how to write a book | Randy's Blogs

August 12, 2023

Writing A Book

First time writing a book.: nine steps that will help. It’s been a while but I’m back.

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Today I’m talking about writing a book for the first time and giving you nine steps that will help.

What Kind of Writer Are You?

The first step is to figure out what kind of writer you are. Decide if you’re someone who writes from the seat of your pants or if you’re someone who requires a detailed outline, Find out what works for you.

One is not better than the other, as long as it matches your personality.

Personally, I prefer a combination of the two. I come up with large ideas or topics and break the writing down into those sections. I use that as a heading and then just let the writing flow.

So start off using a very simple outline in your writing if you’re a “pantser.” (someone who prefers to write with no set structure or outline)

Now if you are a pantser then you do probably want to improve your structure a little bit. You need to know where you’re going and how you’re going to end up.

If you are someone who prefers very detailed writing, that’s fine. Come up with that type of outline, and write from it.

Even so, you might benefit from taking some of those sub-points and setting a timer, and making yourself write quickly until the timer goes off.

That might feel a little odd to you, but I think if you do the two together. you will find some benefits in doing that.

If you’re a pantser or an outliner, after you get through with your book, you will come back in the editing process and be more analytical.

But first of all, figure out what kind of writer you are, and don’t try to force yourself into the other. This is an important step in your first time writing a book.

The Big Idea

The second step is to get a big idea of what you are talking about. This will work for either fiction or nonfiction.

Your title might not reveal that big idea, it may be more of a curiosity-type title, but you still need to know what the big idea of your book is.

Some writers come up with their characters and start their book. Then once they get about halfway through they figure out what the big idea is and go from there.

Get the big idea.

Develop A Writing Plan

The next step is to either outline (if you are a detailed outline person) or, if you are a free-flow writing person, then come up with some type of writing plan.

This is especially important if you are writing nonfiction. You need to come up with some ideas about some of the things that you’re going to cover in your writing

Develop a writing plan for your first time writing a book.

In the past, I’ve talked about some types of writing plans that go from just an outline to turning the main points into a series of questions. You can even do that with sub-points. When you do that, then all you have to do is answer the questions.

Come up with a writing plan for your first time writing a book.

Research

Then after that, you need to research. As you conduct the research, be excited about what you’re doing.

The next thing you need to do is figure out how much time you’re going to spend researching your particular writing project.

When deciding how many days you’ll need, be sure to tame your research. If you don’t, you will research and research and research until that’s all you’ll ever do.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have the plan and you will know what the big idea is.

Have a Routine for Your First Time Writing A Book

Set up a routine for writing. Find a special place where it is quiet. Maybe you’d prefer going to different places like restaurants, coffee shops, or libraries

Find out where you’re going to write and then set up a routine.

I have a desk at home where I especially like to write.

So the next nice thing is to set up a routine.

Now my routine has been interrupted quite a bit this summer because of some of the things that have been going on in my various enterprises. One of those things is I accepted the call to be the pastor of a new church, so getting settled in has kind of messed with my daily routine of what I was doing at home.

Now I’m back and beginning to reestablish that and I’m able to work from home.

You need to set up your routine, and I think there are two good ways to do this.

The first is to set a daily writing goal of so many words. You might want to set a goal of 500 or 1000 words a day.

Create a routine for your first time writing a book.

Another way is to decide on a certain length of time that you will write. You might write 25 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, or 75 minutes a day.

With some writing plans, you can break your writing down to where you are doing anywhere from 10 to 15 five-minute writing sessions a day, which comes out to 50 to 75 minutes a day. That’s pretty good; especially if you have another job and you need to do your writing either early in the morning or late at night or at some other time outside of your job.

So set up a routine and have a daily goal.

I often find it helpful to set a timer for the timed writing.

If you find yourself going over the same sentence three times before you’re finished, it’s good to just set a timer and force yourself to write as fast as you can until the timer goes off.

That one works well for me.

Set up your routine where you’re either going to write a certain number of words per day or for a certain amount of time each day.

Having this set structure will be a big help for your first time writing a book.

Now the next thing is very important.

Keep Going!

Once you get that routine established, stay with it. Stay with it on the days when you feel inspired and on the days when you don’t feel inspired. Just keep going, and as you meet those daily goals, you will get that rough draft finished.

If this is your first time writing a book, it can feel daunting and overwhelming. Keep going.

Finish the Rough Draft and Edit

The seventh step is to finish the rough draft. The eighth step is to add it to your second draft or close to your final draft.

There may be a second and a third in there but just go back and edit what you’ve written.

The importance of getting that rough draft done is that it is much easier to edit something if you have something to edit.

So get the rough draft done and then start the editing.

One writer said someone gave a writing project back to him and it was marked up and he thanked the editor who said, “All I did was get rid of the unnecessary words.”

