Write Your Book Now

A Proven System to Start and FINISH the Book You've Always Wanted to Write!

Gene Perret

• Publisher: Quill Driver Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781610350716
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Écriture créative

Ideal for aspiring authors who only dream of actually finishing their works in progress, this guide features proven, field-tested tools guaranteed to successfully complete that romance, expert guide to business success, or great American novel. The chapters simplify the writing process by breaking it down into a series of discrete tasks, from creating a schedule in order to finish within a reasonable time, brainstorming sections of the book, and organizing ideas into chapters to rewriting, editing, submitting for publication, and even marketing. This reference is tailored to help writers avoid distractions and delays by establishing and maintaining a powerful writing momentum, thereby carrying their projects to completion. The psychological blocks that prevent writers from completing their manuscripts as well as how to combat them are also explored.

CHAPTER 1

SO WHAT’S KEEPING YOU
FROM WRITING YOUR BOOK?

YOU HAVE A BOOK YOU WANT TO WRITE. It’s a good idea, it’ll make a fine book, and you are a fine writer—but your book is not getting written. Why?

The answer to that question is critical to completing your book. Not finishing your book is not really the problem. It’s merely the symptom. The reason why you’re not completing your book is the problem.

If you go to your doctor and say, “Doc, I’ve got a tummy ache,” the doctor is going to want to find out why you’ve got a pain in your stomach. He or she might prod you and poke you, maybe even send you for tests in order to answer the basic important question—why? What’s causing the symptom? The doctor knows there could be any one of several possible reasons for the problem. Now the MD has to discover which specific reason is causing your specific pain. That information will tell him or her how to treat it. And, then your MD will know what medicine or procedure will make it go away.

Henny Youngman used to have a joke that said, “A guy went to the doctor and said, ‘Doc, it hurts when I lift my arm.’ The doctor said, ‘Don’t lift your arm.’” The solution was that simple.

That’s an old gag, but sometimes the solution can be that simple. Find out the “why” and resolve it.

You’re reading this volume because you have a book that you want to write, but you’re having trouble getting it into manuscript form. That’s the symptom. As a writer, that’s your “tummy ache.” Now, just like the physician, you must probe, prod, and uncover the cause.

There are many reasons why writers have difficulty completing a book. Often, simply finding the cause can be the solution. In other cases, definite steps must be taken to correct the problem. Let’s look at some of these reasons why writers don’t finish their manuscripts. With each cause we study, I’ll also suggest solutions.

Of course, not all of the problems will apply to each reader. (Just as not all of the reasons for a “tummy ache” will be present in each patient.) It’s up to you to read through the various reasons and isolate the ones that are influencing your writing (or lack of writing) and then take the steps to eliminate those problems.

Here are some of the reasons why you may be having trouble completing your book:

1. You Never Begin the Book

There’s an old proverb that says, “The journey of one thousand miles begins with the first step.” If you don’t take the first step, you can’t possibly take the final step that gets you to that thousandth mile. Similarly, if you don’t begin your book, you can’t finish your book. The only way to get to the last page of your manuscript, obviously, is to type the first page of the manuscript. Typing the first page, of course, doesn’t guarantee that you’ll complete your book, but it is unarguably a prerequisite.

If you investigate, you may find underlying reasons why you are reluctant to begin your book. One possibility is that you feel that you’ll never be able to either get an agent or publishing firm interested in any book you write. It’s not an unusual attitude. However, it’s very much premature. It’s also quite self-fulfilling. You convince yourself that your book will never sell; consequently, you don’t write it; consequently, you don’t sell it. The solution here is to simply ignore the possibility of a sale. “Ignore” may be too strong a word. How about postponing the idea of selling your book? Push that problem back until you come to it. The immediate problems are to start and complete your book. When that’s done, you can begin the campaign to sell it.

My system will suggest ways of beginning to market your book while you’re in the process of writing it. I’ll discuss ways of sending out query letters or even book proposals before the book is completed. A great incentive to completing a book is to have a publishing contract in hand. Nevertheless, whatever steps I advise and you take in order to market your book should not detract from the main goal—to finish your manuscript!

Another reason why you may be hesitant to start writing your book is because you feel that you’ll never be able to finish it. Writing a complete book is indeed a challenging task to undertake, and from the starting point, the finish line appears a long way off. You may convince yourself that you’ll never complete a full-sized book, so what’s the point in beginning it?

My response to this problem is to look back at some of the work you’ve already accomplished in your life. Whatever you do for a living presently, review it. Take a look at the body of work that you’ve accomplished. It’s probably tremendous. It’s probably such that if you took a look at it as if you were just beginning that work, you’d say to yourself that there’s no way you could do it. And yet you have done it. Someone once asked Bob Hope what he would do differently if he had his life to live over again. Hope said, “If I had my life to live over again, I wouldn’t have the time.” That’s pretty much true of most of us.

So yes, the completion of a manuscript when viewed from the first blank page seems to be a long way off. It is. But it’s doable. Many others have done it, and you can, too.

