How To Write Your First Book!

1. Introduction: Welcome to the course, taking a book from conception to completion. One of the things that I've noticed on all of the writing groups that on the pot of online and in person is that there's this block, this sort of barrier to entry where people start a book or they've got an idea and I just can't quite complete it. For whatever reason. It could be conceptual, It could be practical. It could be something happening in their life. But they want to write a book and yet they just can't quite do it. And to me, this is a big shame because, you know, how many people out there, how many awesome works of fiction or autobiographies of poetry or whatever it is which want to write could be at their familiar afraid for you to read. But for whatever reason the authors can't quite finish. So in this course, I want to break down the tips, tricks and IDs that I've used to bring five books to completion. And what I'm doing for the books that I'm currently writing. My name is Zachary Phillips on an online mental health advocate, author and coach. And in this role have helped thousands of people move from a place of surviving to passionately thriving. And in this course, I'm going to show you how I have written and completed five books, as well as the person I'm using to do on my current books right now. So if you've got a book that you want to write, if you are writing a book and you can't quite finish it. This is the course for you. It doesn't matter what sort of genre or you're writing, or if it's fiction or nonfiction, it's about getting it completed. So without further ado, let's get into it. 2. Start With A Strong Why: So obviously you guys are becoming into this at different areas. Some of you will have a book that's always done. Some of you will just have a vague idea. But this first hit is for every one, you need to have a strong, why. Why are you writing? Why do you rise? Why does this book needs to exist? It if, if you don't have a strong reason why other than like arms X1 to write a book, it's likely that you don't care enough about it. Now this isn't saying that you don't actually care, but it means that you haven't really solidified why you care. If you focus on working out. Why, why is that? Why is there a specific reason for this book's existence? Why do you want to write this piece of fiction? What do you want to write this poetry? Why do you want to write this guideline is man or whatever you're writing. What is the reason? And you can put this up on your wall. So let's say you've got a writing desk or a writing space. And you'll put up the title of your work and say, I am writing this because or my Y, or just the quote. And you'll say why you're riding it. And that that statement, that practice, that activity will help you to drill down on the importance of this book for you. A lot of the reasons why books don't get finished is because people start with all his passion and motivation and drive and energy. And then life happens. You know, the kids get sick or work puts a bit more pressure on, or you get a new hobby or this other idea comes back. Who knows what happens? And then you sort of forget why you care about that book. And when you go back and you come back to it and you sit down, you're like, okay, I'm going to get into it. I'm gonna write, I'm gonna do it. You don't quite know why you've still got this vague idea of what the book's going to be bad and what you're doing, but you don't quite care anymore. And that will show in the writing. And then you start running again and they sort of stocks. Why does it cycle? It sucks because you don't care as much anymore. Now, if that's the case and you truly don't care about the work, maybe it is time to move on to a different project. But if you, instead, you'd spend that time working at your why, exactly why you want to write the book. That will be an anchor point, a driving over repeated motivation to get you back into the group and get you started. I'll go through a couple of examples of my work to show you what I mean by a strong wind. The first one is my book, how to get your shit together. Now, this is a, basically a self-help book, a book that I wish existed when I was growing up, I moved out of home at 16 years old. And it was quite challenging to say the least. There was a lot of personal issues and all that sort of stuff that I'm not gonna go into. But the point was, is there's a lot of stuff that I didn't learn that I didn't know about that I wish I had learned. So my strong y for creating this book was to basically write the book I wish existed when I was growing up. And then my additional why was to share that information with the world. And that's strong. Why has helped me, helped me to write the book and helped me to share it actively with the world. I release all of the chapters I do for free. And it's enabled me to say, hey, you know, I've been there, I've been struggling and he got his the assistance that I wish I had. Now what why does that strong water work? But when I was writing it, I'm like, okay, I want the advice that I wish I had have had in a format in a way that would have been available and explicitly understandable to me. I was writing the book that I wish existed. That was my strong why. Why did that matter to me while I wanted to solidify the learning for myself and ought to be able to pass it onto people. Now, that strong why enabled me to write the a 100 plus thousand words in this book and enabled me to go through the editing and the processing. Because until I'd written it, until I done it, until I created that, that idea of this is the book I wished that existed. It's not going to exist. It was out there. It was providing that motivation back and forth every time and enabled me to smoke through. Now, the size of this book, the scale of it, took a lot of effort, took a lot of time, but I could keep coming back to that strong. Why? So I encourage you to spend some time right now and just think about the reason why you're doing this. Why do you click on this course? Why do you care about finishing a book? Right that down, stick it on your wall and look at it daily. And when you look at it daily, you'll be able to go, Okay, this is why I am doing this. 3. Let’s Talk Titles: Let's talk titles for a moment. You know, surprisingly, a lot of people struggle with naming their work. You know, naming the piece poetry, naming the book, naming this, the thing that they're doing. They feel like they have to name it first, and then they continue on. And this is the same as for characters or for places in your fiction work or whatever you're doing. There's this feel like you need to solidify the name before you can start the project. I feel like that's a little bit of a fallacy or a little bit of a, I think that can hold you back in the sense that in the act of writing the piece, you may discover what the title should be. So one of the practices that I use is to just give it a working title. Yeah. Just just come up with something, call it, call it something that vaguely relates to the concepts that you're going to write about. And then just stop. And in the process of writing that book, you will discover what the, what the title is. And this does a couple of things. It gets you started writing which is vital, but it also, it also makes the writing a little bit freer in the sense that if you've written a, if you've chosen a perfect title, you will feel sort of restricted by that title in the sense that