During the course of 2019 and early 2020 I wrote my first book. I did little research about how to go about this process. My strategy was to jump in head first and get words onto the page. Writing a book is merely the task of stringing together sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters. For my first run at writing I didn’t want to overcomplicate this. So I got started and through trial and error wrote about a 100 pages on lifting weights and strength training. Through the process of doing all this I learned a lot about myself and writing books. I plan to write more books in the future, and have a much better approach going forward. These are the biggest lessons that come to mind from this experience.
Lesson 1. It’s Not About Tools
There exists lots of cool software and tools to help people write books. I have no doubt they are wonderful tools and can really help the process. For this book, I decided not to use any of these tools. I used tools that I already knew how to use like Microsoft Word and a Chrome Browser. This ended up being a good decision, because I spent almost no time working on learning software and tooling.
I made this choice in the beginning of this project because of my experience as a web developer. Writing code involves using a lot of different tools. Some of them are very complex, and you often use many of them. Web development can become a dance of getting tools to work together and learning how to use tools. Really learning and mastering these tools takes time and energy. I didn’t want to go through this process any more than I had to with writing. I wanted to put all energy into writing if it was possible. Luckily it was possible to just use Word and move forward. This process was clunky at times and I wish I had features and abilities I didn’t but I made it work. I was very concerned if I had to spend a month learning how to use some writing software, then I would just end up quitting the project altogether. In retrospect I think this choice was a smart choice.
Tools can be complicated and distract us from the job at hand. A good chef needs a few basic kitchen utensils things to cook a great meal. I think writing can be the same way, the old writing masters didn’t have computers and they managed to write some wonderful things. I wanted the experience of doing this without all the fancy tools. One way I thought of it was that it was like how I learned math. I didn’t use a calculator much at all until I had gotten to college. Math was done by hand in my schools, I had to learn how to do it the slow clunky way so I understood the principles. After I got to college I started using the calculator more but the principles of mathematics were at that point baked into my mind. It is my hope that writing with the simplest of tools taught me some of the same things. Going forward I think I will make better decisions about the tools I use.
Now that I have gone through writing a book with what I consider basic tools, I am in my mind ready to play with more complex software. I want to find something that helps me have multiple versions of documents. I want to find things that help me keep track of research and footnotes and references as well. Now that I have done this thing once my hope is that I can try things and say more accurately if a tool will be good for me. Overall I am very glad I chose this path to my tooling for this book.
Tools are great and wonderful, but I’m glad I realized early on, that the tools don’t matter much. Effort and cleverness make up for any lack of tooling I had.
Lesson 2. Repurposing Blogposts Is A Trap
I had been writing blogposts about fitness for a while before deciding to tackle a book about fitness. My first thought about writing a book is I could take these blogposts and put them together, add an intro and conclusion, and I might have a good book. That is not how things turned out. This was a trap and I walked into it.
After a little while of trying to make this work it started to look like this wouldn’t work for me on this project. I persisted with this strategy a little too long. I feel as though I would have been better off outlining a book and writing from scratch. Trying to use what I already had forced my hand into bad directions and really created more work for myself.
By using already written blogposts I ended up having to do a lot more editing. Many blogposts referred to things that made sense in the old context of being on a web page. So I had to edit and rewrite a lot of stuff. I think writing it from scratch might have gotten me further faster. There was also no flow to this monster that I had assembled, which lead to more editing. I was editing and editing to create flow to this book. Eventually I got it all to work, but I think I made it harder on myself than it needed to be.
I would be weary of ever trying this method again. I will probably use this method again though. A collection of well done blogposts could make a decent book. I have seen it work. I think it takes the right mix of author, writing style, and subject matter to make this work. My best advice if you want to try this is to give it a go and abandon it if it doesn’t work. There is a trap here but it’s an easy trap to escape if you just recognize the trap.
Lesson 3. You Have to Find the Right Metrics
Goals are a good thing. Yes I am sounding so simplistic here. To be productive with my writing I needed goals. I played around with different goals to get productive. I settled on words writing in a day.
Microsoft Word makes this is easy to do. In the bottom left of the window you get a word count. I just took my starting count and compared it to my ending count for the day. Just having these numbers helped me really churn out the content and get through this book.
I tried setting goals of writing for X number of hours.
I tried scheduling time on my calendar to write as well.
In the end the metric that resonated with me was word counts. As soon as I started to look at word counts and measure progress this way my productivity skyrocketed. I worked on writing this book over a year, but in reality once I got to using a word count I wrote the bulk of the first draft in 30 days or something like that. As soon as I just started looking at word counts, I felt like I had unlimited power.
My best advice to others is find the metric and goals that work with your mind. Just because one way of looking at progress doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean there are not other metrics that won’t work.
Lesson 4. Get It Right the First Time
I spent a lot of time editing and working on revisions of this book. A lot of this was time I didn’t need to spend on this. I would write a section and then quit for the day. I then would put the book together as a whole for an editing pass. This workflow just lead to me having a lot of errors I had to fix. If I had just reread and checked for spelling and grammar along the way I would have saved myself a lot of trouble. This isn’t a profound lesson or insight, but it is something I messed up a lot.
Lesson 5. Writing a Book Isn’t “Hard”
To be truthful, writing a book is both easy and hard. Writing words to that come together into a manuscript, that isn’t that hard. That is all it takes to write a book. If I can write about a page an hour, then all I need to do is write for 100 hours and I have a book.
For me all I have to do to write a book is sit down and do it. For others it may be harder or easier. This is a lesson for myself.
Writing a GOOD book is the hard thing. This is where what I write matters. I can only do the best I can do though, so I will do that. It is not for me to judge whether what I write has any value, that is for the reader. It is only my job to write.
So this is a mindset lesson. In my mind I can write a book, that is something I can just do. It only takes some time and effort. There is no question it can get done. Not questioning whether I am capable of doing a task does make that task easier.
Lesson 6. Stay in Flow
Getting into the flow to do good writing can be a hard thing for me to do. Once I get in the flow of writing I am best served by doing everything I can to stay in flow.
Doing things like taking a break is problematic. I might not return to flow after the break, I am much better sitting at the keyboard until the wheels fall off.
Flow can be transferred from day to day. I feel like my best writing happens when I write almost every day. I have tried to be productive only writing on a one day a week schedule. It is possible, it is however not all that ideal for me. I feel as though the best way forward for me is that once I start a writing project is to work on it every day I can until it is finished.
Flow is just that important to my process.
Lesson 7. I Want An Outline
Before writing this first book of mine, I did no outlining. I just sat down and shoved random scraps of writing together. I just banged my head against the wall until a coherent framework emerged. I did not like this process all that much. Next time around I want to do more of an outline and see if that saves me headaches.
Final Thoughts
As I look back on my first book, these are the lessons that jump out most to me. I am sure when I write book number 2 that some of these lessons will prove helpful, and some will change altogether. This is just where I am at as a writer at this moment. I hope you get some ideas from the lessons that you can implement on a project of your own.