How to Write a Book

If like me, you consider yourself a visionary, there’s this little issue called The Finer Details, which tends to nip our limitless thinking in the butt. Dreaming big, going large on the vision, holding space for hope – ppfftt – that’s the easy stuff! But putting systems in place to support that – on something as large and fulfilling such as writing a book – that’s like putting the elephant in the room right? And is where us visionaries so often fall flat on our face.

That’s why I adore what I’m about to share with you today: the plan that supports the dream of the aspiring writer. A framework for the creative at heart. A structure.

I was lucky enough to recently participate in a once in a lifetime opportunity called the The Writer’s Mastermind in Bali with Mastin Kipp, the founder of The Daily Love and two world-class teachers to deep dive into my own creativity.

Most of what you’ll read in this blog post is wisdom imparted from Kelly Notaras and Patricia Verducci – our mastermind writing coaches while we were in Bali. Kelly’s a Hay House Editor, and Pat’s a screenwriter, and they’re both worth their weight in gold, so you can rest assured that if you can feel a book rattling in your bones, this ain’t terrible advice to follow.

How To Write A Book – The Outline

Essential. Do not – under any circumstances – start writing a book without an outline (Mastin found out the hard way). How many chapters does your book have? What’s going to be the central theme or message in each of them? What case studies or stories can you use to strengthen the message? How will you transition to the next chapter? Do the introduction and conclusion have a link-in, full-circle effect? All handy questions that will help you craft a useful outline. Note: this will more than likely change as you begin writing, and that’s 100% okay. A few of my chapters merged to make way for new ideas, and many of the other girls in Bali experienced the same.

The First Draft

Put your white out away. Step awaayyyy from the backspace key. Leave all self-criticism at the door, and just effing write.

The first draft isn’t pretty. It’s quite literally a transfer of creative information from your body, to the page.

It’s impossible for me to express how frustrating it was to continue writing without editing, without making my sentences sing and paragraphs purr and my chapters connect seamlessly. Oh, if only.

More than anything, and I can only speak for myself here: the first draft is a test of faith. Faith in the process. Faith that, when the time is right (and that time is most certainly not now), you will know how to make the words pretty, how to restructure the paragraphs. Faith that you will find (and fix) what you missed the first time round.

Write without judgement. Write without judgement.

It’s a mantra that was on repeat in my mind, not only in Bali, but also once I returned home and immediately got stuck into Spirited 2.

Just get the damn bones out – the ideas, the general message, the stories – and make it glow later.

Brilliant writers barf it out, and then they work it out.

Writing a book takes not only discipline, but experimentation of routine. I mentioned in this post what my daily writing routine in Bali looked like – a 4am alarm being essential for me to feel as though I’d had a productive and progressive day (with only 23 full days to write a book, we were rather under the pump!). Back home in my Burleigh, my days roll out differently – I still rise early, but my waking hours are focused more on a nourishing morning routine, before I hit the books and computer at about 8am.

Kelly and Pat, and almost any writer ever known, will offer you this: WRITE EVERY DAY. For you, this might look like a commitment to 2000 words a day, or one hour of writing before the kids wake up, or stream of consciousness journalling every morning.

With my business model, writing everyday isn’t a problem – my days are filled with writing blog posts, eBooks, emails as well as marketing copy, but I cannot for the life of me imagine fitting my book in amongst the rest of my life (not at this stage, anyway), which is why I’m heading to Byron tomorrow for 8 days of creative caving and body detoxing. My challenge since returning from Bali has been intuitively compartmentalising my days into boxes of What Projects Need What From Me To Feel Nourished.

My book was born in a retreat environment: a space in which everything I did – what I ate, how I moved my body, how long I meditated for – was in support of it’s birth. It feels right in my body to create a similar space for Draft Two, in Byron.

So, I would alter Pat and Kel’s initial suggestion and say: Yes, write everyday, but if you feel in your heart that you need to create a special place to invest the time and energy into your book, then do that. Create and schedule sacred containers: periods of time where you can clear your calendar and get away (or not – perhaps all you need is an at-home, switch-off retreat), draw on all the devotion you can muster and give it everything you’ve got.

