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About This Article

To write a book, first think of an idea that you’re excited to write about. It could be anything – a memoir about your life, a fantasy tale, or if you’re an expert on a topic, a non-fiction book. Once you’ve come up with an idea, you’ll want to cultivate good writing habits to bring your book to life. First, make writing into a routine rather than an activity you need to fit into your busy schedule. Try to consistently write at the same time and place every day. Second, set a daily word or page goal so that you know exactly when you are finished writing each day. Last, don’t feel pressured to create a perfect first draft because it’s much easier to edit perfectly than it is to write it perfectly the first time around. Focus on producing and writing as much as you can. Then, go back and spend time editing on another day. Once you have written and edited a draft that you like, seek feedback from your family, peers or mentors. If you want to self-publish, research how to do so online. You could also consider hiring an editor to help you through both editing and the publishing process. If you want to know more about how to write a non-fiction book, keep reading!

How to write a how to book

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.
–Mark Twain

The hard part of writing a book isn’t getting published. It’s the actual writing. In this article, I offer 10 steps for writing a book along with 10 bonus steps.

As the bestselling author of five books, I can tell you without hesitation that the hardest part of a writer’s job is sitting down to do the work. Books don’t just write themselves, after all. You have to invest everything you are into creating an important piece of work.

For years, I dreamed of being a professional writer. I believed I had important things to say that the world needed to hear. But as I look back on what it really takes to become an author, I realize how different the process was from my expectations.

To begin with, you don’t just sit down to write a book. That’s not how writing works. You write a sentence, then a paragraph, then maybe if you’re lucky, an entire chapter. Writing happens in fits and starts, in bits and pieces. It’s a process.

The way you get the work done is not complicated. You take one step at a time, then another and another. As I look back on the books I’ve written, I can see how the way they were made was not as glamorous as I once thought.

How to really write a book

In this post, I’ll teach you the fundamental steps you need to write a book. I’ve worked hard to make this easy to digest and super practical, so you can start making progress.

And just a heads up: if you dream of authoring a bestselling book like I have and you’re looking for a structured plan to guide you through the writing process, I have a special opportunity for you at the end of this post where I break the process down.

But first, let’s look at the big picture. What does it take to write a book? It happens in three phases:

Below are 10 ridiculously simple tips that fall under each of these three major phases plus an additional 10 bonus tips. I hope they help you tackle and finish the book you dream of writing.

Phase 1: Getting started

We all have to start somewhere. With writing a book, the first phase is made up of four parts:

1. Decide what the book is about

Good writing is always about something. Write the argument of your book in a sentence, then stretch that out to a paragraph, and then to a one-page outline. After that, write a table of contents to help guide you as you write, then break each chapter into a few sections. Think of your book in terms of beginning, middle, and end. Anything more complicated will get you lost.

2. Set a daily word count goal

John Grisham began his writing career as a lawyer and new dad — in other words, he was really busy. Nonetheless, he got up an hour or two early every morning and wrote a page a day. After a couple of years, he had a novel. A page a day is only about 300 words. You don’t need to write a lot. You just need to write often. Setting a daily goal will give you something to aim for. Make it small and attainable so that you can hit your goal each day and start building momentum.

3. Set a time to work on your book every day

Consistency makes creativity easier. You need a daily deadline to do your work — that’s how you’ll finish writing a book. Feel free to take a day off, if you want, but schedule that ahead of time. Never let a deadline pass; don’t let yourself off the hook so easily. Setting a daily deadline and regular writing time will ensure that you don’t have to think about when you will write. When it’s time to write, it’s time to write.

4. Write in the same place every time

It doesn’t matter if it’s a desk or a restaurant or the kitchen table. It just needs to be different from where you do other activities. Make your writing location a special space, so that when you enter it, you’re ready to work. It should remind you of your commitment to finish this book. Again, the goal here is to not think and just start writing.

Phase 2: Doing the work

Now, it’s time to get down to business. Here, we are going to focus on the next three tips to help you get the book done:

5. Set a total word count

Begin with the end in mind. Once you’ve started writing, you need a total word count for your book. Think in terms of 10-thousand work increments and break each chapter into roughly equal lengths. Here are some general guiding principles:

6. Give yourself weekly deadlines

You need a weekly goal. Make it a word count to keep things objective. Celebrate the progress you’ve made while still being honest about how much work is left to do. You need to have something to aim for and a way to measure yourself. This is the only way I ever get any work done: with a deadline.

7. Get early feedback

Nothing stings worse than writing a book and then having to rewrite it, because you didn’t let anyone look at it. Have a few trusted advisers to help you discern what’s worth writing. These can be friends, editors, family. Just try to find someone who will give you honest feedback early on to make sure you’re headed in the right direction.

Phase 3: Finishing

How do you know when you’re done? Short answer: you don’t. Not really. So here’s what you do to end this book-writing process well:

8. Commit to shipping

No matter what, finish the book. Set a deadline or have one set for you. Then release it to the world. Send it to the publisher, release it on Amazon, do whatever you need to do to get it in front of people. Just don’t put it in your drawer. The worst thing would be for you to quit once this thing is written. That won’t make you do your best work and it won’t allow you to share your ideas with the world.

9. Embrace failure

As you approach the end of this project, know that this will be hard and you will most certainly mess up. Just be okay with failing, and give yourself grace. That’s what will sustain you — the determination to continue, not your elusive standards of perfection.

10. Write another book

Most authors are embarrassed by their first book. I certainly was. But without that first book, you will never learn the lessons you might otherwise miss out on. So, put your work out there, fail early, and try again. This is the only way you get better. You have to practice, which means you have to keep writing.