It's going to force you to go, oh, this is my title, so I need to write the book that's sort of represents that title. Now that might work, but it can also hold you back. So even if you do want to go down that path of I've got my perfect title. Be open to changing it, be open to considering that that title may change. And that's okay. The goal right now is to pick something and get started. If you're writing fiction, if you're, if you're struggling with character names, with places with, with all of that sort of stuff. Chucked something in there. It doesn't matter. Note to self and got I've handed a tweak the names. I'm going to go through the process of doing these minute details and that's okay. You can come back to it because you know, you will. It's just just a little note to yourself. And if that if that's what helps you with your process to just get started, fine. If you look over a bunch of famous authors, some of them will come up with the names first, sum will come up at the end. The reader doesn't care in a sense that they don't know. They see the final book that I don't see the backstory of the book. They only see they only see the final product. So if you come up with the name of the title of the book, the characters, whatever, at the end, and then backwards in certain. That's okay. It's about finding a method of finding what works for you. So for me personally, I actually checked a title on for poetry book I did called words on a page. I'm just like, okay, these just words on a page. And then it stuck. Because near the complete title is words on a page killing your at a daemons, their poetry. And it sort of has a dual meaning here. The idea was they just words on a page. That's all it is. But it's also that it's sort of the act of putting the words onto the page is a form of self-expression, is a form of a way of getting those demons out and expressing them and putting them on there. So sort of like worked double. I didn't intend on using words on a page as the title, but it just stuck. It could have changed. I could have just used the second part of the title, killing your end daemons through poetry. I'm going to use a title from one of the poems inside the book. I wasn't set on any particular title. And when I started putting the inflammation together, I didn't know where I was going to go with it. That's okay. I went with a working title and went along. And for this case, in this example, it worked for my other books. I went with a working title and change them as I when. The goal is to get ourselves going. 4. Find Your Process: I want to highlight the fact that everyone's processes different. When I first started writing, I read a interesting book called daily rituals, how artists work. And this book was revolutionary to me because basically it told me that it goes through a bunch of different authors and artists and musicians and all of these world-class performers over the years and shared their daily rituals, what they did during the day to get them ready to write. And what the basic Ola over message was. Look at all of these world-class performers past and present. And look at how different they are. Look at what works for one and how that would be the complete opposite of works for they are. And the message is, is find what works for you. And that sort of allowed me to sort of be free and realize it's like, okay, well, this world class performer suggest doing it this way. This best-selling author suggests doing it that way. They both right, but they both might be wrong for me. The best approaches for me to step back and figure out what works. Now, the next step from that was to go, okay, look at all these different options. Does the freer option where you just sort of wait for the creativity to come work. Does establishing a very strict morning routine work? Do I need to socialize heaps or not centralized at all, right? There's a whole variety of things that people will say to do and that you should do this or you shouldn't do that. You do what works for you. Whatever it takes to get you writing is what works for you. And then, you know, my, my approach in my logic was if, if a repeated book, if daily rituals part two was released in 50 years time and I'm somehow a best-selling author. They would interview me and my daily ritual would be in that book. And then other people would look at that and go, that's the way to do it. Well, maybe that my way is just one way. Just like your way would just be another way. So no matter the advice that I'm giving you in this course, take it with a grain of salt. Consider, try it, apply it and if it works, if it gets your book completed, great. If you look at it and go, oh, this is completely stinting. This doesn't work for my drop it. But now you know. So you know, and apply that same logic to any advice you'd get. So if you, if you are looking at my advice or anyone's advice, take what works, discard the rest, and accept yourself and how you are performing as legitimate. You don't have to justify how you act. You don't have to justify what you need to get you writing. There's so many stories of people needing to meditate first, needing to go for a run first, needing to read first, needing to socialized first, needing to wake up super early in the morning, writing first thing, going back to sleep, waking up again so they can have two mornings to write. Maybe after weighing 20 kids go to bed, maybe have to sneak it in super sneaky at work. You don't have time, but what works for you is what works. Just accept that and that's okay. 5. The Writer's Prayer: So please excuse the change of camera angle, but I needed to put show you this one and I put it on my wall. So I've changed the cameras just to show you that this is all my wallet to beat poster called the rightist pray. This is a polymer prayer monitoring defamation. I'd know something that I came up with and I wrote and I'll put a link so you can grab yourself a copy if you like this, tweak it, use it printed, whatever. But the idea is that we'll go through this rod is print and astounding breach reminding session. Why? Well, let let's have a look through it. On a rod. I've given myself this time to rot. Astronomy sacred or not wasted, or not worried about the quality worth or potential audience. I'll just write over the words on the page as they come without judgment, without filter. I'll write because I love it, because there's something to say. And because writing heals me and when the time is up or let it go until I sit down to write again. I wrote this as a reminder to myself and I say it to myself at the start and the end of every writing session. The idea being is that I want to get myself into this disordered, get myself that writing ritual happening. These words remind me that I am a writer. Why my rudder? Because I'm writing. I've given myself this time to write and it's sacred. I've had to carve it out of my day. I did do it in the morning. I've had to sacrifice a whole bunch of stuff. So this is sacred to me. I'm going to use it. I will not waste it on, not worry about the quality, the worth, or the potential audience. I'm not going to worry about all those other people. I'm going to write it for the sake of writing it, the words on the page as they come without judgment and without filter. If my inner voice is sitting there Yellen at me, Nothing comes. I'm going to get done. Alright, because I love it. So this is, this is my wine general, why I run, alright, because I love it, because it's something