1/20/2023 0 Comments Writeroom mode auto wrapOnce your brain is engaged with your book, ideas are just going to show up randomly. Take your best shot and get back the writing. While I think it’s important to define some constraints up front, I’m more interested in your writing, so if you haven’t fallen in love with your title, don’t sweat it. The title and the pitch aren’t just the backbones of your book they help define the literary space that you’ve chosen to write within. “A career handbook for geeks” is the pitch for the second book and it came straight out of early discussions with my editor. However, the other title (“ Being Geek“) doesn’t always define your arc as you’d want, so you need the pitch. There wasn’t a moment during the writing of either book when either title was debated or at risk.Īs for the pitch, well, if your title (“ Managing Humans“) has done its job, you don’t need a great pitch. Giving clever names to people, places, and things is my schtick - I know when I’ve succinctly and adeptly identified a thing, and once I’ve done it I stick with it. If you’re going to obsess about something early on, my recommendation is to obsess about your title. The following is the documentation of tools, strategies, and mind games I use to remove barriers and create a book. I wrote the book I intended to write, but the majority of the writing involved discovering ideas randomly, without planning, and in some of the strangest places. It’s not that I ended up with an entirely different book than I intended. Having done this twice now, I can confirm that the only part of my planning process that made it to the published work is the title. In fact, if you’re a frequent reader of Rands in Repose, I would suggest that even if you have a book in mind, that is not the book you’d end up writing. This is not the book that you are writing. These are books where the structure and the data are essential to this book’s success. If you’re writing the definitive medical book on the treatment of West Nile encephalitis, I would like to encourage you to plan the hell out of this book. There are scenarios where you’re going to want to plan the hell out of your book. These are the acts that comprise writing a book, not talking about it, not announcing that you’re going to do it, and certainly not reading an article by a blogger who at this very moment is procrastinating finishing his book by writing about how you should start yours. Quietly crossing out paragraphs you loved. That tweet that captured your thought better than a chapter ever would. ![]() There was an arc that I wanted to write about, and a table of contents eventually did show up, but, by far, my most productive move regarding writing a book was - wait for it - writing.Ī blank page. This is my second book, so having gone through the process once before has given me experience that I am using for planning. I’m just about done with my book, Being Geek. Your unwritten book is not one of these decisions. Deliberate planning around complex issues involving different people with varied goals is essential to making a correct decision. There are many classes of decisions where there is a right move. ![]() The theory about big decisions is that they require a tremendous amount of thought, and that investing in all these thought results in better decisions. My guess is if you took all the time that you’ve spent considering writing a book and translated that into actual writing time, you’d be a quarter of your way into writing that book you’re not writing. Your endless internal debate and self-conjured guilt about that book you haven’t written yet is a sensational waste of your time. Even better, stop thinking about writing a book. Are you sitting down? Good.ĭon’t write a book. I’m going to start by telling you exactly what you need to do to finally write that book you’ve promised yourself for the past three years. I’m going to jump right to the punch line.
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