© K.L. Hall and www.authorklhall.com, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to K.L. Hall and www.authorklhall.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions from aspiring authors lately, or better yet, people who don’t consider themselves aspiring authors, but they know they have a story to tell. Regardless of where you fall on the author spectrum, if you want to put fingers to keys or pen to paper and don’t know where to begin, this blog post is for you.
Whether you just woke up with the idea to write a book, or you’ve been thinking about it for some time now, the number one reason you haven’t started is because you’re probably asking yourself, “how in the hell do I even begin to write a book?” I wish I could tell you that the answer was straightforward and simple. It isn’t. Writing a book isn’t something that you just sit down and complete within a few hours. It’s not a test or an essay. It takes discipline, organization and most importantly, determination.
If you’re considering writing a book, I want you to ask yourself these five questions:
1: How much of my time am I willing to dedicate to this?
2: What do I want to write about?
3: Why do I want to write?
4: Who am I writing for?
5: What does success look (and feel) like to me?
Trust me, there are a million other questions that you’re going to have to ask yourself if you decide to continue down this path, but for now, start with those. Before you just jot down a quick answer, I really want you to THINK about them. Be honest and up front with yourself. Writing a book is going to make you unlock levels of yourself that you probably didn’t even know existed, but if you want it, you can, and you will be able to do it.
If most of the answers to those questions are leaning in a positive direction, then it’s time to sit down and start jotting down those ideas in your head. You can use your phone, a notebook, Microsoft Word document, sticky note, or whatever. Get those thoughts out of your head and store them somewhere you won’t lose or forget them.
What’s next? Once you’ve gotten the thoughts out of your head, it’s time to organize them. Depending on the story you’re trying to tell, you can organize it a bunch of ways, (examples: chronological vs. reverse-chronological order). That’s up to you. But, the more organized your thoughts or ideas are, the easier it will be for your story to flow from your fingertips to the computer screen.
You’ve got more than enough information to get you STARTED on writing your first book, PLUS you’ve got three homework assignments to do. (Yes, I said homework!)1-answer the five questions above, 2-jot down all of your thoughts and ideas, and 3-start to organize those thoughts and ideas of yours.
See you in the next blog post & happy writing!