When you’re editing that’s a good little tip. You will be trimming a lot when you edit and add it to your second draft.

Once you have that done, you have your second draft, third draft, and your final draft.

Publish It

The next step is to publish your book.

Now you can publish it as an ebook and you can publish it as a hard copy. I recommend that you do both.

Several years ago, the number of sales of ebooks surpassed those of print books. That went on for a couple of years and then I think it’s gone back and forth since then, but I would just recommend that you publish both.

Now, I have no stock in any particular company, but if you’re wanting to find out how to publish, there are some options.

If you want to self-publish for the first time, Kindle Direct Publishing is a good platform to do that.

Other ones that are good are Lightning Source and Lulu. I don’t have as much information on either of those or experience with them, but I know those are good platforms.

If you’re interested in self-publishing, you could also pitch your book to a traditional publisher.

You would need to write a query letter and present some sample chapters to be able to do that.

In this modern world, there are a number of hybrid publishers where you sort of get the best of both worlds of self-publishing and traditional publishing.

A hybrid publisher will charge you for certain things that they do for you, so you need to figure out how much you’re willing to pay for the services that you get.

Now, these are not vanity publishers; these are legitimate publishers who do need to be compensated for the time they’re going to put into helping you to get your project finished.

So, first time writing a book: those are nine steps that I hope will help you.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in having someone come and speak to you on the topic of writing, I happen to be the author of the book, How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death and I would be glad to come and speak to your group on the topic of writing.

To get your own copy of the book, just click the link above. To submit a request for me to speak at your event, click here, fill out the form, and I will gladly get in contact with you. If you’d like to read more blog posts on the topic of writing, click here and you’ll find many helpful posts.

Well, I hope you have a great day. If you need me for anything, let me know.

For now, remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK

May 18, 2023May 18, 2023

How to Write a Book Now!

How to write a book now. Hello everyone. Welcome to another blog based on my video series “Walking with Randy” where I talk about writing, speaking coaching marketing, and marriage. Today I’m talking again about writing.

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Susan’s Story

Susan wanted to write a book. She had wanted to for some time, but she had not been able to get it off the ground.

She had not only put it off for a couple of months, it actually had been three years since she had the idea for the book, but she just could not start.

Susan's writing career wasn't going well — Susan’s writing career wasn’t going well

She had some times when she was writing on paper, and she wound up with crumpled papers in her wastebasket.

Then she had spent some time using a typewriter, but again, wound up with piles of wadded-up paper in her wastebasket.

Then she moved on to word processing programs on the computer, but it was just a hodgepodge of materials here and there.

She had been throwing away all of her attempts.

Then she read about some time management techniques.

Schedule Time to Write

What I’m talking about today is, if you want to write a book now, you must schedule writing your book. If you don’t do that if you don’t plan you are almost guaranteed to have days, weeks, months, or maybe even years of uncompleted projects toward that book. Time can slip by without you having a book to your credit.

Pick a Topic

Well, how can you write a book now? As I said, you must schedule but first of all, you have to start so you have to pick a topic.

You can do this, just in a day’s time or you may already have a topic in mind. Either way, if you don’t pick a topic, you can’t start.

Define a Problem

Once you’ve decided on a topic, you’ll need to define a problem.

Now here’s where perfectionism will come in and it will get you aren’t careful.

Your stated problem does not have to be a perfect statement, just define a problem and have a working statement to use as you start working on this book.

Brainstorm

Your next step will be to brainstorm some steps to the solution for this problem. Try to come up with seven to nine steps. If you come up with more than nine you might want to try to combine some somewhat. If you have more than 20, you’ll definitely want to combine some of them.

A nonfiction book is a good book to start with, and I would suggest that you try to have five to nine steps toward the solution.

Once you have done that, you can consider each of those steps as a chapter for your book.

You’re off to a good start.

Do Your Research

Now the next thing is to research.

Once you have the five to nine chapters picked out, do some more research on your topic. Look at other books on the topic, look at their tables of contents. Have you left out something that should be in your book? If so, just go ahead and add it in.

By now you may have trimmed some of your ideas by trying to combine some ideas in order to narrow down the number of steps, but you also may be adding in some more information that you need.

The Key To Writing a Book Now

Here is the key to how you can write a book now.

You’ve done all the preliminary planning and you’ve done some brainstorming. This could be done in a day.

Then you have done some research and have tamed the information that you found while doing your research. If you don’t tame your research you will be researching for years.

Now, here is the secret. Take a calendar and mark a certain date to start.

When that day comes, you will write every day. You will write using one of two different methods.

Timed Writing

With the first method, you will decide on the amount of time that you have to write each day. It might be 25 minutes, it might be 50 minutes, it might be 75 minutes or it could be as much as 90 minutes.