Every writer started somewhere, and most of them started by squeezing their writing into the cracks of their daily lives. That’s how I began, and it may be where you begin, as well. The ones who make it are the ones who show up day after day. You can do the same.

The reason most people never finish their books

Every year, millions of books go unfinished. Books that could have helped people, brought beauty or wisdom into the world. But they never came to be. And in one way or another, the reason is always the same: the author quit.

Maybe you’ve dealt with this. You started writing a book but never completed it. You got stuck and didn’t know how to finish. Or you completed your manuscript but didn’t know what to do after. Worse yet, you wrote a book, but nobody cared about it. Nobody bought or read it.

I’ve been there before.

In fact, the first couple books I wrote didn’t do that well at all — even with a traditional publisher. It took me years to learn this, but here’s what nobody ever told me:

Before you can launch a bestseller, first you have to write one.

What I mean by that is so many writers sit down to write their masterpiece, assuming that’s all there is to it. Just sit down and write. But as I’ve studied the world’s most gifted and successful authors, I’ve noticed this is not what the masters do. They are far more intentional than simply sitting and letting the words flow.

This is the part that I never learned in any English class. Producing work that sells is not just about writing what you think is good. It’s about finding an idea that will both excite you and excite an audience. It’s about being intentional and thinking through the whole process while having proper accountability to keep you going.

In other words, the writing process matters. It matters a lot. You have to not only finish your book but write one worthy of being sold. And if you want to maximize your chances of finishing your book, you need a proven plan.

Writing books has changed my life. It helped me clarify my thinking, find my calling as an author, and has provided endless opportunities to make an impact on the world and a living for my family.

Bonus: 10 more writing tips!

If you need some help staying motivated, here are another 10 tips to help you keep going in the process:

11. Only write one chapter at a time

Write and publish a novel, one chapter at a time, using Amazon Kindle Singles, Wattpad, or sharing with your email list subscribers.

12. Write a shorter book

The idea of writing a 500-page masterpiece can be paralyzing. Instead, write a short book of poems or stories. Long projects are daunting. Start small.

13. Start a blog to get feedback early

Getting feedback early and often helps break up the overwhelm. Start a website on WordPress or Tumblr and use it to write your book a chapter or scene at a time. Then eventually publish all the posts in a hardcopy book. This is a little different than traditional blogging, but the same concepts apply.

14. Keep an inspiration list

You need it in order to keep fresh ideas flowing. Read constantly, and use a system to capture, organize and find the content you’ve curated. I use Evernote, but use a system that works for you.

15. Keep a journal

Then, rewrite the entries in a much more polished book format, but use some photocopies or scans of the journal pages as illustrations in the book. You could even sell “deluxe” editions that come with photocopied versions of the journal.

16. Deliver consistently

Some days, it’s easy to write. Some days, it’s incredibly hard. The truth is: inspiration is merely a byproduct of your hard work. You can’t wait for inspiration. The Muse is really an out-of-work bum who won’t move until you do. Show her who’s boss and that you mean business.

17. Take frequent breaks

Niel Fiore, the author of The Now Habit, says, “There is one main reason why we procrastinate: It rewards us with temporary relief from stress.” If you’re constantly stressed about your unfinished book, you’ll end up breaking your schedule. Instead, plan for breaks ahead of time so you stay fresh: minute breaks, hour breaks, or even multiple day breaks.

18. Remove distractions

Try tools like Bear or Scrivener to let you write in a totally distraction-free environment. That way, email, Facebook, and Twitter won’t interrupt your flow.

19. Write where others are writing (or working)

If you’re having trouble writing consistently by yourself, write where other people are also working. A coffee shop or library where people are actually working and not just socializing can help. If you’re in a place where other people are getting things done, then you’ll have no choice but to join them.

20. Don’t edit as you go

Instead, write without judgment first, then go back and edit later. You’ll keep a better flow and won’t be interrupted by constant criticism of your own work. And you’ll have a lot more writing to edit when it’s time to do so.

What do you want to write a book about?

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How to Write a Book (and Actually Finish It) in 5 Steps

This guide offers a roadmap on how to write a book from beginning to end.

There are a ton of reasons why you might consider writing books. You might want to prove your expertise on a given topic or create a funnel for your business. You might need a book in order to establish yourself as a public speaker or professor. You might simply have a story that you need to tell.

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But where do you get started on writing that story? Figuring out how to write a book with a beginning, middle and end can be daunting when all you have is an idea and a blank page.

Just as with anything in life and business, the answer to learning how to write a book is to find a good teacher — people who have accomplished what you’re trying to do. If you want to know how to write a business book, and you’re trying to work out how to approach the style of your writing, you could try reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People again. If you want to write a memoir, you might check out Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog.

But when it comes to the straightforward act of writing books — actually starting a project and finishing it — perhaps the best role models are novelists of epic-length fantasy books like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. These writing pros know how to write books and series that span thousands of pages and over millions of words, and the processes they use can be informative to help you write books of your own. Not only can we access the end result of their work — their books — but these epic writers often love to offer a roadmap to others hoping to walk the same path.

I spend the hours from 9 to 5 in the Entrepreneur offices writing about business and entrepreneurship while collaborating with our contributor network. But in my personal time, I love reading fiction like Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. When I decided to write a book of my own, then, I chose to emulate the fiction stories I grew up reading.

