So, you're wondering how to start writing your own book? I found a process that
worked. And I moved from "Going to write a book"
to "I've written several." And you get to learn that in this video. I'm kind of
passionate about this one. How to start writing your own book. Because for years,
I told everybody and more importantly myself, "I'm going to write a book. I'm
going to do it." And notice how every time that I say that, it's always true. I'm
going to, right? In some unforeseen future time or space continuum somewhere. Do you
see how vague and far-off that is? That's the first thing we need to change. We
switch our own mentality from, "I'm going to write a book" over to "I'm writing a
book". Now, once you make that shift, what feels different to you? Do you notice
that that changes the energy? So. it's no longer out there in the future ethereal
world somewhere. Now, it's present. I'm writing a book. Here's another way to
shift that mindset. I am an author. Now, notice if you have a little fight in
your head, because you haven't written a book yet? That it feels like, "Well, I'm
lying." Really? What if you're telling the truth
in advance? Because if you are an author at some point in the future, it's still
you. You are an author if you're going to write a book. What does that make you? So,
we switch it in our mind to say, "I am an author. I am writing a book." Now, that's
going to create a little cognitive dissonance. That's fine, I'm okay with
that. Cognitive dissonance is just when my
experience doesn't match my belief. And if your belief is that you're not an
author and now you're saying that you are, hmm,
that's a little dissonance. Your mind will work to bring that into sync, okay?
And so what we're doing is setting up our mind to shift into author mode.
"I'm a writer mode, I am writing the book." See how that's all present tense and
very affirming. That's the first thing, folks. You shift. And I had my shift about
10 years ago. When I had already been telling myself for 10 years prior to
that, that I'm going to write a book. It shifted for me. I am an author. I went
through several experiences that brought me there. I don't have to share all of
that with you to make the point. But that was the first key element. Now, what are
you going to do next? Let's get practical. What I want to do in this video is share
my own experience with you. Now, other authors may have done this in different
ways. That's fine. And be open to their experience and their wisdom. Here's what
happened to me, I was listening to a webinar where the point was made that
you start by doing what this trainer called an Authors Book Tour. Here's what
the Authors Book Tour is: You simply get your body out of the seat that it's in
and head down to the book store. I'm not talking online amazon.com. It's amazing, I
love to buy books through Amazon Barnes & Noble all those fun online retailers.
No, you go to the store. There are still bookstores in most communities. It may be
a dying breed. But while we've still got them, take advantage of this, head over to
the book store. Now, what is the author's book store? You walk into the book store,
the physical bookstore and you look for your book. This is brilliant because it
creates an image in your mind of what kind of a book you're going to write?
Where it would be in relation to the other books in that bookstore. So, I walk
in and I see the mechanics books and magazines over here. And I see design and
fashion over here. And I see cookbooks back there
somewhere. And books about art and books about science. None of those are mine,
okay? That's... I'm not going to those sections to find my book. You might go to
that section. But that's not my section. What am I looking for? Well, there it is. --
Psychology and Self-help. "Oh, that's where my books going to be." I go over to that
section of books and I start looking for... Well, is it going to be in child
development? Is it going to be in human ethology? Is it going to be what? So,
we narrow it down. Find the shelf where your book is most likely to be. On that
shelf where your genre is and where the similar books are that are kind of in
that same family as yours, you're going to look around at some of the books
there. And I even had some fun picturing, "Oh, my last name starts with J. Jenkins,
that's going to be right here." My book would be right there on the shelf. Now,
I'm going to look at the other books around it. Pick 4 or 5 books off of
the shelf, really. Actually do this. This is a powerful experience. Pick 4 or
5 that look similar to what you might write. And then go find one of those big
overstuffed chairs in the back of the book store. Go sit down on one of those
and I took my phone with me so that I could take some pictures of these books.
The covers, the title pages, the table of contents. Because I want to see how
they're organized and how they pull together ideas that are similar to what
I want to present to the world. You're going to find one or two that speak to
you more than the others. Find the one that seems the most similar to you as to
what you want to create and buy it. It's called no more regrets by Marc Muchnick.
Marc, if you see this video, send me a message. I would love to chat with you.
But marc's book spoke to me in a way that's like, "You know what? This is kind
of like the book that I would create." So, I bought it and I read it and
I enjoyed it and I noticed how he structured and put together. The book
that I'm holding right here in my hands. I bought a physical copy because this
makes it more real to me that maybe I can create something like this. Now, I'm
not going to knock off Marc's book or plagiarize it in any way. This is simply
kind of the roommate, if you will. To my book, it's right there on the shelf with
my book. Do you see where I'm going with that?
