How to Write a Book

Most important: to write a good book, you need a good idea. No one wants to read a book without an idea, no matter how well written it may be. Always start with something to say.

But let's look at the practical side—how do you write a book?

It's not as difficult as most people think. You work with the time-and-deliverables concept: break down exactly what you need to accomplish the goal, then make steady progress toward it. Here's how that works in practice.

The numbers

Writing a book costs exactly zero dollars, at least in terms of financial cost. The only real cost is time—and that varies by how fast you write.

Your main deliverables are chapters and words. For a non-fiction book, a good target is twelve chapters and 60,000 words—roughly 5,000 words per chapter. Once you build the habit, it's manageable to write 1,000 words a day, sometimes more.

At that pace, a first draft takes 60 days. But most people shouldn't expect to have a finished book in 60 days—because writing a book is different from writing a blog post or journal entry. You can't just keep your head down and press on. You also have to think about structure, arc, and whether the whole thing holds together.

The process

Here's how to break it down into stages:

Stage 1: Outline (1-2 weeks)
Before writing a word of the actual book, map out every chapter. What's the central argument? What does each chapter need to accomplish? Write a paragraph or two of notes for each one. This takes a couple of weeks and makes everything that follows easier.

Stage 2: First draft (2-3 months)
Now write. Don't try to write a perfect Chapter 1, then a perfect Chapter 2. Write a rough version of everything. When you get stuck on a chapter, skip it and move to another. Your goal at this stage is word count, not brilliance. Keep moving.

Accept that a good portion of what you write won't make it to the final manuscript. I wrote more than 85,000 words for one of my books and went to publication with about 72,000. That's normal. The extra words aren't wasted—they help you find the book you're writing.

Stage 3: Revision (2-3 months)
Once you have a complete draft, go back. What's good? What should be cut? What needs more development? The problems you avoided in Stage 2 now need to be solved. The editing process takes roughly as long as the writing—sometimes longer.

This stage is either very hard or very satisfying. For most writers, it's both.

The real obstacle

The reason more than 80% of people who want to write a book never do isn't a lack of process knowledge. It's fear—of the blank page, of being judged, of realizing the book isn't as good as the idea for the book.

These are real feelings, but they're not book problems. They're thinking problems.

The practical answer: write badly on purpose at first. Your first draft is supposed to be rough. Give yourself permission to write a version that only you will ever see. Once a draft exists, you can fix it. You can't edit nothing.

Don't worry about publishers or marketing at this stage. Don't worry about skill or talent. Worry about telling your story and building up the word count. Those other things come later.

What happens when you finish

Half a year of consistent work—a few months of drafting, a few months of editing—and you have a book. Not a perfect one, but a real one.

From there: you can pursue a traditional publisher, self-publish, or publish in some other form. The writing process is the same regardless of which path you choose. Get the manuscript finished first. Decisions about publishing are much easier when you're holding a completed book.

If you want to write a novel, you can also follow along with thousands of others during National Writing Month—but no need to wait. Books can be written at any time of year.

The goal is to write the book you have in you. Start with the outline. Keep the daily quota. Finish the draft before you judge it.

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Photo by Min