The Self Help Authors Network

3 Easy Steps to Writing a Book

Many people have the idea that writing a book is hard. I hope to dispel that notion in this article by breaking the process down a bit more into bite-sized chunks.

1. DO NOT try to write a book!

I often talk to beginning writers who want to write a book, but who have a hard time getting started. The first thing I tell them is to STOP thinking about writing a book. Instead, think about writing a page a day, or one page a week or whatever fits with your writing schedule.

Some of you are reading this article right now as a blog post and I want you to realize that I wrote this 2 page article as a blog post with every intention of using this article as part of a book. Those of you reading the book (The Self Help Author) should realize that this wasn't originally part of Chapter 2 and that at the time I wrote this as an article I hadn't even written the outline for the book yet!

My point here is to write! Set up a free blog about your favorite topic, your holistic healing practice, your life coaching business, etc. and just write. One 8½ X 11 page equals about a page and a half in the 6X9 format Trade Paperbacks are published in. You need about 60 pages in a book in order to have a Perfect Bound Cover. This means that you only need about 40 pages of regular text to have a book!

I dare say that anyone who's drawn to read this article has the ability to write 40 pages on a given topic, probably this afternoon.

2. Use an outline

Some brilliant writers have stated that they never use outlines and they just write and the book happens. I go completely the other way. I write an outline, then take whatever section appeals to me at any given time and write articles based on that topic. As I've stated, I don't write books, I write articles and then compile them into book form.

This is a really simple process and I'll give you a sample. Since at this point I still haven't written the outline for The Self Help Author I'll start here.

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