I began, buoyed by the knowledge that I could succeed and even huge successes often had doubts along the way … and still continue to have doubts while writing books today. Here’s Joe Abercrombie, whose newest book just debuted at No. 15 on the New York Times Hardcover bestseller list:

Oh God will people like my new book >
Early readers seem to like my new book but who knows >
Book is getting good reviews but that could all change >
Book has gone down great with everyone hurray! >
Oh God will people like the second one.

I learned that it’s okay to dislike a section, a chapter, even the whole book at times. It’s okay to make mistakes, to struggle. In the end, only one thing really matters when it comes to writing books: finishing. Creating a product you can be proud of despite whatever obstacles, doubts or frustrations might arise during the process.

So, if you want to know how to write a book and actually complete the thing, here are the five steps I used to finish mine — each one inspired by epic authors who’ve been there and done it on the biggest stage.

1. Figure out how to start your book.

I don’t just mean figuring out how to write Chapter One of your book. No, I mean, “What is the driving force behind your book?” This could be anything — a theme, a storyline, an idea. This thing will act like a seed, from which the rest of your book will grow, or a spine to give it its shape.

George R.R. Martin was writing a different book when he figured out where to start A Game of Thrones. In a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, Martin claims, «One day, the first chapter of ‘Game of Thrones’ came to me: the scene where they find the direwolf pups in the summer snows.»

It’s important to note that, technically, the scene where the Stark children find their wolves isn’t the first chapter of the book. Instead, the story opens in a different place, with other characters, before pivoting the Starks. However, as Martin notes, that one scene created such an intense image in his mind, and the characters felt so real to him, that he had to continue to ask questions and eventually develop a world around a single scene. A Game of Thrones started from one sentence.

“I knew right from the beginning,” Martin told Cooper. “I mean, that single sentence: ‘They found the direwolf pups in the summer snows.’ I knew they were the summer snows, so this was a place where it snowed even in summer. So, what could result in that?”

“One weekend after flat hunting, I took the train back to London on my own and the idea for Harry Potter fell into my head,” J.K. Rowling told Urbanette. “I had been writing since I was six, but I had never been as excited about an idea as I was for this book. Coincidentally, I didn’t have a pen and was too shy to ask anyone for one on the train, which frustrated me at the time, but when I look back at it was the best thing for me. It gave me the full four hours on the train to think up all the ideas for the book.

“A scrawny, little black-haired, bespectacled boy became more and more of a wizard to me. He became more real. I think if I might have slowed down on the ideas and began to write them down. I would’ve stifled some of those ideas. I began to write ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ that very evening. Although, the first couple of pages look nothing like the finished product.”

The last bit of Rowling’s answer — “the first couple of pages look nothing like the finished product” — is just as important as anything else. We often think of great writers as naturally gifted, creative people who are inspired in ways that most simply can’t be. Perhaps that’s true because both Martin and Rowling were gripped with incredibly detailed images of the story that they would one day turn into bestselling books.

However, it’s crucial to note that when they started writing their respective books, Martin was able to use the first pages he wrote and Rowling wasn’t. Sometimes, the perfect words will come and sometimes they won’t. The key is to bring the story back to its foundation eventually.

After all, no one can say Rowling failed to write a great book about a “scrawny, little black haired, bespectacled boy” on a train, even if her first attempt wasn’t perfect. Rowling changed and refined the words describing her vision over time, but the image and inspiration for the book remained.

“I knew right from the beginning. I mean, that single sentence.»

— George R.R. Martin on the inspiration for ‘A Game of Thrones’

Chapter One is important, too.

As the old saying goes, you only get one shot at a first impression. If you don’t want to self-publish, your first impression is hugely important. In order to get attention from a traditional publishing house, you’ll typically need to get a literary agent first. In order to get a literary agent, you’ll typically need to impress that agent’s assistant.

That agent will typically read only a small portion of your book or book proposal — say, five to 15 pages — before deciding whether you really know how to write a good book. If you fail to grab their attention in those first few pages, you probably won’t have a chance to show them what you can really do later.

That doesn’t mean you need to spend all of your time and energy on making Chapter One perfect. In fact, spending too much time on the first chapter will be unproductive — the 80/20 rule applies in writing, just as it does in business. After a while, the return on your time investment simply won’t make sense.

You don’t need to show off everything you can do on the first page of your book. A blockbuster movie typically doesn’t use its whole budget on the first scene, and you shouldn’t feel like you need to do the equivalent in your book. If you can create a strong hook, interesting characters or thoughtful insight to draw in the reader, that’s enough. Just make sure the writing is as clear and concise as possible, showing a competency with language that creates confidence with your audience.

Just as you want to show up well-prepared for a pitch meeting, you should try to prove you know your business. Here are three basic tips that can help when writing the start of your book:

The most important aspect of nailing Chapter One actually has nothing to do with the chapter itself. The more important part is understanding how the beginning fits with your big idea, how it allows you to transition to the middle and end flawlessly.

You simply can’t build a good foundation if you don’t know what you’re building on top of it. I’m not an architect, but I doubt you’d use the same fundamental structure for a skyscraper and a seaside cottage. The same goes for writing books. That’s why, before you start writing your own book, you need to …

2. Figure out how to end your book.

You need enthusiasm to undertake the project of writing a book, but in my experience, it’s folly to get too carried away and simply start writing the book without a plan. Just as Rowling’s first pages of Harry Potter never made it to the book, your ideas are bound to shift over time — either because you think of new great ideas or because you realize the ideas you had to start aren’t as great as you believed.

You might not have believed in outlines during your school days, even for a 20-page essay. However, writing a book is like writing 20 different 20-page essays, all of which should work cohesively to complement and further that basic theme or idea you began with.