to say. And because writing heals me because it does, that's why I ride. Okay. I've got a couple of courses on riding, riding therapy or running for self-expression. I wrote because it helps because heals, This is why I'm doing this. So in general, like, you know, he's talked about the the y field book. Why are you writing right? There's that deep courts, you need to know it. So for me, I do it because I love it because there's something to say because it heals me. And then last year when the time is up, I'll let it go until I sit down to write again. Because I found that for me personally, I eat very easy for me to hold on to it, hang up and sort of stay sort of in that writing zone. Unless I switch off. I have to switch off so I can be as focused and present with my family to my everyday life, with my work, all of that sort of stuff. So when the time is up, I will let it go until I sit down and run again. And that enables me to have that sort of that rotting and real-world left balance. So if you like, grab, grab yourself a copy and just cut and paste it, or even better, write your own version of this hump, right? Your own right is pair up and have it as something that you can do for yourself. 6. Types Of Writers: It's been said that writers can be broken into two distinct camps, the planners and the CV pants guys. So the planners will have this massive outline and go, I'm going to write this in this, in this, in this, in this, in this, in this, in this. And they sort of know how stories prior to starting, you know, they've got this whole plan in the head. Whereas the free riders sort of get a spark of an idea and they just sort of let it flow. They sort of channel the mu's. Now, the reality is, is your problem. Yeah, this is probably a spectrum and you're probably somewhere in that in that range. Okay. Some people will be full plan of some people, we fulfill the path. I just let it go. Now me personally. And what I've seen with other people is that you can sort of switch in swayed depending on the project you're doing. So one of the projects that I'm working on right now is basically looking at and sort of dissecting and breaking down and looking at the wisdom in the sort of cliches, the parables, the idioms, the proverb that we live by, you know, like don't put all your eggs in one basket, or it's better than what, you know, that kind of stuff. So for, for that project, I've got this idea. I'm, I'm slowly collecting all of those different examples. And I've got an idea. I'm going to define the topic, I'm going to explain it. I'm going to sort of break it down and then I'm going to respond to it. So the book, as it stands right now will be a bunch of those sort of idioms, all sort of problems broken down and expressed with my response. I know that each piece will be about 4500 words, and that's where I'm at. So for that project, I'm roughly in the middle in the sense that I've got this idea of the overall plan and OK, I've got an idea of which one I'm going to ride on, but I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to write about it until I sit down and write. So today i wrote the, the, the pace on, don't put all your eggs in one basket. I didn't really know what I was going to say. Prior to sitting down. I just knew that I was gonna write about that problem. Okay. But I have an idea of what the book's gonna look like. Whereas for my book, adequate shit together are pretty much knew what I wanted it to be. I knew that I wanted it to have a bunch of the sections that's got a new I wanted all of the seconds to be I would each chapter to be able to be read on its own. I knew that I wanted it to be very extensive. I had a very good idea of what I wanted to do, right. So that was more down the planning part. I was very, I had a very clear direct vision of exactly the content that I wanted to make. I'm also writing a book where I'm basically sharing a poem that I've written and then sort of breaking it down and discussing it. That's completely seat of the pants. When I write poetry on our planet, it just, it just comes and flows. And my response to my production by breaking down the, you know, exploring the wisdom inside that poetry is once again, see that the patents like so don't just free-flowing. Now my process with that is to just let it come. And then I'm gonna go back over and edited and tighten it up and actually make it coherent. So whichever your approaches, that's okay. Like I said in the previous video, you find what works for you and you experiment. But if you're not sure, try planning. Try free-running. See how you go, find that balance. The correct answer is what gets words on the page, I think was Neil Gaiman who said, basically just get the words on the page, get it going, and tweak it at the end. You know, you're editing can make it look like you meant it. Yeah, if you're writing fiction, get the book done and then go back and add the foreshadowing. Go back and make the names all, you know, really cool. References to the university rain, right? You can do that. Or alternatively, spend the time pre-plan and go through it. I can't tell you which approach is better. But maybe if you are aware of the different approaches, you'll be able to make better choices. You'll be able to start trying the different ones and you'll find what works for you. 7. There's No Reason To Fail: Let's talk about the practical nature of writing a book for a moment. You know, actually getting down and sitting down and writing it. There's there's always going to be a reason that you shouldn't. Work needs, your family needs you, you got other hobbies. You wanna relax, you haven't got the time. There's always a reason not to take action. But this is true for everyone. And this is hard to say because you'll be like Yes, but I've got all of these things and you'll always have a response to give back to me. But if you look at any world-famous author, any person has written a book that you like and you looked into their lives just a little bit. You'll see that they too had issues to overcome. Maybe they had kids, maybe they had an illness or disability. Maybe they lived during a tumultuous time. Maybe they had to work two jobs to support themselves while they while they run. Maybe they had a family member that was chronically ill, who knows, right? They had setbacks, financial problems, whatever. Everyone faced problems. Everyone the people that succeed, the people that are successful had to push through those problems just like you will have to as well. And it's, it's, it's, I understand. It's very easy for me to say like, hey, just get through your problems. But it's a matter of accepting them. It's a matter of accepting that what is going on in your life, that's your cross to bear. That's the thing that you need to be able to push through to work with and get going. It depends, like how you going to address that problem will obviously depend on what the problem is. So I can give some general advice here. But what I'm strongly suggest is, is for you to first realize that your problems aren't unique. Once again, highly offensive, but it's true in the sense that if you look at the collection of humanity, there are people in the world that have faced your issue before, not your exact issue, but issues like it. People have been pulled before, people had been sick before, people have had family members with issues before, people have lost their jobs before, right? People have had a variety of mental illnesses. People have had