Have you ever dreamed of writing a book and seeing it published, read by millions? Have you ever wished you had the discipline to make this dream come to fruition? Have you ever wished you could just allow yourself to let your imagination run wild for hours on end?
You can with this list of pro tips about how to finally write that book you’ve always wanted to.
1. Join a critique group.
Writing groups can be brutal but also super helpful. I highly recommend taking a creative writing workshop to get started on the writing process. The feedback you get from writing teachers and from your classmates will be invaluable. On the other hand, feedback can be extremely challenging at times because you’ll receive so much of it.
The main thing to remember is that while everyone’s opinion is important, at the end of the day, you’re the master of your own writing. You get to decide what works and what doesn’t.
2. Write for two hours straight, five days a week.
This strategy helped me finish my first novel and also have fairly cohesive writing. I tried writing for eight hours a day for a while, but that resulted in a lot of writing that wasn’t very organized.
Writing two hours straight for five days a week works best for me. I get to practice writing consistently, but I also have time for the rest of my life and don’t write to the point where it becomes nonsense on the page.
A lot of professional writers do this. The important thing here is to remember to not edit while you’re writing. Edit after you finish your first drafts. Even the best authors have really terrible first drafts 99 percent of the time.
3. Read books about writing.
I highly recommend reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, On Writing by Stephen King, and Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. If you want to write creative nonfiction, I recommend reading The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr, which you can often find in libraries. If you want to focus on environmental writing, I recommend reading Environmental and Nature Writing by Sean Prentiss and Joe Wilkins.
4. Read books in your genre.
If you want to write in a particular genre, I recommend going to the Writer’s Digest Shop online and buying a few books in whatever genre that is. The site is focused mainly on fiction, but whatever genre you want to write in, make sure you read books in that genre.
If you want to write about politics, read a lot of books about politics. If you want to write about the environment, read a lot of books by Henry David Thoreau, Terry Tempest Williams, and other environmental writers. If you want to write romance, read a lot of romance novels.
You get the idea. Doing this will give you an idea of what works and what doesn’t in the genre you are writing in, and it might even give you ideas for your own book.
5. Hire an editor.
So, what do you do when you’ve finished your first draft? Edit. This has always been the most challenging part for me. Some authors suggest asking a close friend or family member to read the draft and offer suggestions.
Of course, if you do this, I would suggest asking someone who’s interested in writing and will be brutally honest with you. I don’t recommend asking your significant other to read your work, though. It could compromise your relationship if you don’t like what you hear, and it puts the other person in an awkward position.
Personally, I find it more nerve-racking to ask a close friend to edit my book than to just hire a professional editor. Furthermore, a professional editor knows more about writing in general. These editors are often authors themselves, so they understand how much your work means to you, how messy first drafts can be, and how to improve your writing, grammar, and storytelling skills to really captivate your readers.
I would recommend hiring an editor. However, it usually costs at least $500 for an editor to edit an entire book, which is quite a bit, at least for me. Another option is to have a professional editor look at the first 50 pages.
This will give you an idea of what’s working and what’s not, and these pages are usually the ones you’ll submit to literary agents if you choose to go that route anyway. It might lead to you having to rework the whole book, depending on the quality of your first draft. But at least you’ll know this for a significantly cheaper price than if you have the book edited, and you can edit the entire book based on the feedback you receive.
Honestly, this is the best way to get someone to really look at a lot of pages in depth in a timely fashion. Sometimes it’s difficult to get friends and family members to do this.
6. Pick a publication strategy.
Decide whether or not you want to self-publish. The thing with self-publishing is that you have to be really good at promoting yourself and your work through social media outlets. This can be a bit of a challenge, especially for new authors.
It’s free to publish your book, but it’s hard to get as many readers as someone who has a marketing team. If you want to publish with a traditional publishing company, you can send query letters and samples of your novel to a bunch of literary agents.
It’s still free to publish, but a slice of the pie will go to the agent before it goes to you if a company chooses to publish your book. It’s important to note that submission guidelines are different for nonfiction books and fiction books. If you’re writing fiction, you’ll need to send query letters and sample pages to literary agents.
Sometimes publishing houses will accept manuscripts without an agent, and so it’s important to have your full manuscript prepared before you start submitting it.
However, for most nonfiction books, all that’s required is a proposal. Book proposals should be a minimum of 20 pages and are often a lot longer than that. You need to submit your proposal to agents or publishing houses before you write the book so that they can tell you whether or not they want to purchase it.
The only exception for nonfiction is a memoir: If you’re writing a memoir, have your full manuscript ready before you submit it to anyone.
Final thoughts
So there you have it, the basics of what you need to start and finish your first book. You can do it! Writing just requires consistency and discipline, and a passion for and knowledge of the craft. Don’t be hard on yourself if the first draft isn’t all you’ve ever dreamed of. No one’s first draft ever is. Let the editing do its magic, and you’ll be on the way to a fulfilling career in writing if you stick with it.
