With your trusty outline in hand or on your computer screen, you're on your way to the next step, which is to add to your outline. The idea now is to allow your mind to wander morning, noon, and night. Keep adding thoughts to that outline. These thoughts might be a story, a better way to explain a concept, a creative way to display something, or countless other ideas. Just turn your mind loose.
My suggestion is to use the record feature on your smartphone or invest in a small digital recorder.
Remind yourself, no matter how obscure the idea or how positive you are that you will remember it, to put it on the recorder. This is particularly important at night. I can't tell you how many times I've fallen asleep swearing I'll remember a certain idea in the morning, only to wake up remembering one thing. I'll say to myself, “I had an idea. Now what the heck was it?” It's a lot like trying to remember a dream; sadly, most of the time you just won't remember.
Now, it's time to get started writing. The first couple of pages are the toughest. You might want to prepare this writing around an event; maybe you have a long train ride, you are flying cross-country, or you have a vacation planned. What you are looking for is three to five hours of uninterrupted time alone.
Personally, I've always loved to write on planes. It doesn't hurt that I travel a lot, but the planes create an environment that suits me to a tee. There are no phones ringing, and the humming engines create a type of white noise that works wonders for me. The few minutes of waiting to load, waiting to push back, waiting to take off, and waiting to reach 10,000 feet and open that laptop allow me to focus on my topic at hand.
I've never actually seen what I look like, but you'll recognize me if you ever see me travel. I'm the guy who usually appears somewhere between being lost in thought and daydreaming before the flight begins. Then I look like I was shot out of a cannon once the flight attendant makes the “cell phones and laptops can now be used” announcement. I'm also the guy who sends absolutely no signals to the person sitting next to him regarding the remote possibility of a conversation. Let me apologize in advance. My time at home is for conversation with family and friends. My time on the road is to write.
Wherever you choose to write, my suggestion is to try to do it consistently. If you want to get up and write early in the morning, do it every day. If you want to put the kids to bed and write from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., do it every day. The key is consistency. The longer you adhere to a consistent writing schedule, the easier it is to fight off the doubts that will haunt you.
I've always treated my writing projects like training for a long race. As a former triathlete and marathoner, I used to train pretty hard. I wasn't crazy, but I was consistent. I used to set distances to run not by the day but by the week. For instance, I might set a month or two of training with a goal of 30 miles a week. In a sense, I didn't really care how I got to those 30 miles. I'd log my daily workouts and plan my normal daily activities to ensure I got them in.
Some weeks were much easier than other weeks. I might have some free time and take a few long 10-mile runs. That certainly took the pressure off the rest of the week. I never liked running in the rain much. If you ever saw me slogging by, it was usually later in the week. That meant I did not have my miles in, and I had no choice but to get wet.
Have you got the analogy yet? I recommend you handle your writing the same way. Set a weekly goal. I like 10 pages, but it's up to you. If you are like me and have a trip planned, you might do your writing then. You may not need to write at home at all. Maybe it's a short trip week, so there will be a little writing on the road and a little writing at home. Maybe you won't be traveling at all, so there will be a week of writing at home.
As for slogging away, running in the rain, occasionally you might have to cancel plans and be a little miserable on a Sunday getting those last couple of pages in. The most important thing is, once you start, you mustn't allow yourself to miss a week's total. Perhaps it's just my way of thinking, but once you let your mind get away with justifying failure, the next failure becomes infinitely easier to accept and justify.
With every new book I write, and I've written six, I strategically buy an old-school calendar. Once the project begins, almost ceremoniously on Sunday night I write in my page total for the week. Ten pages a week is my goal, but I almost always try to get a couple of extra pages in. This allows me a little cushion in case I have a week of rain. It also introduces a little bit of mystery. After a month or two, I don't really know how many pages I've written in total, and I like it that way. That is a reward I allow myself at the end of each month. At that time I add that month up and the other month or two that precedes it to the total. It's a terrific feeling when the number crosses over the first 100-page barrier.
Allow me one last suggestion that will help you to get to that first 10-page barrier. Don't micromanage your writing. That means don't edit your work. That's for another stage, but not right now. Your job is to write. There will be a time and a place to edit and fix. That's not happening until you bring this writing project in for a landing. That “landing” used to be around 215 pages, but this too has changed over the years. Most business publishers are looking for books in the 150- to 175-page range, with many looking for even fewer pages.
Want to know one of the best feelings in the world? It's the first time you print out your manuscript and actually hold it in your hands. I'm not much of a cigar smoker, but I usually keep a cigar somewhere near my computer while the typing is going on. Once I hold that manuscript (and I mean the whole thing), I usually light up that cigar. Often it's a bit dried out from sitting by my computer for so long, but it tastes great to me.
There are two editing options now for you to consider. The first is to edit the manuscript yourself, and if you can do that, you are a better person than I. I have a real problem reading my own words for any significant length of time. What's more, I'm a bit sloppy because I know what I'm trying to say and will assume anyone can follow me. You'll save some money here by doing the editing yourself, but personally I don't think it's worth the possible savings.
The editing option I recommend is to find a third party to do this for you. I usually find a retired English teacher or someone who edits material for a living. The costs are usually around $500 and well worth it. You'll have to train your editor, but most of them know what to do. Their job is not to agree or disagree with what you've written. You are the expert, and that's why you've written the book. Their job is to concentrate on grammar and syntax. I know for me, my editor needs to look for a repeated story here or there. Remember, this project may well have been written over a four- or five-month period of time. It's very easy to tell the same story or to use the same analogy two or three times.
Keep in mind that whoever decides to publish your book will have their own editor look over your book and suggest changes. The goal here is to have not only a great book but a well-written book as well. With a small investment in an editor, that's just what you'll have.
With manuscript in hand, it's time to get a publisher. Once again, there are two ways to go here. You can try to find a publisher or publish yourself. There are books written on this subject alone, but allow me to cut through the rhetoric a bit and lay out both sides of this equation for you. If you want to avoid self-publishing your book, you can lay out the ideas you have for your book, write a sample chapter, get that proposal together, and see what happens. Not me.
Many speakers – and by many I've heard numbers as high as 95 percent of professional speakers – self-publish their books. Self-publishing means the authors pay the publisher to publish their work. Their books are printed and bound beautifully. The publishers they use leave no trace of the fact they were paid to do the work. Companies like Amazon now self-publish for no charge, and e-books obviously require no binding.
You can spare yourself the time and trouble of creating a proposal because the self-publishing companies will be selling you to allow them to do the work. Why not? They are not taking any risk whatsoever. It is purely business. Most print on demand, and some will save