a whole plethora of problems. Likely. There are people that are experts at helping people like you through those problems. Yeah. So so so even if you've got something that seems insurmountable, seems like something that can't be addressed. That stopping you're writing a book. You need to take action to look for the support. You need to take action to find the, the guidance, find someone that's overcome it and say, hey, what did you do? How do you get through it? I've got the same problem. Help and then accept that help. Yeah. Very easy to say, very hard to do. But if you don't do it, the book will never be written. Okay. 8. Common Solutions To Common Problems: With that in mind, let's tick off some common solutions to some common problems. First of all, is just getting the time in your day. Yeah. I would suggest strongly that you have a morning routine, wake up at a particular time, get yourself ready and sit down and write. My morning routine is I wake up, I do some meditation, and then I get onto the laptop and I start typing. I'll do this before my wife and son wake up. Why? Because the house is quiet. I'm free to myself and then I can get it done. It just, it just happens to work for me in that sense. But this requires a little bit of more of nighttime discipline. I have to go to bed early, I have to get up early. I have to say to myself, hey, this time is important or prefer to sleepin unfit to be doing something else. But I'm gonna get up and write. That's what works for me. So if you, if you can't find time during the day to write, practice getting up a bit earlier. I've got a course on morning rituals. I've got a course on daily habits, check those out and will help you to establish your morning routine. I've got a course on waking up earlier. The idea being that is, you can claim that time for yourself and use it to write your book. Yeah, on the topic of the family. It's very easy. As a father, as a partner. As a son, as a brother has all of the things I am to go. I should be spending more time with my family. I should be doing this, this, this so much that I'm missing out on by writing. That's a fact. But the reality is, is that part of me, part of my desire to exist as a human is to write these books. So in order to be the best file in the best hardware, the best person I can be. I need to have that time to be able to get it out so then I can focus on my family. But what does it mean for a practical sense? It means that I'm going to share that with my partner and say, Hey, you know, I need your support on this. I need you to know that I'm going to spend a decent amount of time every day doing this because it's important to me. And through open and honest communication, we've come to an understanding and she recognizes that it is important. And more than that, she recognizes that when I do get to right, I'm able to focus and be far more present, far more focused, far more connected to hurt my son to everyone because I've done the thing that I'm loving, right? So what I would strongly encourage is that you have the conversations with the people in your family say, Hey, this is what I need from you right now, this is Y. And have that conversation back and forth. And they might be like, OK, I get it. Let's talk about the practical solutions. When can you write? What do you need from them? Running needed a quiet house? Do you need to have a specific room? What do you need? And let's talk back and forth. Because unless you get everyone on board and not only are you finding the inner demons, the writers block all of that stuff that you dealing with just a right. You're also fighting the external world. And that can be enough to crush the project and make it just not happen. So it's a better approach to talk openly and honestly and work out a solution to the problem. Another common problem is that people struggled to find the time just in general, they have to work too much. That's okay. Think about it while you're at work. Usual lunch breaks. Yeah. Give up some TV. There's no necessarily an easy solution to this. Yeah, you can't you can't have it all. I know that there's this sort of tried to be like, oh, just tell me that the shortcut tell me that easy fix. There is no they will have to be some sacrifices. You might have to give up the Friday night drinks. You may have to give up watching some TV. You may have to pull back in some capacity. For me, starting out, starting my writing. I went from full-time work to part-time in casual work because I needed the time to commit to writing. Without that time, without that dedicated chunk, I wouldn't have been able to get the work done. I wouldn't have been able to develop the habits. I wouldn't have been able to develop the skill that I added, start writing. But what was the cost? While the cost was a literal reduction of my income to a third of what it was. Was that easy was a pleasant hell, no, it's sucked. It really, really, really did. It meant that I couldn't go on holidays. It meant that I couldn't get a car, meant that I had to eat cheaper food. Wasn't good in that sense. But it meant that I had the time to dedicate to writing because I didn't have to spend it working. Now, thankfully, I was in a position and I had this skill set to be able to implement that sort of drastic change. But what I'm getting at is is that they will have to be some sacrifices. But if you truly want this, if you truly want to finish your book, you may have to sacrifice certain things. What look over your day and work out where you spend your hours. And think about what can I give up? What isn't vitally important? If you've got a strong wind, your book strong wise like this has to be written. Then show that strong why bits. Another sitcom. Surely that why beats the next show on Netflix that people are talking about. It means that you won't be able to enjoy the conversations as much. It means that you won't be able to sort of comment or understanding the social media memes that are going around about the witches of whatever the most common current fingers. But you've got your book. It's a way up here. Once again, I encourage you to consider the example of world-class performers. In order to write their best sellers, they had to give up something. What are you willing to give up in order to write? 9. Maintain Your Mental State: With that in mind, I would also suggest that you don't give up sleep or physical health. Your mind is the thing that's gonna create this product, right? You have to be able to get it out of your brain and onto the page. So if you're, if your mental state is poor, if your physical body is weak, it's going to be quite a lot harder. So for me personally, I dedicate time every day to meditation, to exercise, and to self-care. And the reason I dedicated, dedicate myself to that is because I know that if my mind and my body healthy, I can write better. There's a direct correlation there. I avoiding toxicants as much as possible. We'll still have, you know, chicken drink here and there, whatever. But I won't go as hard as I used it. Because if I go that hard, I wake up with a hangover, wake up feeling terrible, and I can't run. And then it takes a couple of days to get back into it. It's just not worth it. I'll try and eat healthy. Now, all of these are habits that will slowly, slowly, slowly have to be implemented into your life. And once again, it depends on what works for you. You may find certain approaches help certain approaches hinder. But I know that if I'm of