Many people will come up to me and say, "Gosh, I could never write a book!"
Here is my response to them: can you write a sentence?
Let's drill down on this a little further. Can you write a sentence that introduces something? Can you write a sentence that describes something? Can you write a sentence that summarizes something? Guess what: if you can write ten chapters with four or five hundred of these sentences, over a period of a few months – say, a few dozen a day – then you can write a book.
Most people look at book projects in terms of their enormity. I look at them in terms of a bunch of nice, small chunks that you can master. So if you are thinking about a book project yourself, don't think about boiling the ocean. Start with one sentence, and make that sentence absolutely incredible. Then put those sentences to work in paragraphs that teach people something.
Don't think about your next book project as being hard. Think of it as being lots and lots of easy. Then divide and conquer!
Monday, September 6, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
The secret to getting published: study the genre
I recently installed a new bookshelf along the wall of our family room - a beautiful, glass-enclosed space that overlooks the hills of upstate New York - and for the first time ever, devoted a shelf to hold one copy of each book I've ever written, ghostwritten, or contributed to. And it is quite a big shelf! Including things like foreign editions, second printings, and the like, there are close to 30 books there. And on average, I have cranked out one nationally published book every year or so since the mid-1990s.
So how do you get to be a "repeat offender" like me? Hard work? Well, perhaps, but I really enjoy writing and have never succeeded at anything just because of Calvinistic toil. Born with a silver-tounged pen? Nope, I was a C student in writing at Cornell decades ago. The right connections? Sorry, I live in the middle of nowhere, and was a humble lay middle manager with no agent when I first hit the bookshelves.
But there is one thing I do differently than almost any wannabe writer I know, and it is the single biggest reason I am successful: I study the genre I am writing in.
Go to a bookstore sometime, and you will see most people browsing through books. Go to one when I'm there and you'll see me pulling one book after another off the shelf, running my finger along the pages, muttering to myself, and occasionally even pulling out a calculator. (Did I tell you I have an engineering degree?) While other people are reading books, I am deconstructing them. And when I finally sit down to write, it is a thoughtfully composed performance informed by the style of the genre.
Studying the genre is NOT the same as copying another person's style. I have my own style, thank you. In fact, I have lots of them, having published in genres that include popular business books, social science, and even fictional stories. Rather, I have a good, general sense of the audience I am writing for.
Take business fables, one of my most successful genres. These projects never top 25,000 words, use short paragraphs, and are built around simple ideas. If I write a thick book with lots of jargon, no matter how funny or well-written I make it, I can't play in this market. Similarly, my non-fiction business self-help books generally tip the scales at 60-70,000 words, have a clear reader benefit in each chapter, are written in third person, and use lots of "eye candy" such as sidebars and examples to break up a wall of prose.
So, do you want to write a weighty tome like James Surowiecki The Wisdom of Crowds, a thought leadership book like Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, or a quick read like Seth Godin's Tribes? Surowiecki runs out his anecdotes over several pages, Gladwell hooks your attention with "aha" moments at the beginning of each chapter, and Godin uses tons of micro-examples written in second person ("You need to be using Twitter. Now."). Each of them "smell" the way they do because of reproducible points of style.
So go out there and break down your favorite books. Study their opening hooks, their paragraph lengths, their chapter structures, and the way they keep your interest flowing. Think of how these things might affect your own unique writing voice, and how you want your own books to be seen. Then get writing. Have fun!
So how do you get to be a "repeat offender" like me? Hard work? Well, perhaps, but I really enjoy writing and have never succeeded at anything just because of Calvinistic toil. Born with a silver-tounged pen? Nope, I was a C student in writing at Cornell decades ago. The right connections? Sorry, I live in the middle of nowhere, and was a humble lay middle manager with no agent when I first hit the bookshelves.
But there is one thing I do differently than almost any wannabe writer I know, and it is the single biggest reason I am successful: I study the genre I am writing in.
Go to a bookstore sometime, and you will see most people browsing through books. Go to one when I'm there and you'll see me pulling one book after another off the shelf, running my finger along the pages, muttering to myself, and occasionally even pulling out a calculator. (Did I tell you I have an engineering degree?) While other people are reading books, I am deconstructing them. And when I finally sit down to write, it is a thoughtfully composed performance informed by the style of the genre.
Studying the genre is NOT the same as copying another person's style. I have my own style, thank you. In fact, I have lots of them, having published in genres that include popular business books, social science, and even fictional stories. Rather, I have a good, general sense of the audience I am writing for.
Take business fables, one of my most successful genres. These projects never top 25,000 words, use short paragraphs, and are built around simple ideas. If I write a thick book with lots of jargon, no matter how funny or well-written I make it, I can't play in this market. Similarly, my non-fiction business self-help books generally tip the scales at 60-70,000 words, have a clear reader benefit in each chapter, are written in third person, and use lots of "eye candy" such as sidebars and examples to break up a wall of prose.
So, do you want to write a weighty tome like James Surowiecki The Wisdom of Crowds, a thought leadership book like Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, or a quick read like Seth Godin's Tribes? Surowiecki runs out his anecdotes over several pages, Gladwell hooks your attention with "aha" moments at the beginning of each chapter, and Godin uses tons of micro-examples written in second person ("You need to be using Twitter. Now."). Each of them "smell" the way they do because of reproducible points of style.
So go out there and break down your favorite books. Study their opening hooks, their paragraph lengths, their chapter structures, and the way they keep your interest flowing. Think of how these things might affect your own unique writing voice, and how you want your own books to be seen. Then get writing. Have fun!
Welcome!
Welcome to the blog for YourOnlineWritingCoach.com!
Our intention here is not to be a marketing shill for my coaching practice. (Of course, if you are interested in being coached or having your material evaluated, I will gladly shill over at my regular website of http://www.youronlinewritingcoach.com/.) Here, our goal is to examine the fine art of writing for publication, and ideally to open a dialogue that includes you as well. Welcome!
Our intention here is not to be a marketing shill for my coaching practice. (Of course, if you are interested in being coached or having your material evaluated, I will gladly shill over at my regular website of http://www.youronlinewritingcoach.com/.) Here, our goal is to examine the fine art of writing for publication, and ideally to open a dialogue that includes you as well. Welcome!
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