Tuesday’s writing tip for authors

Here are 6 important questions for authors to ask before starting to write a book. Your answers to these questions will help you write your book as efficiently as possible, getting your message before your market on time without unnecessarily disrupting your business or family routines and responsibilities.

1. Where will you find the time to write? All authors suffer from a lack of writing time. What separates authors from dreams, however, is a commitment to writing their book a little at a time. Success comes from consistent daily progress, not marathon writing sessions. Successful authors assemble their daily schedules around the writing, rather than trying to fit their writing into their “spare time.”
2. Do you have a detailed content plan for your book? A written table of contents, or a mind map of your book’s contents, can make a huge contribution to your book’s success. Writing to a plan permits you to write in short daily chunks, often adding topics to several chapters at a time. Many writers find this far easier than trying to write your book in a linear fashion, from start to finish.
3. How are you going to track your progress? Successful writers create a system of tracking their response in a way that creates a daily feeling of progress. Printing each day’s output on 3-hole punched paper and inserting it in a 3-ring binder is one way to show progress, other ways include using colors or large check marks to indicate completed topics.
4. Have you carefully studied your publisher’s Writer’s Guidelines? Every trade publisher has their own Writer’s Guidelines. These spell out exactly how they want their authors to format and submit their manuscripts. Failure to follow their guidelines can cause unnecessary frustration and delay. Always clarify what you’re going to be doing, and when, with the editor in charge of your book.
5. Are you able to write as efficiently as possible? Just as a carpenter’s success involves having the right tools, and using them in the right way, your success is based on how efficiently you have set-up your computer and how much advantage you take of the power built into your word processing program. An efficient file and folder system can save you hours of work, as well as speed backing up your work. Learning how to edit and format text using keyboard shortcuts, and allowing your software to enter frequently-used terms and phrases, can save you hours of work over the course of your book.
6. Have you prepared a contingency plan for handling writer’s block? Writer’s block can cause serious havoc with an author’s progress, but it can be prevented and there are ways to handle it if it does show up.  Writer’s block is typically caused by deadline stress. Writer’s block is less likely to occur if you have prepared a detailed content plan and are writing a little each day. If writer’s block strikes, try writing a brief article or a letter to a friend describing the topic you are having trouble writing. Or, call a client and discuss the topic with them.

A published book has the potential of transforming your career and your life. You can begin to enjoy its benefits earlier by writing as efficiently as possible. Answering the above questions will help you identify ways to write as efficiently as possible so your expertise will be brought to the attention of readers, meeting planners, and prospective clients as soon as possible.

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To learn more. Writing a book is a matter of cultivating the right habits. Click here to read about three books that can make a big difference in your writing success.

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