Jon Samsel

Bringing a book to life is an exciting adventure. Make no mistake about that. Creating a book from nothing is similar, in a sense, to childbirth. Whether it sells a million copies or only 5,000, there is something very satisfying, even mystical, about bringing a new book into the world.

It’s a one-on-one experience. It is your words and ideas and thoughts being communicated to the minds and hearts of readers you will never meet personally. Yet, in the pages of your book, you do meet the reader. You lead the reader on a journey from page one to the last sentence. Each reader of your book shares a part of their life with the story or material of your book.

When It’s Time to Start the Writing

When the first page looms before you, and it’s time to start the writing, some important questions to ask (if you have not done so earlier) are: how can I say what I want to without boring the reader? How can I make the reader care about my characters and the situations they are involved in? How can I entertain or instruct the reader in this book?

One very helpful guideline is not to let all the material you have researched or gathered scare you. If the book you want to write is your first, or twentieth, don’t be overwhelmed by the mountain of facts and material you have and worry about transferring it into a book.

Worry about how to get it into book pages and you will be constantly on edge.

Follow these simple directions:

• Realize first that you don’t have to use all of the material you have. Go instead with the cream-of-the-crop.
• If you already have an outline, you will have a map, a framework showing where your material will be used.
• Your mountain of material will soon start to shrink by dividing it into the key sections or divisions of your book. This process will become clear to you by simply sorting through your material.
• Get a handle on the beginning, middle, and ending of your book. Put your material into the proper divisions. Then the mountain you first had in front of you will have shrunk to a molehill.
• Discipline is vitally important for an author. Some authors sign book contracts, receive and spend their advances, and then never complete the books they agreed to do. Publishers have been burned by such authors, and this is a key reason they look for assurances that a given author, known or unknown, will actually finish a manuscript
• Discipline will help you finish your book or books. Without enough discipline you may never reach that final book page. Try to develop as much working discipline as possible, for it can play a major role in leading you to success.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 5:22 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.