's connect with
the pain for just a minute. What is it costing you? What is it costing you both
in terms of money and in terms of mental burden
or shame or feelings? What is it costing you to be stuck in this I'm-going-to
-write-a-book mode? What's it costing you? Get real about
that for just a minute. And not only you. What's it costing all of the people
whose lives would be enhanced or improved in some small degree when your
book comes out? What's it costing them to not have your book? Chew on that for a
minute. That's important because that lays the groundwork for how you're going to
actually start. Okay, now with that in mind, let's talk about 5 specific
steps that you can take. Step number 1, start writing. Get this through your head
somehow. Writers write. As long as you're going to write, you're not a writer. Start
writing. This made a huge difference for me when I made a little paradigm shift. I
say little but it was actually pretty significant. I had said for probably 10
years or more. "I'm going to write a book." And you know what? Every time I said it,
it was true. I'm going to. I'm going to.
That is a trap. The shift for me came when I went from "I'm going to" to "I'm
writing". I'm writing. You have to start in order to make that mental shift. Because
then you're no longer saying, "I'm going to write a book." You're actually working
on it. That brings me to strategy or step number 2. and you're probably going to
chuckle a little bit about this. Because writing actually takes time. Where do you
keep track of your time? I've often said, "You can tell it's important to someone
by checking to documents. Their calendar and their checkbook."
What are you willing to carve out on your calendar as writing time? And don't
tell yourself you'll do it someday. That hasn't got us anywhere. You want to make
sure that it's on your calendar. Because when it's on your calendar, now you know
exactly when you're going to do it. Make an appointment and keep it.
I held appointments at my office all day every day. People show up. Why? because it
was on their calendar. It's on my calendar. We make and keep appointments.
You're going to have to do this for yourself because as long as you just
tell yourself you're going to do it and it doesn't hit your calendar, it stays in
the idea realm. as soon as you make an appointment and keep it, now you're
writing. Now, you're actively doing what you've said that you're going to do.
Alright. Let's take that two step number 3 because a lot of times at this
point, people that I'm coaching say, "Well, I don't know what to write?" Well you kind
of do because you've already got your ideas flowing, right? But when you sit
down, it's like, "Where do I start? I don't know what to write." If you don't know
what to write, write that. "Wait, write what?" wWite that you don't know what to write.
If you're typing. "I don't know what to write right now." You can write that.
There's something psychologically powerful about actually getting your
fingers moving on that keyboard or speaking into that dictation machine. And
pick whatever form works for you. You don't have to do it the way everybody
else does. In fact, find something that's uniquely suited for you. I have a good
friend who wrote his entire book with a little recorder. A little digital
recorder that he held in his hand. He spoke the entire thing. There's software,
there's services, there's people working all over the world that are happy to
transcribe that for you. So don't let that get in your way. And if you don't
know what to write, write that. "I don't know what to write." You're only going to
get a few of those before your brain gets tired of that.
This can say, "You know what? Let's get to something actually serious here." Now,
here's my fourth tip. This is a powerful one because of the way it starts to make
things real in your own mind. Everything that's created has to be imagined first.
That is the template, the mental template that drives the creation process. One of
the powerful steps you can do to make this real is to do what I call an
authors book tour. I learned this in a webinar that I attended when I was
trying to learn how to write my own book. The authors book tour is where you go
physically to the book store. Go down. That you probably have one in your town
still. This might not be true for a long time because I think we're phasing about.
But you go to the book store. If you don't have a book store in your town, you
can probably do this virtually as well. But it works really great in a physical
book store. Go to the book store and look for your book. Yeah, do you see what this
is going to do for you? You're not going to look over in that
section because you're not going to write that kind of a book. You're probably going tO
look in this section over here. That's good to know. See, you're starting to hone
down where your book is going to be. Go over to that section. Now, where are you
going to look? Is it more like these books are more like that those books
over there? Start to narrow it down. Where would your book actually be on the shelf?
You know what letter your last name starts with. That's usually how they file
author's names. Find where your book would be on the shelf. And it's kind of
exciting when you realize, "You know what? My book would be right here between this
one and that one. Huh!" Now, look at all the books that are around your book. Those
are similar, right? They're not your book but they're similar. I would suggest that
you take 6 or 7 of those books. Go sit down in one of those overstuffed
chairs in the bookstore. And just kind of peruse through these books a little bit.
Look at the table of contents. See how they're structured. I took
digital pictures of the of the cover and of the table of contents. Because these
are similar books. I'm getting ideas for how to structure my own book. From those
6 or 7 books the one that spoke to me the most, I bought. I took it home and
I read it. Because that helped to guide my creation process. Do you see where
we're going with that? Now, I've got one more step for you. As you go through the
process, find other ways to make it real to you. The more real this is to you, the
faster you're going to create an actual product. Some of the ways I did that. When
I had my first cover mock-up. I took that cover, I printed it out. I'm just a plain
piece of paper and I wrapped it around another book. It's not my book but now
it's got my cover on it. That makes it more real in my head. Whatever you can do
to make this real in your own mind is going to facilitate your creation
process. It's really exciting when you actually get a draft of your book. With
the cover and you go through and you do edit still at that point. But it's an
actual physical book. You can speed up that process by doing something like
what I did. Paste your cover on another book. Then you can have something to hold
and encourage you to keep writing. Remember, writers write. So just get
started. You're going to have a fun time with this. These principles are really
simple. Simple and easy aren't the same thing. But if you put in the time and
effort on this, you're going to have a product soon. I would love to hear how
it's going for you. Make some comments down below.