Quick Link: 8 Steps That Will Help You Start (And Finish) Your Book

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8 Steps That Will Help You Start (And Finish) Your Book

From start to finish, child writing on white paperJULY 6, 2016 by ROBERT WOOD

Writing’s really hard. I don’t mean it’s hard to create something good, I mean it’s difficult to sit down and start writing. That may sound like lip-service, but the fact is that writing – especially writing a book – goes against every rule of self-motivation there is.

Generally, it’s not done to order, meaning that goals and deadlines are self-set and easy to break. It’s also rarely done in a focused, dedicated environment – even those lucky enough to have an office or dedicated writing space probably use it for other things, and utilize a device that’s also a primary source of leisure: imagine trying to do paperwork in your local pub or aquarium (we haven’t met, so I’m not sure what you like doing in your spare time). Finally, it’s ill-defined – ‘How long is a book?’ is the same question as ‘How long is a piece of string?’, but it applies to every quality of a finished work. How polished does your book have to be? How realistic should the dialogue feel? How many characters is too many, or enough?

These issues combine into a task that’s almost designed to not get done. Authors begin the writing process with no goals or parameters except ‘make a book’. What even is a book? Answers differ.

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