Sometimes it is okay to wing it. As Brandon Sanderson writes, planned writing can help you with foreshadowing or planning a series, while more spontaneous writing allows you to tell jokes and add humor in places when the opportunity arises.

“There’s no one perfect way to do this,” Sanderson says. “George R. R. Martin described some of the extremes in terms of ‘Gardeners’ and ‘Architects.’ Gardeners grow a story, without a firm idea of where they are going. Architects tend to build an outline as a frame and work from it.

“I’m (usually) an architect. I’ve found that the best way to get the kinds of endings I like. I have to know where I’m going before I start.

“That said, an outline has to be a living thing of its own. I need the flexibility to knock out entire sections of it and rebuild them; I do that frequently.”

Two important notes here: The first is that no one is (or ought to be) entirely either a gardener or an architect. Sanderson describes himself as an architect, but he admits that he needs the freedom to let the outline grow the way a gardener would. Martin is probably more of a gardener, given how he grew the series from a single sentence, and yet in his 60 Minutes interview, he talks about creating histories, maps and structures for his series. He even has a Game of Thrones expert to consult with whenever he has questions about continuity.

You can choose your own balance. I typically prefer writing the book to outlining, but there’s nothing more frustrating than realizing you need to pivot, rendering the first 200 pages of your book useless. I had to rework major sections of the book due to my lack of foresight, leading to months-long delays that I might have avoided if I had spent a few days, or even weeks, figuring out how to write the book ahead of time.

The more complex your book idea, the more time I recommend you spend planning how to write your book. For example, my story involved two narratives alternating and intertwining in various ways. Changing something in one storyline affected the other, meaning that every alteration was sort of like a game of Jenga — the whole book could fall apart if I pulled out the wrong building blocks.

Take a look at Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series — a 10-book epic covering dozens of characters, storylines and times that could be as many as 4 million words — and you’ll see why his outlines are more complex. Here’s an image of one Stormlight book’s format.

“You see, Stormlight books have a kind of strange format,” Sanderson writes. “I plot them in this bizarre fashion that likely makes sense only to me.”

Sanderson also creates written outlines, detailing scenes, images, names and phrases he wants to include. You can check out an early version here.

Rowling also created a spreadsheet-style outline when writing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The outline explains when each chapter in the novel takes place, the title of the chapter and what happens in that chapter. She then explains how the plot of the chapter advances the six fundamental subplots of the book.

Try Rowling’s outline or Sanderson’s. Try the Snowflake method. Come up with your own style on how to stay organized, but an outline and a plan will help you see the bigger picture. Just as you want to stay on-brand with your business offerings, you should use the backbone of your book to create a cohesive story all the way through.

3. Write the book.

Helpful, right? It might seem basic, but it’s the truth — writing a book takes time and effort, and there’s no getting around it. It doesn’t matter if you know every tip or trick on how to write a book, at the end of the day, you actually have to just do it.

I have always loved this exchange between Neil Gaiman and one of his readers:

There is just one question for you, and if I dont receive a reply I’m not going to be all bent out of shape about it, but, how do I finish a story that I believe is going to be great? My problem is that I start what I belive is going to be a good story, and I can never finish it. I have dozens upon dozens of unfinished short stories that I know would be good reads, but I just cant seem to finish them. If you have any input for me, it would be greatly appreciated, and I would also be honored to hear back from you.

How do you finish them? You finish them.

There’s no magic answer, I’m afraid. This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.

Read the stories over that you’ve left unfinished, pick out the one where you know what happens next, and write that down, and keep writing until the story’s finished. Then finish the next one, or start a new one and finish that.

You may find that you need to have more of an ending in mind before you start.

I always used to know I was finishing something because instead of worrying about how it was going to end I was now worrying about how the next thing was going to start.

Most people can start a short story or a novel. If you’re a writer, you can finish them. Finish enough of them, and you may be good enough to be publishable. Good luck.

Knowing how to write a book means knowing there are no shortcuts. The book is going to be as long as it needs to be. Fortunately, you can optimize your time while writing.

Minimize your distractions.

Want to know how to write a book faster? Avoid spending five minutes staring at a blank Google Docs page before scrolling through Twitter for half an hour.

In order to avoid the distractions that come with modern technology, I personally choose to write everything by hand … including this story. Here’s a part of the outline:

It’s slower than typing, of course, but using a good-ole-fashioned notebook and pen’s great for several reasons:

I wrote first 2 Potters by hand and typed them on a 10 yr old typewriter. All a writer needs is talent & ink. https://t.co/oK30qfcVZK

Gaiman also prefers writing his books longhand. He told BuzzFeed: “I started with Stardust: It was (in my head) being written in the 1920s, so I bought a fountain pen and a big notebook and wrote it by hand to find out how writing by hand changed my head.

“And it did, it really did. I was sparser, I would think my way through a sentence further, I would write less, in a good way. And when I typed it up, it became a very real second draft – things would vanish or change. I discovered that I enjoyed messing about with fountain pens, I even liked the scritchy noise the pen nib made on the paper.”

Martin, meanwhile, told Conan O’Brien he uses a DOS computer, which isn’t hooked up to the internet. It’s such an old machine that O’Brien asks if Martin “carved it out of wood.”

Martin explains, “It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn’t do anything else.”

If you prefer to work on your laptop, you can limit your distractions in other ways. Find a great place to work — Rowling recommends a cafe, others have dedicated writing rooms or separate offices dedicated to working on books.

Find a great playlist that helps you focus. I listen to a lot of coffee shop-style music while I write, which I find soothing. Others prefer classical, electronic or even silence. Figure out what works for you and stick to it.