Whatever amount of time you choose, you need to commit to writing for that period of time, every day.

Then before long, you will have come to the end of the rough draft of your book!

Word Count Method

The other method is to not write for a particular period of time but to write a certain number of words a day.

You may have committed to writing 500 words a day, 1000 words a day, or 1500 words a day.

Word count is one way to reach your daily writing goals.

If you want to get the rough draft of the book done in a month’s time, you will probably need to write 3000 words a day.

The key is that you have written the word “start” on your calendar, and you start that day and you write every day.

You can decide what your business days are. I take Sundays off myself or many times I take Saturday off too and just have my business days or writing days be Monday through Friday.

You can determine what days work best for you and then you write every day.

How to Tame Your Research

At first, you’ll have to stop researching and start writing but you will probably come to places where you’ll find that you do need more research.

But don’t stop right then to go find the answer. Just put some x’s or some asterisks or, I’m told that if you put “TK”, a word processing program will find those. Make sure you don’t have a space between the letters. That should work well with a word processing program. When you see the “TK” marked, you’ll know that’s an area where more research is needed.

The difference with this research is this time it will be very focused. You’ll just be trying to find the answer to the question regarding what you need to add to that section of your book.

Be sure that before you do the extra research you do your daily goal first. Don’t stop writing to do the research. Put in those codes and then later you can do more research and put it in where you put your codes.

That’s how you tame your research.

Next Steps

You can write and publish your book now.

So once you have your research, pick a day to start writing. Write every day until you come to the end of your rough draft. Then you will be over the hump and you will be able to figure out how to finish your book.

You can hire someone else to edit or you can do it on your own. Then it’s time to get your book ready for publishing.

You can pitch to a traditional publisher if you wish, or you can self-publish. More and more people are self-publishing nowadays, and it’s certainly something that you can do and you can learn to do well.

Or you might do what some people would call getting a relationship with a traditional publisher.

Whatever route you choose, you can get your book not only written but published as well. You will have the basic book.

The key is to start scheduling now. Take your calendar and write the word start. on whatever day you want to start and then do it.

That’s how you write a book now.

If you’d like more writing tips like these, just click here to be taken to my blog posts about writing.

Within a very short period of time I will also have a special gift for you on that page. it will be a free one-page roadmap to writing success,

For the ultimate guide to writing, consider purchasing my book “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death.” It’s available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions.

If you’d be interested in having me speak to your group about one of the several topics I cover, like marriage, speaking, or coaching, click here to be taken to the page where you can request that

It’s been good to share with you today. I hope you have a wonderful day. Until next time, I’m Randy Carney reminding you that YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

November 26, 2022November 26, 2022

Writing a Book for the First Time?

Hello, everyone!

Writing a book for the first time. Here’s a secret that bi-vocational pastors and others can use to publish a wonderful and beneficial book even if they have never done so before.

Define a Problem

First of all, you want to define a problem. Once you have the problem figured out, then come up with a series of steps to provide the solution to the problem.

Once you have those steps, figured out, make sure you have them in the right order. Then you can prepare a series of sermons based on those steps.

It may be that that will be exactly what the Lord would have you to use for your congregation. If not, then you’re just going to have to prepare your sermons and deliver them to yourself or to your phone.

Either way, prepare a series of sermons based on those steps. A 30-minute sermon will provide a good chapter length for a book.

It would be best to have around seven steps to provide the solution to the problem.

Five to 10 would work and you can come up with a book by doing that.

Transcribing

Next, you have your recordings transcribed. You can do a search online and find services that will use artificial intelligence to transcribe your recordings, and they will be relatively accurate.

You can transcribe your book yourself, or hire someone.

Depending on what kind of monetary investment you want to make in producing your book, you could hire a live transcriptionist. He or she may charge $1 or $2 per minute to transcribe your recordings.

Editing

After that, you’ll need to have the transcriptions edited.

You can hire editors to help you do that or, if you’re really good with grammar and writing, you can edit yourself.

Feedback

Find a couple people you trust to offer their opinion on your book.

You should then give the book-to-be to at least a couple of people to get their feedback on it.

Publishing

Once you’ve done that, either send your book idea to a publisher or self-publish your book.

More and more people are self-publishing today, and they are not producing bad books. They are self-publishing good books.

Well, that is a way you can write and publish a book for the first time.

If you’re not a bi-vocational minister, just pretend that you are and prepare a series of talks and follow the steps above.

Whether you are a bi-vocational minister or just a regular person, these steps will work for you.

For more information about writing and publishing your own book, head to Randy’s Blogs where you can read many more posts with helpful hints.

For the ultimate guide to getting a book completed, my book “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death” on Amazon is what you need.

I hope this information has been helpful to you. I’m Randy Carney reminding you, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!