10 Tips for Writing a Book that Actually Worked for Me as a Professional Ghost Writer
Before considering publishing or self-publishing, it goes without saying that you must first have a book to edit.
However, writing a book is not always an easy thing to approach, especially if it is the first.
That’s why today I would like to give you 10 tips for writing a book. This advice has been given to me by others and I haven’t always followed it, believing it to be too different for it to work for me. And yet, strangely, as soon as I started to apply them all, everything worked much better!
So I share them with you so that you too can write all those books you want to write, whether they are fictional or not!
1. Refine your idea
Do not throw yourself headlong into writing as soon as the slightest idea emerges. Take the time to evaluate it, to see how far you can go with it, what you can get out of it.
Not all ideas are good to write about: some have already been covered thousands of times; others just have nothing to say.
If, after some thought, you realize that your idea is one of the bad ones to write about then you can:
The set aside to give him time to mature and tell later
the upgrade by mixing other ideas stashed in drawers, going to inspire you through other media (movies, history, music …).
2. Plan
To succeed in a book, whether it is fictional or not, it is essential to plan it in order to know where you are going.
Take a sheet of paper and write at least the major steps of the book you want to write. It doesn’t matter if you are a gardener (scriptural writing) or an architect (structural writing); the only difference that sets one apart from the other is the amount of preparation. Gardeners will tend to limit their plans and cards to a few notes on a corner of a sheet, while architects black out pages and pages of plans and documentations.
It is up to you, and you alone, to define your minimum planning needs.
3. Make an appointment with yourself
The main problem for writers is time management.
I often come across thoughts like “I don’t have time to write” or “I’m waiting for time to write”. If there is one thing I learned while writing my first novel, it is that you never find the time to write.
If you want to write your book, you have to take this time, snatch it from your agenda if necessary. And the best way to do that is to make an appointment with you.
So, take your agenda, whether it is a planner , Google Calendar or a bullet journal , choose a time slot of the duration of your choice (between 30 minutes and 2 hours, it is ideal) and write down y: “I’m writing! »
Put as many as you want in your calendar, but stick to it! These time slots must be blocked, padlocked. These should be times of your week that you will only dedicate to writing and nothing else.
4. Know how to say no
The second problem with writers is procrastination.
The first thing to do is to succeed in saying no to you. It’s all well and good to make a date with yourself, but you still have to succeed in cutting yourself off from the world to concentrate on your writing. To remove distraction, turn off your phone first, or put it on airplane mode if you’re using writing apps, like a stopwatch.
The airplane mode is a pre-configured setting that exists on all smart phones and all operating systems and that can cut all network connections while allowing you to continue using applications and functions that do not require to be connected . Airplane mode disconnects:
the telephone network
· 3G, 4G, Wife
· GPS
· Bluetooth connections
Thus, you no longer risk being disturbed by calls, texts, emails, social network notifications …
Then, if you are writing on paper, shut down your computer. If you write on a computer, block all notifications, including Windows live mail notifications, and close all your tabs or keep only useful ones.
The second thing to do is to succeed in saying no to others. If a friend wants to see you over coffee to soak up the sun or a friend wants to call you to chat, you have to say no to them. This appointment that you have made with yourself in your diary must have the same value as a course or a client appointment: it cannot be postponed or canceled.
If you are afraid or ashamed to tell your loved ones that you cannot agree to their requests because you are writing, then just tell them you have a date.
Likewise, if you are afraid of cutting yourself off from the world (fear of missing an important call for example); remember that this is only for a short time, 2 hours maximum. It’s movie time! However, in the cinema, you are just as cut off from the world and that does not pose a problem, neither for you, nor for others.
5. Don’t retrace your steps
When you travel, normally, you have to start from home to ultimately get to your destination. Now, if you spend your time leaving your home and then coming back because you forgot your wallet, your toothbrush, your pair of lucky socks, etc. you will never get to your destination.
The writing is the same thing: if you want to complete your first draft, look in front of you, not behind.
Do not correct your previous chapters until you have finished writing the first draft of your book. You will have plenty of time to perfect your writing once you have written everything. In fact, your corrections will be much more effective if you make them when you already have an overview of all your work.