Don’t try to write the whole book in one sitting.

You’ll fail, and then you’ll get discouraged. Unless you’re writing a small booklet (say, fewer than 10,000 words), you probably won’t be able to finish in a week or even a single month. The key to finishing a book is committing to making consistent progress.

I’m a big believer in keeping track of your word count, both on a daily basis and overall. The daily word count keeps you accountable, while the overall number allows you to get a bigger picture. The average book has about 250 words per page, so you can easily keep track of how long your book will be by thinking that every 1,000 words is equal to four pages.

When writing the first draft of my book, I aimed for 1,500 words per day, inspired by the fact that Stephen King tries to write six pages every day. I wasn’t perfect, of course, but I was able to finish a 118,000-word draft (a little short of 500 pages) in about five months.

It’s realistic for everyone to write 1,500 words per day. You might have a day job, a side hustle, a family at home or a hundred other things that take away from the number of hours you can spend sitting alone at a writing desk or cafe table. Just create a goal for yourself and be mindful about hitting that goal as often as you can. In my experience, it’s the surest and most efficient way of writing books.

If you get stuck, move to a different part of the book. Try editing something you wrote earlier, or jump to a different scene. Do research for the chapters you want to write next. Just keep writing and moving forward.

4. Edit the book.

When I was in school, I hated to go back and edit my writing. It was boring because I had finished creating and needed to shift my brain to a more technical, objective mode of thinking. More than that, it was disappointing, because the words never looked as good on the page as they had felt while I wrote them.

That disappointment is exactly why it’s critical to edit your work. Novelist Sam Sykes posted on Twitter (only somewhat jokingly) that there are seven stages of writing a book:

You’ll probably never feel as good about your book as you do while writing the first draft. That doesn’t mean that your first draft is the best — remember, Rowling remembers precisely the first time she started writing Harry Potter, even though those pages didn’t make the final version.

It’s only upon reflection that you can see that the execution of your idea doesn’t quite measure up to the grand image you had in your head. You can get closer to that vision only through dedicating yourself to improving and edits. There are plenty of resources you can use to learn more about editing, and each case will probably be different.

When I wrote my book, it took four drafts before I felt confident enough to submit the work to literary agents. Here’s what I did with those drafts:

5. Accept the book.

This can be the toughest step of all. So many entrepreneurs are perfectionists who want to get their product or offering exactly right before they send it to market. If you want your book to be published at a traditional publishing house, and you don’t already have a big following or previous book experience, you will need to wow your audience.

That said, going over the same sentence over and over again probably isn’t going to make a difference. Making big changes means big-time commitments, and it’s simply unproductive to try to re-work the same concept 100 different ways. You’ll wear yourself out on stuff that doesn’t make your book significantly better, and then you’ll burn out.

Understand that your book probably isn’t going to be perfect. Not everyone is going to like every part of it. As King said in his book, On Writing, “You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.”

You already understand that your business has a niche, your book ought to have one, as well. If just one percent of the U.S. loves your ideas enough to buy your book, you’ll make it to No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

How to write a book in five steps

Here are the five steps I recommend on how to write and finish that book idea you’ve been thinking about for a while now.

Writing a book isn’t easy, but it is simple. The truth is that you probably already know how to write a book, it’s just about actually doing it. So do it. You got this.

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How to Write a Book From Start to Finish: A Proven Guide

So you want to write a book. Becoming an author can change your life—not to mention give you the ability to impact thousands, even millions, of people.

But writing a book isn’t easy. As a 21-time New York Times bestselling author, I can tell you: It’s far easier to quit than to finish.

You’re going to be tempted to give up writing a book when you run out of ideas, when your own message bores you, when you get distracted, or when you become overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the task.

But what if you knew exactly:

You can write a book—and more quickly than you might think, because these days you have access to more writing tools than ever.

My goal here is to offer you that plan for writing a book.

I’ve used the techniques I outline below to write more than 195 books (including the Left Behind series) over the past 45 years. Yes, I realize writing over four books per year on average is more than you may have thought humanly possible.

This is my personal approach on how to write a book. I’m confident you’ll find something here that can change the game for you. So, let’s jump in.

Contents

Part 1

Before You Begin Writing a Book

Part 2

How to Start Writing a Book

Part 3

The How-To of Writing a Book

Part 4

Rewriting Your Book

Part 5

Publishing Your Book

Part 6

You Have What It Takes to Write a Book

Part 1

Before You Begin Writing a Book

You’ll never regret—in fact, you’ll thank yourself later—for investing the time necessary to prepare for such a monumental task.

You wouldn’t set out to cut down a huge grove of trees with just an axe. You’d need a chain saw, perhaps more than one. Something to keep them sharp. Enough fuel to keep them running.

You get the picture. Don’t shortcut this foundational part of the process.

1 Establish your writing space.

To write your book, you don’t need a sanctuary. In fact, I started my career o n my couch facing a typewriter perched on a plank of wood suspended by two kitchen chairs.

What were you saying about your setup again? We do what we have to do.

And those early days on that sagging couch were among the most productive of my career.

Naturally, the nicer and more comfortable and private you can make your writing lair (I call mine my cave), the better.

Real writers can write anywhere.

Some authors write their books in restaurants and coffee shops. My first full time job was at a newspaper where 40 of us clacked away on manual typewriters in one big room—no cubicles, no partitions, conversations hollered over the din, most of my colleagues smoking, teletype machines clattering.

Cut your writing teeth in an environment like that, and anywhere else seems glorious.

