Writing My FIRST BOOK
Almost Everyone Wants To.
Almost Everyone Wants To.
Almost everyone wants to write a book. It’s on the old bucket list. Very few know how to go about making that happen. It is becoming my purpose lately to introduce people to some concepts and possibilities that might be used to make it happen if you are one of those people who want that.
Any instructional piece should be available all along the way of its continuing development because knowledge is rarely finite. The early adopters who join with any project will be rewarded along the way with subsequent improvements and increased information. I wish I had today’s resources a good while ago.
No One is Born an Author
As it turns out, no one is born an author. You may be born a storyteller, or a good teacher/communicator, or even a writer. Being an author, however, also requires some knowledge and skills most of which are learned.
Now, sometimes, I just write about writing. My original attempts at writing were more for use as a tool to use in my “real job.” As I learned, my writing quickly eclipsed my “real job.”
My books started innocently enough. In my profession, I was almost daily, either with a prospective customer or a prospective employee, trying to convey a process or idea, in a simple and understandable manner.
Information Packets
Possibly, just the way my mind works, I could flip through eight or ten pages of graphics in a notebook with the listener feeling much more comfortable than if I were to be giving them the same information, but following some outline. My mind, at that point, seemed to function in terms of “information packets,” one around each graphic.
If my conversation was ever thrown out of order by a question, it didn’t matter. I would not feel satisfied mentally until I had completely emptied that particular information packet. Each packet took on the sound of being a story, rather than giving a speech. I even had a few prospects ask me if they could have a copy of my story, written or recorded. Well, I had never, until that point, even thought about it.
Writing it down was an idea. My information packets could be chapters, so I wondered why not? Piece of cake. (More about my information packets HERE.)
When I was younger, there was only one way to become a writer. You wrote. You read what you wrote, and you corrected it. You read it again in a few days, and you corrected some more if it needed it. This was done once or twice, and then if you were patient enough, you would put your manuscript in a drawer and not look at it for a week or two.
During that period of waiting, the writer could thumb through Writer’s Digest and pick out submission addresses. The manuscript was hauled back into the daylight where it was read with semi-fresh eyes, corrected one last time, and then mailed to a submission address. After that, all there was to do was to wait for your rejection notice.
No More Rejection
Things have obviously changed today, however. Now writers are able to publish their own books and articles independently. But to explain how to do it requires a lot more than a few paragraphs. Different writers have discovered various methods to do that. Each believes so passionately in their own method, so as to make covering all ways of publishing impossible. Besides, the explanations would become so complicated as to almost become discouraging to new potential authors.
Therefore, rather than providing an all-encompassing volume of different possibilities, I decided it better to just tell how I did it. Yes, I researched a lot, but yes, I stumbled into a lot. My explanations, therefore, are usually the fast and easy way to do some of this, because that’s the kind of person I am. I am lazy and impatient. I don’t want to work any more than I have to, and I surely don’t want to wait for results. Somebody once said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” That’s me, too.
Well, this is what I decided. If I were to write a piece trying to include everything about how to write and publish, I would be as far over my head as I was at the beginning of my own journey. I wouldn’t really help anyone. I would have to do a lot more research, and even then, a bit of my tale would be theory only.
That would not accomplish my original purpose, which was to be a help to writers on a basic 101 level. Therefore, much of my current and future work is about what I did. It’s about what I learned, whether through research or accident. The stuff I stumbled into may be as or more valuable than the studied parts.
You can often find Don hanging out at his websites about real estate or writing. He’s an analog cowboy in a digital world. Join him and his writer’s rough crowd HERE. Or join his Real Estate Success Club.
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