In addition, corrections often look depressing for two reasons. The first is that you are going to be confronted with your rough writing on your first draft, and it is very common, not to say inevitable, that you find it mediocre. When you are confronted with it in the middle of writing, you often feel too discouraged to write the rest (the famous: “Everything I write is bad! I am a failed writer!” ), whereas if you are confronted with it after writing, you already feel more confident because the book is already finished and because you know that correction is the next step after writing. Telling yourself that you only have to correct your text and no longer finish and correct it that changes everything. It is much less daunting.
The second is that you will not feel like you are moving forward in your writing. And it will be true. Constantly correcting what has already been written will not lead you to writing the word End. Thus, by correcting before you have finished, you will think that you are moving forward when, in reality, you are not.
6. Don’t disperse
There is nothing worse than carrying out several big writing projects at the same time. This is all the more true for fiction projects.
It is common to see young writers (in the sense “who recently took up writing”) start dozens of projects and never finish any.
If a new idea strikes you, either try to make it part of your current project or put it aside for later , coming back to point
Let it mature
It is true that when working on a long-term project, it can happen that you get bored or, quite simply, that you are seduced by the freshness of this new idea (the famous “attraction of novelty”). Giving in to this urge to want to write a new project alongside the old one is, more often than not, the best way to never finish either.
Also, if you already have a problem with time writing just one book, imagine if you had to write two! Well if this really makes you worried! You always have a choice to work with the best ghost writing solutions, publishing houses, hire Ghost Writers and have dedicated to your main project.
I would like to point out that it is possible to run several novels at the same time, but for that you will need a lot of organization and time. Carrying out several projects simultaneously requires rigor and discipline.
7. Personalize your environment
Writing asks us to synthesize our thoughts to translate them into words and we must accept that they are not perfect the first time, this applies as much to fiction as to non-fiction. It is an act of letting go that requires a lot of concentration and kindness towards oneself. Also, you have to feel good in the environment in which you write.
To do this, you need to find the different ingredients that promote your focus. These can fit into several elements:
The place: choose a place where you feel good, where you feel inspired, but also where you will not be disturbed, it can be your office, your living room, a café …
The time: perhaps the most important point of all, you do not know maybe not, but our brain activity is cyclical and it is not operational in creating all the time. We all have different rhythms that make us more efficient at performing certain tasks at certain times and totally unable to do them at other times of the day. It is therefore essential that you find your writing schedules.
The sound environment: I did not want to talk about music because silence is just as legitimate as film music or whale songs, for example; the important thing is that it helps you and puts you at ease.
The medium : notebook, loose sheets, lines, squares, computer, tablet, Smartphone, typewriter, pencil, ballpoint pen, fountain pen, parchment, quill pen… the choices abound!
The position: this point may seem strange to you, but some writers like to write standing or lying down, on the floor or on their sofa … sitting is therefore not an obligation.
The holding: as some attach great importance to the holding, as Victor Hugo who wrote or naked Danny Laferrière writes in pajamas.
The drink and snack: I know I cannot write without my mug of hot drink (tea / coffee / hot chocolate / tea when I write at night) and my piece of chocolate, and I know that ‘so are many other writing brothers and sisters. — I am, by the way, drinking a cup of tea while writing this article!
8. Read
When writing books, it is important to soak up the words of others , their worlds, their styles, their structure in order to be able to draw from them what suits us and to make our own way as a writer. . Words and their usage can only be learned from other books.
Reading a variety of writing styles helps you understand the different parts of writing. It also makes it possible to find models to follow and, thus, to impose a certain level of requirement on us.
9. Be Accountable
It might sound silly, but it’s very motivating to be accountable to someone.
My advice is to choose someone you trust in your circle, let them know about your writing project and, after each scheduled writing session, you will tell them how many words or signs you will have written.
If you haven’t written, that person can give you a pledge (like paying them a restaurant or a movie theater).
If you have a community on social media, you can be accountable to them too… and they could give you pledges too.
10. Treat yourself!
Because after all, if we write, it is first and foremost because we like it!
So don’t lose sight of the pleasure of words and the pleasure of writing.
So tell me: which one do you think is the most useful?
Or the most absurd? Do you already apply some?
