No, You Can’t Write A Book In Two Weeks. Here’s Why.
I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for productivity tips. I’ll read them obsessively, even when I know that they’re probably just a repetition of the same old get-up-early-exercise-meditate-journal formula. And if I can ever find some authentic way to “hack" my life into a wellspring of creative output, you bet I’ll put down my money for it. And I’m just one in an entire generation obsessed with productivity. Aesthetic workstations are the new #foodporn, there are entire courses on planning and bullet journalling, and if you don’t have a morning routine, well, your day is basically down the drain (at least, according to the zillion and one life gurus out there 😬).
Sometimes, though, people can take the productivity obsession a little too far. And that’s when things get problematic.
You’ll see courses and how-to guides on this topic all over the internet — how to write a book in 15 days. 5 days. 5 minutes. Or basically any fantastically short period of time. The premise on which all these guides are built upon is — you have an idea? We have a solution! And I can understand why a lot of people might be attracted by something like that. They want their name out there on the Internet, and fast. They want to start somewhere without having to devote months to it.
Now I’m not saying there’s nothing to be learned from productivity tools. It certainly helps to have a schedule, and even more so to block off time on your calendar for writing. Time tracking is another great way to see where your hours are going.
But if you’re reading this article, you’re probably not entirely sold into the notion of hacking your way through writing a book. You’re thinking: “It can’t be that easy.”
And you’re right.
Do you know how many books are published every day? Thousands. That’s right. Per day. And a vast majority of those are indistinguishable from one another. And this might offend some people, but the writers of those indistinguishable books, I’m sorry to say, aren’t real writers. They’re just adding to the glut of “books” that are essentially the same thing written over and over again. The same vampire romance. The same college romance. The same spiritual insights. The same get-rich-quick hacks. And a vast majority of those writers were motivated by the same desire for a quick fix. They just wanted their name out there in print, didn’t matter what lay beneath the name.
So before you join the ranks of those writers, here’s my honest, unfiltered advice to you.
If you just want to have content under your name on the Internet, write a blog post, set up a Medium page, or share insights on LinkedIn.
Please, please don’t package a thinly-plotted, hastily-stitched-together manuscript in a fancy cover and call it a book.
The truth is that writing a novel — a good novel — is hard work, and no, this doesn’t just hold true for literary fiction. Think about it. Let’s say you’re writing a thriller. Wouldn’t you want your story to have something different about it? Something that defied the formulaic, that got your readers thinking “hey, I wasn’t expecting that”? Wouldn’t you want your narration to have a distinct touch that sets you up as you, not as a poor imitator of James Patterson? Wouldn’t you want to create well-rounded characters that propel a gripping plot, one where setting and pacing work deftly to move the story towards a compelling finish? And wouldn’t that be worth the extra time and effort you put in?
Or think about nonfiction. Let’s say you’ve worked several years in corporate and have some powerful insights about team motivation, which you’d like to write a book about. You could talk to your colleagues and senior management, get their insights, maybe do a few surveys for the express purpose of enriching your book. You could create something that’s new, based on research, and will be of real value to anyone reading it. Why wouldn’t you invest the time to do that, rather than take a shortcut and churn out the same mishmash of famous quotes and generic be-a-leader-not-a-manager spiel?
Why, pray, would you want to sacrifice all or most of your credibility as a writer, just to be able to tell people you finished a 15-day book writing course?
And before you say “But that’s just the draft, I can always revise later,” allow me to tell you, in the kindest way possible, that the output of a 15-day novel course is not a draft. It is not even close to a draft. It is, at best, a few pages of notes that may someday become something that resembles a draft — and at worst, a few pages that can serve as kindling for your next bonfire or outdoor barbecue.
Now, look. Do I believe in being productive? Certainly. I believe in the discipline of showing up every day, of putting in my hours, of writing what I’ve set out to write as well as possible, no matter how many rewrites it takes. And I certainly believe that one can become more efficient at all of that over time. But while the ‘completion freak’ in me does occasionally want to wrap up a story and push it out into the world, I always stop myself in time because the truth is, I’m fooling no one with a half-done story. It’s bad, people will think it’s bad, and I’m merely setting myself up for a dead-cert rejection. Do I want to magically change my life by using a 15-day guide that almost certainly sacrifices quality in favour of quick fixes? No, because there isn’t any magic in that. Good art can’t be forced. Good art will happen when it’s supposed to happen, which could be in two weeks or two years. And when it does happen, that’ll be real magic.
So to my aspiring book writers out there — save your money, don’t fall for the gimmicks. They don’t work, and you won’t be happy with the end result.
Put in the extra hours and days and months and craft a manuscript that you’re actually proud of. Get something real out of all the effort you devote — and then put it out there, either through a traditional/indie publisher or a self-publishing platform. The people who read it, they’ll be able to tell your work apart from the horde of cobbled-together repetitive hack drafts. And they’ll thank you for it.