I once resisted a request from a publisher to write a book. I had never written a book and felt I couldn’t complete a manuscript of 60,000 or 70,000 words. But the publisher talked me into it and acted as my editor, guiding me through the writing process. I did complete the book and published it in 1980. Since then, I’ve published almost forty books. So I was wrong in feeling that I couldn’t complete a book. If you feel that way now, you’re probably wrong, too.

Solution: The solution to the problem of not starting your book might seem to be simply that you must start it. That, though, may be unwise. Yes, at some point, you do have to start the book, but you must start it with the key to my writing program: proper preparation. Read on to point 2.

2. Starting Your Book Without Proper Preparation

If you’re going to take a motor trip somewhere, you don’t just start your car, back out of the garage, and begin driving. You must have some idea of where you’re going, and at least a general notion of how to get there. It’s the same with starting a book. Turning on the computer and typing chapter one may be counterproductive. Admittedly, it does get your book started, which as I’ve said, is the necessary first step. However, it may get you started in the wrong direction and slow up the rest of the process. In fact, getting off to a bad start might convince you to not complete the book at all.

Before you begin typing text, you should have a good idea of what your book is about. You should envision those people you’re writing the book for. The chapters should be organized in your mind—in fact, they should be organized on paper.

Writing a book is not a small task, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. One of the main points of my system is that you can only complete a book by breaking it into smaller segments (I’ll elaborate on that in the following chapter). However, doing that requires an overall plan to guarantee that all the pieces eventually will fit. It’s like constructing a home. The contractor works on various facets of the building at any given time, yet he constantly refers to the blueprints. No contractor would start any portion of the building without first having a complete set of plans.

Solution: In this book, I devote at least six chapters to planning your writing. There are suggestions on defining your book, organizing your thoughts, planning what you want to say, laying out the chapters, refining those chapters, and documenting your writing schedule.

Complete your reading of this book, and then follow the suggestions in order to not only get your book started, but get it started effectively. Yes, do take that proverbial first step on your thousand-mile journey, but be sure to begin it in the right direction. If you don’t, you’ll wind up having to make a journey of one thousand miles and two steps.

3. Not Having a Book in the First Place

For years I had a cartoon from the Sunday papers framed and hanging over my desk—directly over the computer monitor, in fact. It was there in plain view as a constant admonition. The cartoon featured an owl in a tree who sat at a typewriter ready to begin a great work of literature. In the first panel, the thought cloud over his head was blank. In the second panel, the thought cloud over his head remained blank. This continued for the first five panels, as the crumpled up discards grew larger and larger around his wastebasket. Finally…in the sixth panel, the thought panel over his head showed a brilliantly illustrated letter “A”—the kind you would see as the first letter in an ornately hand-lettered book. Then in the next panel, the owl/writer tapped his keyboard and it produced an ordinary, simple type-written letter “A.” In the final panel, the thought cloud over the owl’s head was blank again.

The lesson I took from this cartoon—and the reason why I had it hanging so visibly in my office—was that often there is a large difference between what we conceive and what we execute.

I’ve known many writers, including myself, who have great plans for great literary achievements, but find out in the execution that those great plans have shrunk. Sometimes we envision a book, but wind up with a 1200- to 2000-word magazine piece. A comedy writing friend of mine once said, “I started out to write a book and ended up with a pamphlet.”

When that happens, you can’t finish the book because a book doesn’t really exist. Referring back to the previous item about starting your book with the proper preparation, the organization process you go through before beginning your book will help ensure that you have enough material for a complete book.

Solution: Pay special attention to the recommendations in Chapter 5 (START CHIPPING AWAY) and give full consideration to jotting down all those ideas you might want to include in your book. If you stay focused on that brainstorming task, and don’t quit gathering ideas too soon, you’ll provide yourself with enough information to decide whether or not you have sufficient substance to fill a reasonably sized book.

4. You Start Your Book, but Keep Postponing It Until You Finally Abandon It

In the television writing business, writers would often go from staff to staff. Shows would be cancelled and new shows would be created. There were many good-byes in the profession. Of course, none of us would admit that they were “good-byes”; to us, they were more “Let’s get together for lunch sometime.” In effect, they were good-byes. We would part vowing to call and get together for lunch, but we’d put it off for a few weeks. Then we’d vow to call this week—definitely. But we wouldn’t. Then we’d hit that point where it became embarrassing to call. The result was that those of us who vowed to “get together for lunch sometime,” never got together for lunch.

That’s what can happen with this book you’re writing. You have fine intentions. You may go through the recommended planning and preparation. You may even get off to a good start by writing chapters one, two, and three. Then you decide to take a break. Heck, you’re off to such a fine beginning that chapter four can wait a week. The following week you have a few problems at work or at home and chapter four is postponed again.

This can go on and on until chapters one, two, three, and the rest of your book are gathered up and put in a bottom drawer or some remote shelf and is abandoned. It’s a sin of omission. You don’t purposely stop writing your book; you simply keep pushing it back and back on your schedule and lower and lower on your list of priorities. In effect, you stop writing your book.

Solution: The program I detail in this book will overcome this problem for you. It will require you to plan a definite w...