sound body and sand mine, I can write better. I strongly encourage you to add self-care, meditation, and exercise into your day, which will enable you to write better. Now, there's this sort of balancing a to make between doing all of that sort of stuff and actually riding. There's a temptation to just do that sort of stuff. And then it becomes a sort of way to avoid to resist writing because you like I'm doing my exercises company makes itself is going to be my meditation. I gotta do all of these things before I can run. If you never actually get to writing, then that's just a distraction that you're using to just avoid. So you've got to actually find the balance of what works for you. How much of it, how much exercise, how much meditation, how much self care? How much of a prewriting ritual Do you actually need to get rotting? There will be a balance that you need to make an Once again, it's ideal to find it out for you. I can share what works for me, but that's not going to be applicable to you based on your lifestyle, based on the things happening in your life, and based on your personality. I need to meditate in the morning for about 20 minutes than I do about 45 minutes of exercise. And that together in a day is enough to get me going. And then there's a bunch of other stuff that I'll do to sort of keep myself sign. But that's what works for me. So it's about finding out what works for you and then testing and tweaking it and changing it so that you can get the most words on the page. 10. Overcome Writer's Block 1: Let's talk writer's block for a second. I've got a whole course on overcoming writer's block, so I encourage you to check that out. But the basic summaries this for whatever reason you can't write is sitting down, you're actively trying to ride and stuff isn't coming. What did he do? Well, the first thing is, is, and I go back to this quite often, is have that strong. Why, why do you care about this project? If you truly care about it, that will help you to get postulate rot as blocks because you'll be more motivated to do so. It will just, it will just sort of work. So if you haven't already, please, please, please think about it. Started write it down. I mean, our painted a lot because it is vital. But let's say you got your strong. Why are you sitting down at your computer and you're actually trying to write. It's important to realize that what you feel like is active trying to write, maybe different from actually doing it. What do I mean by that? If you'd run it on your laptop, you've got access to the internet and social media, and your email and YouTube and all the other distractions that are on the computer. Is your Word document open, ready to right. Have you turn off the Internet? Are you sitting down in front of the document, hands, fingers on the, on the keypad actually trying to type. Because it's very easy to think that you've got rotted block when you're just distracted, when you're just laying a brain flown Wanda, There's a really sort of scary but just a terrible feeling that you get when you've been sitting at a blank page for five minutes, where you sitting there going, oh my god, I don't know what's right. And you sort of ruminated star and you get again, this sort of self-hatred cycle on the bad rod. I can't do that. So in order to avoid that feeling, we distract ourselves on social media and bands between a whole bunch of different things before we sit down because we don't want to feel that feeling of like, oh, I don't like this. So in order to not feel that feeling ever, we end up distracting ourselves and that distraction causes us to not be able to write and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Prophecy. So what I would suggest is that you sort of embrace that feeling. It's other bit counter-intuitive. But if you, if you feel like you're actually, you actually have rotted book, just sit and feel what that feels like. The sort of meditative practice I encourage you to practice mindfulness meditation does it, does help you to focus and to deal with these negative thoughts as they come. Check out the link to my course on mindfulness meditation for that one. But the reason I like that is is because if you feel what it feels like, you'll know that that's not actually true. Bad yet sucks. It's not pleasant. But you'll live turnover distractions and get onto the keyboard. Now, let's say you've got your strong why you're at the keyboard, the distractions are off and nothing's coming. Now you truly have wrote his book. That's OK. There are different ways that you can prompt yourself to run. Let's just quickly look through a couple and once again to remind you of the carotid, but cause for a detailed the detailed description of all of these things. And more. The best way that I've found is twofold, one, threefold, sorry. The first one is to reread what you've previously done. And that might get you kicked back into the groove of what you're writing. The second one is, is when you finished for a day. Leafy sentences sort of half finished in a sense that you're about to finish. Leave a sentence half done, paragraph half down so you can pick back up. So it's like you sort of mid stride to avoid the writers block next time in the sense that you've, you're in a flow, you run out time, kids come home, whatever it is you have to start writing. Now, leave yourself with some notes on what you wanna continue with the first sentence of the first word. So you can pick back up. If all of that doesn't work, try free riding. Free riding is the act of just letting stuff flow from your brain, brain onto the page. Now I realize I'm telling you to write, to be able to start writing. But what you're doing here, something specific. You'll pull up a separate word document, a a blank Word document on my computer. I've got I've got a document called Work bomb writing pad. And I'll just pull it up and I just start typing. I type what's going on in my brain. This is how I'm feeling right now. I am starting to do writing, a free-riding to get my brain going. And you just write what you're feeling right now. You could write about the dreams you had last night and day. You're having someone that you hate. It doesn't matter. The idea is, is that you're just getting the words on the page. And exercise analogy would be, you know, before you do your heavy lifting, you do some sort of warm-up activities, right? We're warming up at Brian. It's called priming the pump. We're getting the crap words out. We're getting some words to stop before we turn back to our normal document. So the idea is, is you have some, you have a free running page and you have your riding page that you're running on. And then you can do them side-by-side. You write your free riding document. And then as soon as you feel that the juices flowing, you can jump to your actual work and you'll find that you can carry that momentum over. Now, what do you do with a free routing stuff that's up to you. However, this is a practice, get you back on to that normal onto your, your actual project. 