20 Steps To Writing A Book Part 1 - Inspired By Brian Tracy

At some point in your life you may come to the realization you want to put your life story in writing, it may follow a life changing event like the birth of your first child, getting married or losing someone you hold dear. Whatever the motivation I believe that following the 20 steps laid out below will ensure you have a product that you will be proud of. I am yet to put these steps in practice but I just had to share them as I believe we are all at different stages in our lives. Please share your success stories when you finally get published, now that it is even easier with the advent of eBooks, Amazon and the Kindle.

1. Begin with a message, an idea, or story that you feel passionately about and would like to share

2. You must be an expert on your subject. You must know 10 words for every word you write. If you write on success, you must already be successful. If you write on money, you must already be rich. If you write on relationships, you must already

be happily married. I beg to differ with Brian here, depending on whether your story is fact or fiction you do not really need to have prior experience, just a healthy dose of creativity will do

3. Target audience definition is a very important consideration, who is going to read your book? Define them and you will find it easier as you will be writing “for them”.

4. Write it and they will read it, if money is not your motivation and you are sharing a special message, and then your book is a success if only one person reads it. If however, it is meant to be a best seller then make sure you have a large target audience.

5. Research, research and research some more. Buy everything that has ever been written about the subject and read it, then read it again. This step makes sure you are able to set your book apart from everything else that has been written on the subject, it creates your unique selling point.

6. Remember the research phase is very important, collect all the information required before you start writing.

7. Organization is key; arrange your material into seven or as many chapters as you think will be required to tell your story, each flowing in a logical order, from beginning to end.

8. Outline the key-point in each chapter on the front of an A4 sized writing pad.

9. Arrange the key points in each chapter from No.1 through to the end until you have all the key ideas for the chapter on paper.

10. Now the fun begins, make sure you have a decent dictation machine because you will need it. Start from the beginning and dictate your story supported by the materials you have put together.