Here is What I’ve Learned while Writing my First Book:
Over the past five months I have been writing my first (we’ll technically second) book. This was the first book that I decided to publish, and send out into the wild. I’ve always wanted to write a book about the experiences in my life. Even though I’ve only been alive for nine-teen years, I still feel like I have a story to tell! Throughout this massive undertaking, I was given many unexpected tasks that tried to distract me from reaching my daily writing goal. School for one; was not forgiving to the fact that I was writing a 70 thousand plus word book. My teachers still expected that 5 page essay on their desk by the end of the class. In addition I was also freelancing which meant; I was keeping up with client demands, and producing content they hired me to produce. Just juggling both of these tasks at the same time may make me seem insane, but to add writing a full length book to the list; actually made me feel like I was indeed–Insane. The crazy thing is five months later, I have written about 89 thousand words. For some of you, you may think writing about your own life is an easy task. Let me tell you something, this was not an easy task. Not by a long shot. I spent countless hours, racking my brain trying to remember about that time, or event that happened to me in perfect detail. Writing a book, was not an easy task. So don’t tell me that it was!
Some of you may be wondering; how was he able to write a book in such a short amount of time. We’ll this is how….
When you write a book, or anything really for that matter. You should never stop writing! Your mind is going 24.7, and you have many thoughts throughout the day. I’m sure you’ve had many good ideas that you’ve wanted to write down, but by the time you finish the task at hand it slips from your mind.
I know, I’ve had this happen to me countless number of times. Until I adopted my method of writing. When I write anything I sit down at my computer (if I’m lucky), and begin to write small paragraphs. I write about the idea that popped into my mind at the time! This means sometimes using that piece of glass everyone of us has in their pockets! I’ve heard of many authors using this method of writing in ‘bursts', but I didn’t think that would work for me. I thought that if I wrote in bursts, it would make my work seem inconsistent and jumbled. I was right. It does, but think about writing this way. You want to get your thoughts out of your mind, and down on paper (or in digital word) to where you can later go in, and craft a perfectly readable book, blog post, article, twitter post, etc. Sounds crazy right? This method really works, and it even gives you more control over what your writing, as well as being a time saver! Some people like to use AI Writer (a great mac app for writing, and markup), some swear by the stock Apple notes app mainly due to its ease of use & integration with Apple products. I on the other hand love using @evernote for my writing! Almost 99.8 precent of my writing is written in Evernote! It’s an easy to use text editor, that allows you to keep your notes organized, plus your notes are synced between all of your devices. Oh! By the way, did I say that they were searchable as well?
What ever platform you decide to write your thoughts or ideas down on, never stop writing. Capture your moments, ideas, thoughts, whatever quickly; Because they WILL leave your brain in a matter of seconds.
Every second matters; If your day is anything like mine, it may go something like this:
5AM wake up call
7AM leave the house, take client calls, drink a smoothie.
8AM meetings, meetings, and more meetings
9AM even more meetings, maybe sneak a podcast in
10AM dedicated time to edit a book, or work on a project
11AM meetings, time to work on a project
You get the idea, our lives are crazy busy! No matter what you do for a living. That’s why you need to take time out of your day, and dedicate it to writing, or editing your thoughts & ideas. For me this was at 10AM, this was when I was able to get all of meetings out of the way, and when my phone was quiet (mostly because no one had time to tweet, because they we’re all working.) So this was when I got most of my work done on my passion projects. Before I was writing this book, I used this time to work on my website, or design a app concept, or something of the like. I understand that this is a luxury that many of us simply don’t have, but if you add up all of the time you watch your favorite T.V. shows when you get home from work, because your tired and want to relax. I’m sure you’ll be able to find time to write, and or edit your book. The same goes for anything your dong–Like a passion project, or concept. I heard said in one of my classes that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, it’s just that some of us use the full 24 hours; while others only use 10–14. A very profound statement, when you think about it.
We all get the same 24 hours in a day. From 12am to 12am each and every one of us has this time avaible to us. The thing is many of us only use a fraction of this time, and only a sliver of it is used to be productive. If you want to write book, especially in short amount of time you will make time in the day to do it! If it means that much to you, you WILL find time to do it! That may mean not watching T.V. for the next 2 hours after you get home. Sorry to break it to you! Could you imagine how much we all would get accomplished if we took time out of our precious t.v. watching to work, instead of escaping from our own lives? There is some truth behind why successful people don’t watch t.v. they don’t have time to, nor do they want to! Something else really successful people do, is plan their entire day out by the Minute! Yes! By the mintute. This was something that I adopted early on in my college career. I scheduled out everything from the time I woke up, when I need to shower, even down to when I brushed my teeth. Once you see how much time you waste in a day, by watching T.V. or doing other unproductive things you start to see your potential, and how you can use the same 24 hours we all get to your advantage. For example, I took the 12 hours I watched T.V. on a day-to-day basis, and decided to design concepts for mobile apps. Then once I had the idea for write a book; I shifted my efforts to the writing, editing, and marketing of my first book. What if we all created 80 precent of the content, and consumed only 20 precent?
Where could we be in our world? Where could you be in your life? What could you be dong?
If we are all being honest, we consume a lot of content. That may be T.V, Movies, Music, Podcasts, Books, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, FaceBook, Music.ly, and god only knows what else. That’s a lot of platforms we are trying to juggle, and keep on top of! The majority of us are spending 80 precent of our time consuming content, and 20 precent creating it! If you want to write a book, or make a tv show, or be ‘famous’ on twitter; but your still consuming 80 precent of the content. You will never make it! You need to be consuming 20 precent of the content, while creating 80 precent of it! Give more than you take; Never take more than you give! Not only will spending less time consuming on these platforms give you what seems like more time in the day, but it will allow you to be less stressed. When your on social media for more than 5 hours in a day, it may seem like your going to miss out on something if you’r not on it. Let me tell you something, no one will care. No one will notice if your not on social media 24 hours a day! Not if your creating 80 precent of content… Let’s use @twitter for example. Notice that the most followed users are not sending a tweet once an hour? If they are they’re probably using a service like @hootsuite, because they are too busy to consume such an extravagant amount of content. Again another method you should adopt from successful people!
Just because you’ve decided to take on a large task, like writing a book does not mean that the world will stop spinning. You have to find the time, and then make the effort to write, edit, and release the book into the world. Because if you don’t believe in what your doing, then no one EVER will. No one will ever know that your book, product, design, [Place a item here] ever existed in the first place! So make people aware.
Make yourself aware. Change some of your habits to work on these projects, and own them!
Take Away: Don’t give up, always capture new ideas, make time, and just create!
