I’m relatively new to writing books having only started 2 years ago. That said, in those two years I’ve written and published two best selling non-fiction books. One could argue that at least I’m being efficient:)
For me, writing a book is very structural. I’m a structural engineer by initial education & profession and I approach a new book project the same way I would approach designing a new building. It starts with a vision, idea or very basic concept of what the book is going to be. Maybe it starts with just a title.
Idea/Title → Schematic Outline → Detailed Writing → Final Manuscript
- The initial idea is where I like to start, and I’ve always got some ideas rolling around in my brain. Ideation is fun, and you likely wouldn’t be considering writing a book if you weren’t already thinking of topics, right?!
- Once I choose an idea I want to pursue, I need to lay out what this looks like. The books I’ve written are on topics for which I have some expertise so I can populate a schematic outline relatively quickly. That said, I want to be as thorough as possible so I conduct a lot of research in other books, online, and using ChatGPT to ensure my outline does a solid job of covering the topic. My schematic outline changes through the process, as it should, usually expanding in scope, and
- During the detailed writing of both of my books I learned a lot about my field, the field in which I already considered myself somewhat an expert. When diving deep into the details one thing lead to another which lead to another. I knew my topic well, but I didn’t know, or have experience with, 100% of all the information or situations that I wanted to present. I kept going down the rabbit hole, learning and adding more information in order to present a thorough work.
- After adding all the detail, saying everything I thought I want to say, I considered the manuscript to be a draft. It was then that I shared it with my editor to refine and improve as necessary to get to publishing quality. After editing I shared a final draft with selected early readers and then incorporated their feedback to ensure the work was as high quality as possible. After making all changes, and going back and forth with my editor on a number of iterations, we arrived at the final manuscript.
One important lesson I’ve learned from writing two books is that there’s always a critic waiting to share their negativity with you. Luckily they are usually in the minority. Even Napolean Hill’s critical work Think and Grow Rich, while promoting more than 20,000 5-star reviews on Amazon, 1% of the reviews are 1-star.
Written by: David Gatchell
