Wherever you are on your book writing adventure, you’ll find what you need here…
What to do if you’re just starting out on your Author Adventure: planning, preparation, and dealing with your Inner Dickhead
One of the reasons people don’t write books
(and I know this to be true because they tell me)
is that the idea of writing a book is just Too Big.
And I totally understand that; I’ve written several books and they are Very Big. But I write for a living; it’s literally what I do.
Tantrums to Titles: that was the name of the talk I gave yesterday at Circle Networks Live24.
I stood up in front of a couple of hundred people…
Shared some of my favourite book writing wisdom…
And was beyond delighted when so many people said their big takeaway from the day was that they wanted to write a book of their own!
Ever wondered if your book idea (or you) is too... weird?
Like — you look at all the nonfiction and business books out there, and yours doesn’t seem to fit?
Maybe your face doesn’t fit, or your voice seems too brash, or your story seems a bit too out there compared to others in your niche...
Writing isn’t a measuring exercise you know.
Nobody cares that your book has 4,392 pages, Gerald.
Actually, they do, and they probs won’t read it because that sounds like a CHORE.
Look: whoever told you a nonfiction book has to have 300 pages and 90,000 words was WRONG.
You see yet another “viral” post on LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever you choose to doomscroll in which someone says something so eyeball-grindingly obvious and shallow about your area of expertise you CANNOT EVEN and yet they’ve got 1,826 likes and 97 comments.
Come with me. Lemme lift the tablecloth and usher you into the den.
Because you might be wondering: what’s it actually like to write a book?
Well, tbh I don’t know what it’s like for you… but I can tell what it ISN’T like.
One of the first books I ever read when I became a copywriter, in my first iteration of being a business owner, was A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young.
It’s a teeny tiny little book of just 60-odd pages, a handful of which are (slightly overblown) prefaces by ad industry dudes.
Do you have a manifesto? A set of values? Principles? Something you’ll stand behind, in front of, and defend with an entire drawerful of improvised cutlery weapons? The idea of a manifesto gives me chills and thrills, like a relic of a bygone era.
Is grammar elitist? Should we chuck it in the bin?
Or are you a stickler for grammar — someone who believes we should not start sentences with “and”, and that we should boldly refuse to split infinitives?
I know people who iron their bedsheets.
I’m not knocking them: all power to their elbows. And their wrists and shoulders.
But honestly who has time to iron bedsheets?
You may have guessed that I am not a person who irons anything. Ever.
There are approximately 8,193 notes in my Notes app. Even more in my Notion.
I’d say more-or-less 48% of them are lists. Plans. Plots, if you like.
I live my life via lists, plans, and plots, or nothing would ever happen. They’re comforting and they make me feel like I’m making progress.
Every time I sit down to write it’s like whack-a-mole: which obstacle is my brain gonna chuck in the way today? Who knows? It’s a surprise!
One consistent blockage, though, is my arrogant and pathological need to write a brilliant first sentence.
