Bring The World A Bestseller: A Writing Guide: Part 1

People are always asking about writing their own books. It seems rather simple, doesn’t it? You get your laptop, open Word and off you go. A few pages in, you start to question your story. “It’s not very good, is it?” you say. You start to wander away from the story, and suddenly you’re on Google, reading about the 2005 election. You have lost the vitality you need to keep to write a book. This is the first of a five-part series on publishing a book. We are going to go over a few goals, a few settings and a few ideas that will help you get that book finished….

Small Steps

500 words per day is plenty. John Grisham began his writing career as a lawyer. He got up early every morning and wrote one page. You can do the same.

Have an outline

Write up a table of contents to guide you. Then break up each chapter into a few sections. Think of your book in terms of beginning, middle and end. Anything more complicated will get you lost.

Have a set time to work on your book every day

If you want to take a day or two off per week, schedule that as time off. Don’t just let the deadline pass. And don’t let yourself off the hook.

Choose a unique place to write

This needs to be different from where you do other activities. The idea is to make this a special space so that when you enter it, you’re ready to work on your project.

Staying accountable

Have a set word count in mind. Try to think in terms of ten-thousand word increments, and break each chapter into roughly equal lengths. This is a rough guide that should help you make your mind up about how long the book should be.

10,000 words: a pamphlet
20,000 words: short eBook or print book
40,000–50,000 words: good-sized nonfiction book
60,000–70,000 words: longer nonfiction book
80,000 words–100,000 words: typical novel length

You Have a Deadline…

It can be a word count, percentage of progress, whatever you’d like. Just have something to aim for, and someone who will hold you accountable.

Get early feedback

Nothing hurts more than writing a book and then having to rewrite it because someone didn’t like it. You could have sent it over for feedback a long time ago; but you didn’t, so you have to do endless rewrites. At the same time, try not to bug everyone to give you feedback. A writer endlessly looking for hints of greatness can soon lose a few dozen friends.

Dr. Princess Fumi Hancock, DNP, MA, BSN
Your Vision Midwife, Lifestyle Entrepreneur
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