11. Overcome Writer's Block 2: One way that I'm gonna go into overcoming writer's block is something that works for me and for people with sort of my personality style but may not work for you. But let's get into it anyway. It having multiple writing projects going at once. I write two to three books at a time. But there are all of different genres or ideas. Fiction book, a poetry book, and a self-help book, for example. They all take different approaches and we'll get different sorts of styles. And some of them are plans on, that are not planned like I talked about. But the idea is that if I've got writer's block in one, I often find that I can write something in another one. And for me personally I sort of, I'm a bit more a bit more right on the go, a bit more sort of seat of your pants, Radha. In the sense that I want to, right? I've got my time to write. And what's, what is the easiest to write right now. I believe in making it as easy as possible. If a books just not coming to me at the moment. I'm going to just, oh, I'll try and an ability. It's okay. I'm gonna do this thing that he's coming easy. When I was a high school teacher, I would tell the students answer the easy questions first and guarantee yourself those marks and spend the rest of the time. The guarantee yourself the 60% of monks that you know, and then spend the rest of that time on the hard questions. The idea being is that one, lock it in. If you've got a couple of projects going and you can look some rotting timing. Great. You've done your job, you've been doing a rider, and now you're able to keep going. Now, if you're writing a epic fantasy, for example, if you're running something really big that requires all of that focus, that approach won't necessarily work for you. But perhaps you could run a different part of it. Perhaps you could write something from a particular scene or a different chapter, right? You don't actually have to write your peace in order. You may, but you may not consider writing a couple of different projects at once or different parts of the same project Oldham, once. There's an approach that I learned from Jerry Seinfeld for writing jugs. He's approach is to get a calendar and put an x on each day that he writes. And the idea is, is that you want to build up a chain of crosses to represent you'll sort of rotting HDI flow and it sort of builds up. So once again, if we, if we use the exercise analogy, writing is a muscle that you need to flex. And if you only flex it every so often, it's going to atrophy. So the idea of this writing daily, even just a little bit, is to just remind that rotting muscle that hey, we're writing height, we're doing the thing, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. And it just sort of allows that continual priming of the pump and allows that continual flow and it sort of gets you into the groove. It allows you to know that you're a writer because you're doing it every day. If you exercise daily, you're going to see results eventually. If you meditate day that you're gonna see results eventually, if you write daily, even if it's just a small bit, eventually the book will be written. There's a little, there's analogies of like how to get to the top of the mountain one step at a time. And how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, right? If your book is a 100 thousand words and you write 200 a day, eventually you're going to get through it. Now. That would take a lot longer than someone that can write a 1000 a day. Or however they're having much their writing, but at least you're gonna get it done. Progress is progress. But a good way to make sure that you have guaranteed progress, dedicate time, h day, find it, and write something. 12. Write To An Ideal Reader: A way to assist that process is to write to an ideal reader. What I mean by this is that there's this temptation, this internal edit. It can be saying, hey, the people won't like it. The, the, the masses will hate this. You'll offend this group who notice R1. If you're writing to the market, if you're writing to sort of mass publicity, all of the AG, fun, exciting, unique bits will be cut off and your book will be, for lack of a better expression, boring. It'll like substance, intellect, personality because you're trying to write to the averages. A better approach is to find someone close to you. Now I use my partner for this and she's great. But find someone that maybe in a writer's group may be in some sort of familial or friendship relationship that you can show your writing to and be like, I'm going to write this book for you. The idea being is, is that you're holding them in your mind as you're writing and you sort of making the book work for that person. And you can show that book to that person and be like, hey, what do you think of this chapter? What do you think of this character? How did this work for you? What did you think over here? How did you feel? And you're working very intimately with that person one-on-one. This isn't really an editing process. It's more about like a stylistic thing. Is it helping you to get that reassurance, get a cheerleader? But also to be like, hey, this needs a little bit of editing, this needs a little bit of a fix. And that's okay because you trust that person rather than trying to write to appeal to the masses. Because, you know, if, if, if you try to make your book work for everyone, it's going to work for no one. Make it work for one person other than yourself, your ideal reader. And once you've got that going, then you can start to share. 13. The Editing Process: So let's talk editing from what process is the best process. Once again, it depends on you, right? I like to go through a couple of different stages, but like I've said, consider what I'm doing and then find different approaches that might work for you because there's no right answer. Here is, the right answer is we'll get the words on the page as best possible unreleased run. So what works for me is to do a check to buy, check to edit, and then an overall bookend. It now go through the different stages. As I'm writing. I will sort of get to a section or chapter chunk and it'll print it off and I'll give it to my Podeh, and she'll have a chick I, but for basic spelling and ideas and sort of give me some feedback like I didn't get that at all. Oh, yeah. Right on right. Very brief, very basic. And just to get a sort of a read on how how it's coming across. And then I put it aside, do the next one, same process, same process, same processing process. Once all of those chapters are done, once I've got the book, I will look it over myself and put it together, collated and try and sort of just see how it suits as a whole. Some chapters we'll have to go maybe Anita, right next chapter. Who knows, but I'm I write it chapter by chapter, edit it chapter by chapter, briefly. Put it all together and see how it looks is a whole book. Once a good a raid on the whole book on printed all of together again with old minute tweaks and work with iPod and try and cut out 10% of the superfluous words, the useless stuff, the paragraph. So let's say the book is 60 thousand words. I'll try and cut 6 thousand words from the book. And you usually find you can't, because when you're writing, there's a lot of stuff that you sort of just put in there that isn't necessarily necessary. You could take it out. Right. And if if we look back over, even just this vehicle should be able to see that I'm repeating stuff. If I was going through a full book ended on this video cause I would go back and check and tweak and make changes and all of that sort of stuff. Okay? Different contexts, different mediums. But you're getting the idea here. The idea is to look back over once you've got the whole thing, cut down on that 10% and make it look crisp. Now we'll look at it again. I'll read it out loud. Reading it out loud helps you to pick up those grammatical errors or spelling mistakes if you're