So, I buy the book, I spend some time in it. I read it. I noticed what's working
for me and what's not and how I might apply that. So, that's what the author's
book tour is. Now, let's go to the next step. This is extremely important. Make an
appointment with yourself. This is a recurring appointment. If you have an
appointment with me, are you going to keep that appointment? Of course you will
because you got that kind of integrity, right? You make an appointment with your
dentist, your doctor, your attorney, whatever. You're going to show up to your
appointment. Make an appointment with yourself. And I don't mean tell yourself
"Well, I'm going to do it." No, you put it in your calendar. It's got a start time and
an end time. You're going to protect that not let other things interfere. This
appointment is your writing appointment. For me that writing appointment for
almost 4 years straight was 5 o'clock, Saturday morning. Now, I set a
start time and an end time. I gave myself 2 hours, every Saturday morning. From
5:00 to 7:00. What am i doing during that appointment? I'm writing? What do authors
do? They write. Start writing. Oh, big surprise. Dr. Paul does a video about "How
to start writing your own book?" And he says start writing? Oh, this is really
high science, people. Connect with it. Start writing. Set an appointment with
yourself. You keep the appointment. Now, let's say that your appointment comes up,
okay? 5 o'clock, Saturday morning was mine. I sit down at my computer. What do I
write? Well, I don't know.
You're going to experience this I promise. It's like, "Uh, what do I write?" And you
might be stuck. If you don't know what to write, write that. Write the words, "I don't
know what to write." Get your fingers moving on the keyboard. Now, you might not
be a proficient keyboardist. That's fine. You don't have to do this on a word
processor or on a keyboard. You can speak it. There are digital recorders, there are
programs, there's software, there's apps where you can actually speak into a
device and the device types it for you. So, don't let that stop you. I don't care
what your limitations are. You've got to get your thoughts from here. Where they
currently reside to here where, we can manipulate them and edit them and move
them around and start playing with and massaging them. Because this writing a
book thing is a very complicated process. Well, I said complicated and actually
fairly simple. It's getting the ideas from here to here and then moving them
around. So that it looks like a book. That's what we need to do. So, however you
need to do that? Whether it's through keyboard, recording, transcription,
whatever. You pick your preferred way of doing this. I have a buddy who spoke his
entire book. He spoke it. Were there errors? Yeah, but there's errors when I type too.
So don't worry about that. Just get it out. Don't worry about organizing it. Now,
at some point, you'll come to this point. Where... And I did this for about a year. I
brained up to got it all out there. And then I realized, "You know what? This isn't
a book. It's Dr. Paul's brain dump." And I need to turn it into something that
looks more like a book. At some point, you will reach the realization that you need
other people. You need other people on your team. You need someone else's eyes
on this. You need someone to look at it or work with it. According to their skill
sets or experience or expertise. I hired a brilliant man named Thomas
Cantrell. Thomas, much love from Dr. Paul. Thomas helped take me through an editing
process. He's a creative editor. So, he takes the
ideas and the concepts and he helps to get to the heart of "what is it you're
trying to say here doc? Because all of this is kind of a pile of brain dump."
Yeah, I knew that. Thomas and his skill set was able to
take me through an editing process. Where we took about half of what I had written
and we put it over here on a shelf in the basement for later use. And this half
is the part that I really want in this book. We worked it around for quite a
while, got to a point where it's time to turn it into a book. Now,
one other comment about this. As you consult with people,
it feels risky. I called my dear friend Leslie Householder. She is the author of
the Jackrabbit Factor, Portal to Genius. Go read those books, do yourself a favor.
Leslie told me, she says, "Dr. Paul, when you get to this point, it's kind of like
you've given birth to this little baby. You know, your book. And you want to
send this baby out to the world. But you don't want the world to tell you, your
baby's ugly." And that's the risk. Because getting outside of your own eyes, in your
own head, to let other people view it and possibly scrutinize it, that feels risky.
And you have to do that at some point. So, be ready for that and we can consult if
you want when you get to that point. At this stage of writing your book, you've
got all of your ideas into some format that you can move it around and edit it.
You've engaged people on your team, you've brought people and you've got
feedback. You're getting to the point where it's starting to form into an
actual book that can go sit on the shelf at the bookstore with Marc's book. I found
it very helpful at this point to start creating very physical images of what's
going to happen with my book. Let me show you this one. This is my book
Pathological Positivity. Psyche! It's actually somebody else's book of a
different title. I print it out the mock-up for my cover and I taped it. It's
even Latin on the back. This is before I had any of the copy written. But this
this gave me a little rush. Because this printed paper cover over someone else's
book gave me something to hold that looked like my book. And I can hold that
up next to Marc's book and I can say, "Look, they get to be roommates now." It's
not even my content. But what this did is have started to work with my own mind to
make this more possible. We move from that to a draft version. When this one
showed up from the publisher, I was so excited. Because this is my book. It says,
"Proof" in it. So, it's not the final copy and the papers not even the same color
that it eventually became. But I got to go through this and make further
corrections and editings. And do see that we're getting closer and closer. Until
finally, boom, there it is. Pathological Positivity. There's a dot-com for that.
You can buy this book. Isn't that cool? And it's a physical tangible book. Now, I
got to give you a warning because we've just talked about how to start writing
your own book. Be careful, it's a little addicting. I wrote that book. Took me a
couple of years to go through that process that I just shared with you. My
second book, Portable Positivity came out in about a year after that. Came out much
faster. It's a little mini-book. My third book, The Love Choice, came out the
following year. I wrote three books in three years. And then I kind of got
distracted with YouTube in stuff. But I got a couple of more books in my
computer right now at different stages of development. There's more to share
than you can possibly share in one book. Start writing this first one because
that will open up the possibilities to so many more things to come. I hope you
found that helpful. It's a totally doable thing and if you feel inclined to do it,
jump in. You can do this. And share this video with someone else that you think
might benefit.