Q: How do you start to write a book?
A: There may be as many answers to this question as there are authors.
In my case, clients had been asking me to write books for my classes for over 20 years. I tried many times, but I couldn’t get past the first page. I was completely blocked and unable to get a foothold due to the enormity of the task in front of me.
But once someone gave me the most simple of advice, it all came together: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
- Bullet point your main ideas.
- Move the bullet points around until there is an arc and logical progression.
- Take one bullet point at a time, expand it, adding additional bullet points.
- For each of these secondary bullets, expand into a conversational language.
- Repeat steps 3 & 4 for each bullet.
- Once this has been done, a book is in front of you. It may be very rough and require significant editing – but most good writers have even better editors behind them (I consider myself fortunate to have the best editor I’ve ever met).