 After you’ve finished your draft (and you’ll know you’ve finished because you’ll feel totally spent; like the thought of writing another word would be akin to getting your teeth pulled out), it’s time to close your notebook, close your lap top, push them to the side, breathe, and acknowledge your efforts. Note: Most of us had to be told in Bali something along the lines of this: Girl, you’re finished. You’ve written everything you can possibly write here. Chill now, and enjoy yourself. So here’s where I remind you that the First Draft isn’t perfect – no where near it. When you’re body says I’m done with this, I’m drawing on empty, listen to it. It knows.

Celebrate (in hindsight, I wish I had of spend a little more time hanging out here). Give the book – and you! – at least a week of breathing space; enough so that you feel excited to go back to it. I needed a little more than a week, probably two and a half, and not because I despised it or was afraid to revisit it, I was simply exhausted after giving a whole month of my life to it.

When the time is right and you feel called to return to the book, here’s what Pat and Kel recommend:

 1. Cold read through.

Print out your draft, and read it start to finish over the course of a few days, without making any notes or edits. Again, this is challenging. The mantra of ‘Write with non judgement,’ becomes: ‘Read with non-judgement.’ Once you’ve finished your read through, you’re going to become somewhat of an emotional engineer and take what’s called Global Notes. Answer these questions:

• What works? What’s great about my draft? Followed by…

• What needs attention?

This is not a time to look at grammar and spelling. That’s a whole different process, called editing! :)

These questions will help you really see your book:

1. Is the organisational structure working?

2. Is the tone inviting and not preaching?

3. Does the reader know where they’re at in their own journey?

   1. Am I on point and consistent?

   2. Is there subheadings throughout the chapter?

4. Is the reader set up to integrate? For example: Here’s an exercise for you to try, or, Here are some roadblocks that I came up against on my own journey…

5. Consistency. Are my chapter lengths consistent? And if they’re not, does it still work?

6. Is it both informative and entertaining?

 My global notes looked something like this:

• More humour

• This is a book about embodying peace, so put a little more emphasis on the light (it’s not all dark).

• Cross out everything that’s irrelevant. Let it go.

• Review and restructure each chapter: Beginning, middle, end.

• Explore these extra topics: X, X, X and X

2. Second read through

This time, you’re reading through with a pen in your hand, taking notes, making scribbles, and jotting down ideas. Again, you’re not even giving a sideways glance to spelling and punctuation – the priority is the strength of the story.

Once you’re finished, you’ll have a printed draft full of graffiti, which might look something like this:

This is a left-brained, analytical, dissect-and-put-back-together process, and I totally loved it! It was so fun to really get in there and see how I could restructure in the name of flow, where I could expand upon a story, add a quote, delete whole paragraphs.

Now, you’re ready to start on your second draft. And, my sweet friends, this is exactly where I’m at. Over the next eight days in Byron, my graffiti draft will be my bible; my divine document that I’ll be referring to hundreds of times per day as I make the changes to the book that my scribbly handwriting tells me to.

I’ll go through this process a couple of times – printing, taking notes, adjusting, until finally I’ll give it what’s called a line edit: grammar, spelling, polishing. 

And here’s the nugget, the piece of advice that quite literally left me stumped: When you get your book to a point where you think it’s brilliant, when you’ve given it your all, then and only then, hand it over to an editor (ensuring that you get the most bang for your buck), and when you make that handover, accept in your heart that in that moment, you are only 20% of the way there.

 20%

As Pat and Kelly told us over and over again: The lion’s share of the writing is in the re-writing. 

If I can wrap all of this up in one potent message, it would be this: do not edit your draft as you are writing it. When you’re writing a book this is saboteur behaviour at it’s most insidious. A first draft is no place whatsoever for perfectionism. With each and every edit, you’ll be taken away from the freeing feeling of completion, of finishing a milestone, of breaking through one hell of an upper limit. The saboteur in all us writers would rather we form the perfect paragraph then finish. There is time to make it beautiful, my friends. And that time is later.

Be a brilliant writer, and barf it out.

Thank you so much for making it all the way down here! I so enjoyed writing this post for you and I hope this inspire you to write your own book. It’s my hope that this will be one of those posts that you bookmark and return back to time and time again.

I’d be so grateful if you’d share this post using the buttons below so that all those visionary writers out there can feel a little more supported by this framework!

With Bliss. x

PS: Those pictures of me with a mammoth cup of tea and thousands of post it notes? That’s what putting together your outline might look like. Or not. Whatevs. ;)

PPS: Wanna write a book in 2014? Grab our Spirited 2014 Companion – it’ll help you smash through resistance, cultivate confidence, and change your relationship to failure.