The discipline required to write a book (Part 1)

At Kainos Print, we constantly encourage our customers to consider turning their accumulated wisdom, or creative ideas into books.

We wrote in a recent blog “Marketing gurus such as Perry Marshall (acknowledged as the leading Google AdWords expert in the world), and our own customer, John Dwyer of “the Institute of WOW” both encourage their clients to write books to stand our from the crowd and achieve the status of expert. People will pay to access your expertise. There’s nothing like a book you have written to establish your authority and promote your career.

“Are you a story teller? Perhaps then you have a novel in you, or a children’s book. Are you an artist, or a photographer? Consider publishing a book of your works.

“Self publishing makes it easy to print a small quantity to test the market, and to develop your marketing skills without breaking the bank.”

Frequently, it is not the lack of wisdom or the lack of ideas, but the lack of self-discipline that prevents people from converting great ideas into great books.

We like a quote I came across recently from one writer who observes “Here’s my theory about the New York Times bestseller list: the most successful writers aren’t the most talented. They’re the most stubborn.”

Here are some hints that may help you overcome the disciple road-block. These are drawn mainly from Joseph Finder’s article which you can find here.

1. Just write it. Fix it later. That means: don’t worry about word choice or grammar. Don’t worry about getting your facts right.

2. You do have time — if you really want to do it. Set yourself some book writing boundaries. Make the decision that you will write every day from six to eight in the morning, or from 10 to 12 at night and every Sunday evening — whatever works for you, but make sure that you write daily. If  you start making enough money from your writing to be able to quit your day job, you may find that you become far less efficient. You have all day to do what you used to do in two hours, and all you do is fulfil Parkinson’s Law that says that work will expand to fill the time available. Not having a lot of free time to write may well make you more efficient.

3. If you have a full-time job, you could write during your lunch break, away from your desk, but not too far away. Being away from distractions is essential.

4. If you are self-employed, or in a full-time job that allows you to do this. Consider adopting one of the most helpful business hints I ever came across. Quit out of your email when you go home, or leave the office at night. Spend the first hour of the new working day writing, before you give any attention to anything, including email.

5. Enlist help to keep you honest. It could be your spouse, a friend, a work colleague. Give that person permission to “speak firmly” to you, and above all, ensure that person maintains the discipline of regularly checking on you.

Part 2 tomorrow.