2 Assemble your writing tools.

In the newspaper business, there was no time to hand write our stuff and then type it for the layout guys. So I have always written at a keyboard and still write my books that way.

Most authors do, though some hand write their first drafts and then keyboard them onto a computer or pay someone to do that.

No publisher I know would even consider a typewritten manuscript, let alone one submitted in handwriting.

The publishing industry runs on Microsoft Word, so you’ll need to submit Word document files. Whether you prefer a Mac or a PC, both will produce the kinds of files you need.

And if you’re looking for a musclebound electronic organizing system, you can’t do better than Scrivener. It works well on both PCs and Macs, and it nicely interacts with Word files.

Just remember, Scrivener has a steep learning curve, so familiarize yourself with it before you start writing.

Scrivener users know that taking the time to learn the basics is well worth it.

Tons of other book writing tools exist to help you. I’ve included some of the most well known in my blog po st on book writing software and my writing tools page fo r your reference.

So, what else do you need?

If you are one who handwrites your first drafts, don’t scrimp on paper, pencils, or erasers.

Don’t shortchange yourself on a computer either. Even if someone else is keyboarding for you, you’ll need a computer for research and for communicating with potential agents, edi tors, publishers.

Get the best computer you can afford, the latest, the one with the most capacity and speed.

Try to imagine everything you’re going to need in addition to your desk or table, so you can equip yourself in advance and don’t have to keep interrupting your work to find things like:

If I were to start my career again with that typewriter on a plank, I would not sit on that couch. I’d grab another straight-backed kitchen chair or something similar and be proactive about my posture and maintaining a healthy spine.

If you’ve never used some of the items I listed above and can’t imagine needing them, fine. But make a list of everything you know you’ll need so when the actual writing begins, you’re already equipped.

As you grow as a writer and actually start making money at it, you can keep upgrading your writing space.

Where I work now is light years from where I started. But the point is, I didn’t wait to start writing until I could have a great spot in which to do it.

Part 2

How to Start Writing a Book

1 Break your book into small pieces.

Writing a book feels like a colossal project, because it is! Bu t your manuscript w ill be made up of many small parts.

Try to get your mind off your book as a 400-or-so-page monstrosity.

It can’t be written all at once any more than that proverbial elephant could be eaten in a single sitting.

See your book for what it is: a manuscript made up of sentences, paragraphs, pages. Those pages will begin to add up, and though after a week you may have barely accumulated double digits, a few months down the road you’ll be into your second hundred pages.

So keep it simple.

Start by distilling you r big book idea from a page or so to a single sentence—your premise. The more specific that one-sentence premise, the more it will keep you focused while you’re writing.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before you can turn your big idea into one sentence, which can then b e expanded to an outline, you have to settle on exactly what that big idea is.

2 Settle on your BIG idea.

To be book-worthy, your idea has to be killer.

I can’t overstate the importance of this.

If you’ve tried and failed to finish your book before—maybe more than once—it could be that the basic premise was flawed. Maybe it was worth a blog post or an article but couldn’t carry an entire book.

Go for the big concept book.

How do you know you’ve got a winner? Does it have legs? In other words, does it stay in your mind, growing and developing every time you think of it?

Run it past loved ones and others you trust.

Does it raise eyebrows? Elicit Wows? Or does it result in awkward silences?

3 Construct your outline.

Writing your book without a clear vision of where you’re going usually ends in disaster.

Even if you ’re writing a fiction book an d consider yourself a Pantser* as opposed to an Outliner, you need at least a basic structure.

[*Those of us who write by the seat of our pants and, as Stephen King advises, pu t interesting characters i n difficult situations and write to find out what happens]

You don’t have to call it an outline if that offends your sensibilities. But fashion some sort of a directional document that provides structure for your book and also serves as a safety net.

If you get out on that Pantser highwire and lose your balance, you’ll thank me for advising you to have this in place.

Potential agents or publishers require this in your proposal. T hey want to know where you’re going, and they want to know that you know. What do you want your reader to learn from your book, and how will you ensure they learn it?

That’s why and outline (or a basic framework) is essential. Don’t even start writing until you’re confident your structure will hold up through the end.

You may recognize this novel structure illustration.

Did you know it holds up—with only slight adaptations—for nonfiction books too? It’s self-explanatory for novelists; they list their plot twists and developments and arrange them in an order that best serves to increase tension.

What separates great nonfiction from mediocre? The same structure!

Arrange your points and evidence in the same way so you’re setting your reader up for a huge payoff, and then make sure you deliver.

If your nonfiction book is a memoir, an autobiography, or a biography, structure it like a novel and you can’t go wrong.

But even if it’s a straightforward how-to book, stay as close to this structure as possible, and you’ll see your manuscript come alive.

Make promises early, triggering your reader to anticipate fresh ideas, secrets, inside information, something major that will make him thrilled with the finished product.

While a nonfiction book may not have as much action or dialogue or character development as a novel, you can inject tension by showing where people have failed before and how your reader can succeed.

You can even make the how-to project look impossible until you pay off that setup with your unique solution.

Keep your outline to a single page for now. But make sure every major point is represented, so you’ll always know where you’re going.

And don’t worry if you’ve forgotten the basics of classic outlining or have never felt comfortable with the concept.

Your outline must serve you. If that means Roman numerals and capital and lowercase letters and then Arabic numerals, you can certainly fashion it that way. But if you just want a list of sentences that synopsize your idea, that’s fine too.

Simply start with your working title, then your premise, then—for fiction, list all the major scenes that fit into the rough structure above.

For nonfiction, try to come up with chapter titles and a sentence or two of what each chapter will cover.

