You've known for a while that you have a book in you. Let's see if we can get it
out. I've got some tips for writing a book for the first time. I am excited for
you. Writing your first book? This is going to be awesome. How do we do it? The
first thing that I would suggest is that you get real about this. I had told
myself that I'm going to write a book for 10 years. At least. And every time I
said it, it was true. "I'm going to." It's always off in the future somewhere. Make
it real. And the quickest way that I know to make it real is to go to the
bookstore and look for your book. This works best in the old traditional
bookstores that have actual books on shelves. And I've got one just a few
blocks from my office. When I say go to the bookstore, show up in the bookstore
or the book section of your favorite store and start looking for where your
book would be if it were already published. Now, I knew when I entered the
bookstore that I wasn't going to wander into the mechanics magazines. That's not
where my book is. I wasn't going to go over into the knitting books. My wife
might enjoy some time there. But that's not where my book is. So, I headed
straight for psychology and self-help. I knew that's probably where my book would
be. See, going into the bookstore helps you to start organizing your thoughts
around what your book actually is. And you know what sections it won't be in.
You might have to do a little bit of thinking to figure out which sections it
is in. But when you get to that section, start looking around for books that are
going to be around or in the same area on the shelf as your book
would be. This is such a powerful exercise because it helps you to really
make it real. Envision it, see it. Now, while you're there at the bookstore, pull
6 books off of the shelf that are similar to or in the same
category as your book. Pull 6 of them. Go find one of those big overstuffed
chairs. Sit down and start browsing through it a little bit. This might be a
little more difficult if you're in an online bookstore like Amazon or Barnes &
Noble. But you can still do it if you select several books. Oftentimes they'll
let you preview the book right there online. This is important because you
want a thumb through the book a little bit. Get a feel for how its organized. How
long is it? How thick is it? How big is it? Get a feel for the actual physical
dimensions of your book. And then purchase one that best represents from
those six that you pulled. Purchase one that best represents the closest thing
to your book. Now, it's not your book, it's somebody else's book. When I did my first
visit to the bookstore. I purchased this one. Mark Muchnick. "No More Regrets". And
bought this one because it best represented to me what I thought my book
was going to look and feel like. No, not look specifically like this. And
obviously, I'm not going to copy Mark's book and try to knock it off as my own. No. But
this is the one that's saying with me that resonated the most with me of the
ones that I told. That helped me to get a better sense of what my book was going
to look like. Okay, next. Set an appointment with
yourself. After you've done your little book tour at the bookstore, set a writing
appointment and keep it. Actually put it into your calendar. Don't tell yourself,
"I'm going to start writing on Saturday." Put it into your calendar. Start time, end
time, my writing appointment. I sent mine for Saturday morning at 5 o'clock. From 5
to 7. That's when I all of my writing. 5 to 7, Saturday
morning. Nobody else wants me. It's the only thing on my calendar. That's when
I'm going to do my writing appointment. And you keep that writing appointment. Here's
a little hint. It's a recurring appointment. Now, whether you do at the
same time every week or not, set an appointment that keeps coming up. Because
to write, you have to sit down and write. Who knew? Make an appointment with
yourself. Don't put it on your to-do list. If you're like me, I don't do to-do lists.
I do what's in my calendar. So, put it in as an appointment and then keep your
appointment. When you start writing, you're not doing a final draft. You are
simply getting it from here on to there. Wherever there is. It might be a word
processor where you're actually typing. That's the way I choose to write. It
might be that you have a digital recorder that you're holding up right
here in front of your mouth. And you're speaking your book. That's totally
legitimate too. And there's all kinds of software and programs that will help to
turn that into text that can then be edited. The main thing is just capture
those ideas. Don't worry about organizing them too much. One of the reasons you
went to the bookstore and bought a book that looks like the one that you think
you're going to write is to give you some ideas about how to organize your
thoughts. If you have an outline to work from or something like that, makes it a
little bit easier. Just start capturing the content. And avoid the temptation to
edit. That's going to come later. And trust me, you're going to have plenty of
editing time. But for this first pass, you just want to brain dump. Get it out there.
Get your ideas into a format that can then be edited later on. Now what? Second
draft. I like the way Stephen King put this in his Memoir On Writing.
He said second draft equals first draft minus 20%. All you have to do on the
second pass through is cut out 2 out of every 10 words.
You've put too many words into it on the first draft. We already know that. Second
draft is going to pair that thing down so you start honing in on the main ideas
in the best way to present them. That's a pretty good idea that second draft
equals first draft minus 20%. There comes a time when you get to put this in front
of some other people. And there's 2 ways that you're going to do that. I call
it free feedback and paid feedback. Now, the free feedback is when you share it
with your family and your friends. And they all say, "Oh, it's wonderful. You are
so awesome and amazing I'm glad you finally wrote your book." You're doing
that for you because you need to have a little bit of feedback and strokes that
you're on the right track. your family and friends love you. And they're not
going to really be honest with you about the book. So this is where the paid
feedback comes in. I hired Mr. Thomas Cantrell, my creative editor for my book.
Thank You Thomas for all of your good work on that book. And he shot straight
with me. I was paying him to make the book great. So, the free feedback is for
you. The paid feedback is for the book, you follow? You need a little bit of
professional help to get this from the brain dump that you did in the first and
second draft. To the book that is going to change some lives when it's finally
published. Remember earlier when I said you got to make it real? And that's why
you're going to go to the book store? I took another step at one point where I took
somebody else's book and I pasted a copy of my cover on the front of somebody
else's book. I'm not going out to sell these. This is for me. This is to give me
something to hold that looks even more like my book than the one that I bought.
Do you see how it's becoming more real for me, psychologically. This is a trick
that works really nicely. I pasted my cover on that and
felt a surge of energy. I needed that surge of energy to get through all of
the additional edits that Thomas took me through. Because he knew what he was
doing with this book. That's a lot of work. A good friend of mine Brett Harward
author of the book "The 5 Laws That Determine All Of Life's Outcomes." When I
ran it by Brett, he said, "Paul, you're gonna feel like you're about 80% there.
And it's probably just the opposite. You're about 20% there." And I was
offended at first. I'm like, "What? I've done a lot of work on this." He's like, "I
know, I know. I was there too." And he was right. The fine editing, the revisions, the
things that are required to get it from the rough draft to a really polished
final draft is more work than you expect. But not as much as you fear it's totally
doable and you've got this. At some point you're ready to do a final draft. And
that's what this one is. It's still a draft. You'll notice that says proof in
the back. This is the one that was sent to me to review to see if it's close. And
it was. But there were still a lot of corrections we had to do after this
first draft. Finally when this one showed up, finished.
Finished product. Can you imagine how it's going to feel to hold your finished
book in your hands. One that you can put into the hands of someone else. This is
what makes your ideas last beyond you. And it's a fantastic experience. I'm
excited for you to write your book and when you've finished it, I would like to
know about that. Because I may want to interview you for my podcast. Could you use
little coaching in the meantime? Go to liveonpurpose.coach where you'll
see profiles of coaches that are certified in programs and processes that
we teach here at Live On Purpose TV. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode.
Hope to see you then.