How to Write Your Book

Are you an inspirational person who has reached a point in your career or your life experience where you have useful knowledge to share?

Then you may be thinking of writing a book. And well you might! I have worked with a few people who have definitely had precious knowledge worth passing along to the next generations.
But how do you start? Here are a few tips.

First and foremost: Go to a library or a big bricks and mortar bookstore and find books that appeal to you and that you would like to see your book sit beside.

Note: you can't do this online. Go touch and smell and feel and look -- how do you visualize your book in the real world? Look not just at covers, but how the chapters are organized and how the book is formatted. Are there pull-out boxes? Do you just want a straight chapter book, or something with more design flair.

1. Decide on a theme and, as appropriate, some sections the book might include. Will it be all one long story? How will you structure it? Or will it perhaps be a collections of smaller vignettes? What themes will you group those under?

2. Do you have titles in mind? I suggest brainstorming those as well and actually writing them down. Everything that you write down begins to ferment like a good wine or cheese, and refine itself in your mind. So do put it down on paper.

Everything that you write down begins to ferment like a good wine or cheese, and refine itself in your mind. So do put it down on paper.

3. If you have a theme book, do you have a set of principles or ideas that add up to the theme? For example maybe what you will call the chapters, or certain ideas that you want to emphasize? Let's get those written down in a Word document. It is fine if you don't have it all mapped out yet, but get a start on it. The more you put down, the more it will grow (And sometimes, rearrange or delete itself). But start putting down a skeleton of the structure.

The more you put down, the more it will grow (And sometimes, rearrange or delete itself). But start putting down a skeleton of the structure.

4. Now within those sections, decide on the stories that you want to tell. This is a process of listing and sorting, and sometimes, culling. You can't tell, for example, the whole entire story of your life in your first eighteen years... there aren't enough words in the world to tell everything. But you can tell selected stories from your childhood. Figure out how each story fits into the theme.

5. And if certain stories are just bursting out of you wanting to be told, then write them, or get them on dictation, and then you can put the pieces together. But it's important to ACTUALLY start putting these pieces down on paper.

It is only after it's down on paper that you can discover if you might have more, or possibly much less, than you thought you had. Maybe you have two or three books. Maybe you have a short one. (Don't worry if it's short -- it may grow, and/or, sometimes short books are good.)

6. As to how you will handle writing/ghostwriting/editing, there are a variety of ways. You could do it through dictation and hiring a typist, through point-form notes with a ghostwriter, or through you writing it and an editor revising.

Questions? I'm happy to help. Just ask in the comments or write me at ChristaBedwin at gmail.com.