4 Set a firm writing schedule.

Ideally, you want to schedule at least six hours per week to write your book.

That may consist of three sessions of two hours each, two sessions of three hours, or six one-hour sessions—whatever works for you.

I recommend a regular pattern (same times, same days) that can most easily become a habit. But if that’s impossible, just make sure you carve out at least six hours so you can see real progress.

Having trouble finding the time to write a book? News flash—you won’t find the time. You have to make it.

I used the phrase carve out above for a reason. That’s what it takes.

Make sure it’s not your family—they should always be your top priority. Never sacrifice your family on the altar of your writing career.

But beyond that, the truth is that we all find time for what we really want to do.

Many writers insist they have no time to write, but they always seem to catch the latest Netflix original series, or go to the next big Hollywood feature. They enjoy concerts, parties, ball games, whatever.

How important is it to you to finally write your book? What will you cut from your calendar each week to ensure you give it the time it deserves?

Successful writers make time to write.

When writing becomes a habit, you’ll be on your way.

5 Establish a sacred deadline.

Without deadlines, I rarely get anything done. I need that motivation.

Admittedly, my deadlines are now established in my contracts from publishers.

Tell your spouse or loved one or trusted friend. Ask that they hold you accountable.

Now determine—and enter in your calendar—the number of pages you need to produce per writing session to meet your deadline. If it proves unrealistic, change the deadline now.

If you have no idea how many pages or words you typically produce per session, you may have to experiment before you finalize those figures.

Say you want to finish a 400-page manuscript by this time next year.

Divide 400 by 50 weeks (accounting for two off-weeks), and you get eight pages per week.

Divide that by your typical number of writing sessions per week and you’ll know how many pages you should finish per session.

Now is the time to adjust these numbers, while setting your deadline and determining your pages per session.

Maybe you’d rather schedule four off weeks over the next year. Or you know your book will be unusually long.

Change the numbers to make it realistic and doable, and then lock it in. Remember, your deadline is sacred.

6 Embrace procrastination (really!).

You read that right. Don’t fight it; embrace it.

Don’t be. So many authors are procrastinators that I’ve come to wonder if it’s a prerequisite.

The secret is to accept it and, in fact, schedule it.

I quit fretting and losing sleep over procrastinating when I realized it was inevitable and predictable, and also that it was productive.

Sound like rationalization?

Maybe it was at first. But I learned that while I’m putting off the writing, my subconscious is working on my book. It’s a part of the process. When you do start writing again, you’ll enjoy the surprises your subconscious reveals to you.

Take it into account when you’re determining your page quotas. If you have to go back in and increase the number of pages you need to produce per session, do that (I still do it all the time).

But—and here’s the key—you must never let things get to where that number of pages per day exceeds your capacity.

It’s one thing to ratchet up your output from two pages per session to three. But if you let it get out of hand, you’ve violated the sacredness of your deadline.

How can I procrastinate and still meet more than 190 deadlines?

Because I keep the deadlines sacred.

7 Eliminate distractions to stay focused.

Are you as easily distracted as I am?

Have you found yourself writing a sentence and then checking your email? Writing another and checking Facebook? Getting caught up in the pictures of 10 Sea Monsters You Wouldn’t Believe Actually Exist?

Then you just have to check out that precious video from a talk show where the dad surprises the family by returning from the war.

That leads to more and more of the same. Once I’m in, my writing is forgotten, and all of a sudden the day has gotten away from me.

The answer to these insidious timewasters?

Look into these apps that allow you to block your email, social media, browsers, game apps, whatever you wish during the hours you want to write. Some carry a modest fee, others are free.

8 Conduct your research.

Yes, research is a vital part of the process, whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction.

Fiction means more than just making up a story.

Your details and logic and technical and historical details must be right for your novel to be believable.

And for nonfiction, even if you’re writing about a subject in which you’re an expert—as I’m doing here—getting all the facts right will polish your finished product.

In fact, you’d be surprised at how many times I’ve researched a fact or two while writing this blog post alone.

The last thing you want is even a small mistake due to your lack of proper research.

Regardless the detail, trust me, you’ll hear from readers about it.

Your credibility as an author and an expert hinges on creating trust with your reader. That dissolves in a hurry if you commit an error.

My favorite research resources:

9 Start calling yourself a writer.

Your inner voice may tell you, “You’re no writer and you never will be. Who do you think you are, trying to write a book?”

But if you’re working at writing, studying writing, practicing writing, that makes you a writer. Don’t wait till you reach some artificial level of accomplishment before calling yourself a writer.

A cop in uniform and on duty is a cop whether he’s actively enforced the law yet or not. A carpenter is a carpenter whether he’s ever built a house.

Self-identify as a writer now and you’ll silence that inner critic —who, of course, is really you.

Talk back to yourself if you must. It may sound silly, but acknowledging yourself as a writer can give you the confidence to keep going and finish your book.

Are you a writer? Say so.

Part 3

The How-To of Writing a Book

1 Think reader-first.

This is so important that that you should write it on a sticky note and affix it to your monitor so you’re reminded of it every time you write.

Every decision you make about your manuscript must be run through this filter.

Not you-first, not book-first, not editor-, agent-, or publisher-first. Certainly not your inner circle- or critics-first.

If every decision is based on the idea of reader-first, all those others benefit anyway.

When fans tell me they were moved by one of my books, I think back to this adage and am grateful I maintained that posture during the writing.

Does a scene bore you? If you’re thinking reader-first, it gets overhauled or deleted.

Where to go, what to say, what to write next? Decide based on the reader as your priority.

Whatever your gut tells you your reader would prefer, that’s your answer.