talking about character dialogue, wring it out loud makes it feel more real. Because if you're reading it out loud, that's how people talk. But when you're typing it to you in your head. So you can sort of get that play reading out loud that allows you to sort of feel that a little bit more legitimately. Sometimes I get someone else to read it to me. And if you have the it can be quite confronting. But if you have the ability to have someone do that for you and you're willing to listen, it'll show you your book sounds like coming from someone else's mouth. Because the problem is, is if you read it out yourself, you know what you mean. Does that person know what you mean based on the words on the page? There's a difference day as the author, you'll have this sort of filling in capacity. You know, the backstory is that the cat out of the characters, you know what you're trying to say in that paragraph, Do they? Yeah. So as they're reading it out to you, you just say to them, hey, just if suddenly flags you, if you don't quite get it or something's off, let me know and flagging it from there. Now from there, you could choose to go down a few different routes. You could hire a professional editor, you go through a publishing house with an agent, normal, that sort of stuff method of beyond the scope of this course. But this whole process is to get you your, your, your book to the stage where you're able to go, Hey, this is of a publishable standard, depending on the context and depending on how you doing going through the, the traditional publishing houses or self-publishing or however you're doing it. If you do invite other people into support your work, make sure it's a professional working relationship that you can talk to. If you've got someone on your team that you don't trust, that you don't like, it's going to be hell. And remember to your book. So when it comes down to it, if people making suggestions, you have the final say, but realize they're seeing it from an external perspective. They may be right in the sense that if they're struggling with a concept and you find yourself defending your book. Surely the book should defend itself. To maybe you need to consider that. We need to make some tweaks or changes. Now, how you treat the book is up to you. But if you've got a trusting relationship with your team, great. Embrace it. If you only have access to yourself, that's okay as well when you need to sort of do some practices to step back and detach during this editing process, if that's the case. But the book aside, start a new project and come back to that, to that first book in a month's time. After that time, you'll look at it with fresh eyes. You'll you'll sort of forgotten. What exactly happens? Yes. So you sort of try to give yourself that detachment. So let's go to someone else. But hey, it works. 14. When Is It Good Enough: May be the case that for some reason you just not able to finish. You just have this feeling that like the book isn't done. It might be fully written, but it's just a summing field off. I tend to trust intuitive feelings like that and I'll look at it and go, okay, well, for whatever reason for something that I can't quite place, this project isn't done. I don't know why. When that happens, I'll take a step back, start something else, and let the project C. And I'll go through a stage of self-education. This might be reading books on how to write. It, might be listening to podcasts by world-famous authors, might be reading fiction. Start like I said, starting my own projects, doing another book. The idea is I'm going to give myself time away from the project, as well as time to grow as an author. Those two things together will allow me to come back at the project with fresh eyes and go, hm, I see it now I see what the problem is. It might not be able to be sort of understood at the start, but that's okay. We'll work on and you'll come back to it. If it takes you a year to fix a problem, and that fixed makes the book Perfect. Great. Do that. And it's worth the time to do it. If you're not happy with it, you're gonna come back to it eventually and redo it anyway. So why not just take a step back, let it go, except that you're gonna have to wait and come back to it at a later stage. With that in mind, I do wanna sort of give the counter advice, which is to realize that 80% done is better than a 100% perfectly not done. What I mean by that is, is there's this temptation to sort of try make everything absolutely 100% perfect. But the fallacy is that if you do that, you're, you're risking never completing it. There's this idea of these chronic people who rewrite that first chapter over and over and over and over and over again, rewrite the first chapter, rewrote the first chapter to make it perfect. But they never finished the book because that first chapter is great. But they never quite happy with it. It's easy to get that 50%, a little bit more challenging to get the next 30. Quite hard to get it up to 90%. How hard is that last 10% arrive? How has the last 1%? Now, depending on what you're doing, you're going to want to make it to some certain level of perfection. But eventually you just going to have to accept it and say, hey, this is, this is the project, this is it. And from there you're gonna realize as the author, the artist, whoever creates the work, they can see a little bit flaws and mistakes and the problems and the things that they wish they could have fixed. You've just got to accept that. And you can accept it by realizing that you as a reader, you as a consumer of art, will likely not be aware of the vast, vast, vast majority of the problems that have kept the author, the creator, the master, awake at night. You just accept the app or what it is. So you can detach enough to step back and realize that whilst not perfect, it's done, or it's done enough to be able to be acceptable to publish it, to release it. Great. Because otherwise you'll find yourself ruminating on this idea of making it perfect over and over again and you'll never finish, you'll never finish it. And let's just consider it once again, get meter on this course, right? I've made this course. I add a level that will teach you something. But I could do something more with the background. I could make fancy graphics where my head flies across the screen, you know, sparklers popped from my head, right? I'm, I'm joking here, but I could spend a lot more time making this video look pretty. Now, would that end video course B of a better quality than this one shot? But if I spent that time, I would have a third tenth of the courses that I have up. And I will have a tenth of the experience that I had from making these causes. And you, the person watching are accepting of it. You know that this is my style. I wear the same clothes. I have the plain background and it just works. The little things are popping up down in the bottom. Gray. Could I make these better? Yes. But it is doable. It is working, it is doing the job that I wanted to do. I purchased the same thing from a book perspective. Like I will go through the editing process. I want to make it perfect, as perfect as I can. But I get to a stage where it's like the effort that it would take for me to get such a small incremental gain on this perfect work is not worth it. It'd be better to spend that time on a new project. Learn the new lesson that I'm gonna learn for that new project, and just keep growing. Because I can make one perfect project or a grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, and have, you know, 20 books down completed. And have that level of skill. Because no matter how many times I try and redo this first project to make it perfect. I'm not gonna be as good a rod as I would be. Heaven. I've written those 20 books right now. There's 20 books might be individually less perfect than that one perfect book. But they've done, they've done their release, the app, not alert. So I strongly encourage you to just sit back and accept that. At times there will be mistakes that you can't fix, but the solution might be to just let it go and that's okay. 15. Further Resources: So let's talk resources. There's a bunch of things that I'm going to suggest to you right now that if you wanna go deep on how to write and how to get through and how to get your book published. There's a few things that I would suggest. The first one is the Writing Excuses podcast. This podcast has a bunch of bestselling authors who share their tips, tricks, and ideas on how to write. Primarily, they're focused on science fiction and fantasy. But they don't just talk about writing in those genres that took about writing in general, the craft from the minutia to the broad. They have a bunch of guest podcast, podcast is on. And it, it really does help to give you a good solid background from the best in the business. I'll suggest the book, daily rituals. How honest work. That book was great to let me know that I'm like, how I operate, how I do is unique to make it that's okay. In terms of specific writing advice, I found Stephen Kings on writing to be quite beneficial because he's a best-selling author. Obviously he knows what he's doing and this in general tips in there that will work for you for the more fiction based riders. And I'm just gonna go through these very quickly, but trust me on this that check him out. Have a look. The automatic writing, very good. Characters and viewpoint by Orson Scott Card. If you're not familiar with Orson Scott Card, he's brilliant and he's writing advice is on point. So much so that I'm going to suggest a second one from him. How to write science fiction and fantasy. Once again, its specific to that genre, but it's not good. Writers know how to write good And I just choose to write in a particular zone genre. So check those out. I would also suggest this little one if you're struggling with self confidence and self worth and you sort of gotten all these weird things going on your mind. This one's good. The writer says. And the idea is it's just a bunch of little quotes about riding from, once again, bestselling authors and sort of let you know that you're not alone here. And the final one, which is a little bit interesting, is writing fiction for dummies. Now, the for dummies books are a little bit of a joke in a sense, it's like, Oh, for dummies. But they're legitimately resourced, researched, and they're a good starting point. You obviously need to go deep and I would always lean towards looking at expert advice. Look at the people that are doing the thing that you wanna do. If you want to know how to get a full splits, you can ask the advice of the person with the full splits. You want to know the best day, you are going to look at the person with the best body, right? It's like get the advice from the people at work. So beyond all of these books that beyond all of the resources that I've suggested, find the best-selling authors in the genres that you're writing in a style that you're writing. And look them up. Look them up on YouTube, look them up on podcasts, and just look at their advice for writing because you'll find that they basically will say, hey, if you wanna be able to write a read everyday, right, every day. But I'll also give you specific tips to do what they're doing. 16. Class Project: Okay, so class project time. Unsurprisingly, it's going to be, give me your strong wine. I've helped don't about this the whole, entire course and I want you to do it. So all unit if the class project is my literature on my strong y is, and tell me one paragraph, max, if you can possibly one-sentence max. So remember my one for the book adequate shit together was to write the book I wish existed when I was growing up. That's it. All I want you to do is for your project, write it and put it. Do this. It's very easy to watch over these courses and you're sort of not do the projects, not engage with it. But here's the thing. If you don't commit to it, you're basically saying to the universe to yourself that you don't care, that you don't care enough to commit. And if you can't fathom the strong y from your book, you likely don't have a strong line, so it's no wonder that you're not writing it. So take the time to think and really dig down. Why do you care about this book? Why should it exist? Write it down and let me know. Okay. And if you're not sure if you're struggling, if you can't write write a paragraph and talked to me, I'll respond back to you and say, hey, let's drill down and dig down and find out why. So maybe we can have a bit of a dialogue and work out what your strong light is because you might just be feeling like, oh, it just needs to be written. Let's talk about it. Maybe we can come up with a strong line. And when you've got one printed up, run it up. Ticket right in front of your face in your desk so that every day as you sit down to write, it'd be like, yes, I've got this, I'm going to do it. 17. Quick Recap: So a quick recap here. I want to encourage you to try a whole variety of things that I've, I've suggested and keep what works for you and discard the rest. It's very easy to fall into this trap of following advice like what I'm giving you in the course, like from those books that I recommended, like from a podcast, like from other people that have made it and thinking you have to do it like them. You done. The way you gonna finish your book is the way you're going to finish a book. And if you haven't finished it yet, you are on a journey of self-discovery. So try the different approaches I've suggested in this course and tweak and choose and use the ones that work for you. And if you struggling, connect with me in that discussion section and say, hey, I'm struggling, I want some more advice and let me know and I'll help you through. Because like I said, we're all individual. We've all got different ways that we work. And it's about sort of finding and tweaking what works for us. The reason these causes are good is that it can give you a wide variety of tools to pick. And you go, well, what tool fits in? In my hand the best? That's our goal here. Yeah, just start, get going, get flowing, and trial. Now above you, you're gonna see a thing that says, Reagan, review this course. Please, please, please do so. It really lets me know that you care. It lets me know how him going. And it's a place that you can say like, Oh, hey, go into a bit more depth on this or I really like this part but not this part. Or hey, I loved it. I loved the reviews. It makes me feel good. It gets me that motivation to keep going and yeah, I appreciate everyone who does so. So click it, do it. Yes. If you wanna connect with me on social media, you can do so at Zackie Phillips. And if you want to check out all of the stuff that I've got going on in my, my books, my podcasts, my poetry, fiction, all that sort of stuff, head over to my website at Zachary hyphen philips.com. And yet we can connect and chat and stay tuned for more courses like this one, which is.