Whatever will intrigue him, move him, keep him reading, those are your marching orders.

So, naturally, you need to know your reader. Rough age? General interests? Loves? Hates? Attention span?

The surest way to please your reader is to please yourself. Write what you would want to read and trust there is a broad readership out there that agrees.

2 Find your writing voice.

Discovering your voice is nowhere near as complicated as some make it out to be.

You can find yours by answering these quick questions :

That’s all there is to it.

If you write fiction and the narrator of your book isn’t you, go through the three-question exercise on the narrator’s behalf—and you’ll quickly master the voice.

3 Write a compelling opener.

If you’re stuck because of the pressure of crafting the perfect opening line for your book, you’re not alone.

And neither is your angst misplaced.

This is not something you should put off and come back to once you’ve started on the rest of the first chapter.

Oh, it can still change if the story dictates that. But settling on a good one will really get you off and running.

Most great first lines fall into one of these categories:

1. Surprising

Fiction : “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nonfiction : “By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old, he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man

2. Dramatic Statement

Fiction : “They shoot the white girl first.” —Toni Morrison, Paradise

Nonfiction : “I was five years old the first time I ever set foot in prison.” —Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand

3. Philosophical

Fiction : “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Nonfiction : “It’s not about you.” —Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

4. Poetic

Fiction : “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. —James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

Nonfiction : “The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’” —Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

Great opening lines from other classics may give you ideas for yours. Here’s a list of famous openers.

4 Fill your story with conflict and tension.

Your reader craves conflict, and yes, this applies to nonfiction readers as well.

In a novel, if everything is going well and everyone is agreeing, your reader will soon lose interest and find something else to do.

Are two of your characters talking at the dinner table? Have one say something that makes the other storm out.

Some deep-seeded rift in their relationship has surfaced—just a misunderstanding, or an injustice?

That’ll keep your reader’s attention.

Certain nonfiction genres won’t lend themselves to that kind of conflict, of course, but you can still inject tension by setting up your reader for a payoff in later chapters. Check out some of the current bestselling nonfiction works to see how writers accomplish this.

Somehow they keep you turning those pages, even in a simple how-to title.

And sometimes that’s as simple as implying something to come.

5 Turn off your internal editor while writing the first draft.

Many of us perfectionists find it hard to write a first draft—fiction or nonfiction—without feeling compelled to make every sentence exactly the way we want it.

That voice in your head that questions every word, every phrase, every sentence, and makes you worry you’re being redundant or have allowed cliches to creep in—well, that’s just your editor alter ego.

This is not easy.

Deep as I am into a long career, I still have to remind myself of this every writing day. I cannot be both creator and editor at the same time. That slows me to a crawl, and my first draft of even one brief chapter could take days.

Our job when writing that first draft is to get down the story or the message or the teaching—depending on your genre.

I can’t both produce that hunk and trim it at the same time.

A cliche, a redundancy, a hackneyed phrase comes tumbling out of my keyboard, and I start wondering whether I’ve forgotten to engage the reader’s senses or aimed for his emotions.

That’s when I have to chastise myself and say, “No! Don’t worry about that now! First thing tomorrow you get to tear this thing up and put it back together again to your heart’s content!”

Some like to write their entire first draft before attacking the revision. As I say, whatever works.

Doing it that way would make me worry I’ve missed something major early that will cause a complete rewrite when I discover it months later. I alternate creating and revising.

The first thing I do every morning is a heavy edit and rewrite of whatever I wrote the day before. If that’s ten pages, so be it. I put my perfectionist hat on and grab my paring knife and trim that slab of meat until I’m happy with every word.

Then I switch hats, tell Perfectionist Me to take the rest of the day off, and I start producing rough pages again.

So, for me, when I’ve finished the entire first draft, it’s actually a second draft because I have already revised and polished it in chunks every day.

THEN I go back through the entire manuscript one more time, scouring it for anything I missed or omitted, being sure to engage the reader’s senses and heart, and making sure the whole thing holds together.

I know there’s still an editing process it will go through at the publisher, but my goal is to make my manuscript the absolute best I can before they see it.

Compartmentalize your writing vs. your revising and you’ll find that frees you to create much more quickly.

6 Persevere through The Marathon of the Middle.

Most who fail at writing a book tell me they give up somewhere in what I like to call The Marathon of the Middle.

That’s a particularly rough stretch for novelists who have a great concept, a stunning opener, and they can’t wait to get to the dramatic ending. But they bail when they realize they don’t have enough cool stuff to fill the middle.

They start padding, trying to add scenes just for the sake of bulk, but they’re soon bored and know readers will be too.

This actually happens to nonfiction writers too.

If you strategize the progression of your points or steps in a process—depending on nonfiction genre—you should be able to eliminate the strain in the middle chapters.

For novelists, know that every book becomes a challenge a few chapters in. The shine wears off, keeping the pace and tension gets harder, and it’s easy to run out of steam.

But that’s not the time to quit. Force yourself back to your structure, come up with a subplot if necessary, but do whatever you need to so your reader stays engaged.

Fiction writer or nonfiction author, The Marathon of the Middle is when you must remember why you started this journey in the first place.

It isn’t just that you want to be an author. You have something to say. You want to reach the masses with your message.

Yes, it’s hard. It still is for me—every time. But don’t panic or do anything rash, like surrendering. Embrace the challenge of the middle as part of the process. If it were easy, anyone could do it.

7 Write a resounding ending.

This is just as important for your nonfiction book as your novel. It may not be as dramatic or emotional, but it could be—especially if you’re writing a memoir.