How I Wrote My 30,000 Word Book In 1 Week
"How to make money on Amazon without selling physical products."
I still remember the ad that sold me on book publishing as a business.
It was of these two twins who were making boat loads of money (most likely off selling courses), and they were teaching others how to publish books on Amazon.
I was interested in trying this business but I was too busy with my marketing agency.
On top of this, I was starting to work on my first REAL startup - Condensr.
Although the book publishing business is completely automatable, I didn't want to spend money necessarily on getting my own books written for me.
So I let the idea sit in the back of my mind as something I would start doing eventually once I find success in another business first.
At the time I was in a terrible state of mind.
Nothing I had tried was working and the agency was going worse than it could ever go.
For months I tried, but nothing came of the monotonous outreach attempts I was making.
Day after day, I lost motivation and the will to carry on.
Thoughts of giving up were plaguing my mind and the reality of having to work for the rest of my life started to grow more vivid.
Till today, I would say that this was the worst few moments of my life.
So at night, instead of going to sleep, I decided to spend a few hours writing about my experience.
'How much worse can it get, right?'
I wrote about everything going on in my head, and suddenly realised how powerful this all was.
I wrote about the ups, the downs and everything that worked for me to make it better.
I had started to fix my own problem just by writing about it.
That's when I remembered the book publishing business I learnt about not long ago.
So I decided to turn everything I was going through into a guide for others who were in my shoes.
A week later, I had an entire 30,000 word book completely written out and ready to publish.
Even though I have not yet published the book, nor have I proof read it - it holds a powerful meaning to me.
It's a way for me to know that whatever I want, I can do.
Once I launch the book, it will become a pivot point for people's lives who are in a similar situation to where I was.
But how did I manage to write an entire book in less than a week?
In this article, I'm going to cover just that and give you my tips that helped me write my 30,000 word book within a week.
Write at your best time
When I started writing the book, I thought that I was writing at a time where I was tired and ready to just call it a night.
Little did I know, that I actually performed really well at night.
As soon as I started to write, I felt like I went into a 'work only' mode.
Even now, I tend to have the most focus during the last few hours of the day before I go to sleep.
When I sit down at my laptop at night and start to do work, it felt like everything I do was just faster and more effective.
There is a great way to find out the sort of person you are so you're aware of what time of day you might work best at.
There is a quiz called the 'chronotype quiz' which helps you find out your optimal work patterns, wake up time and so on.
When I did the chronotype quiz, I was a bear/wolf.
Although I believe I'm closer to a wolf than the bear chronotype, they both have similar styles.
The bear wakes up later than the other chronotypes and works best a little later in the day.
Before bed, the bear has a 2 hour 'brainstorming session,' which is the time that I used to write the book.
Once you figure out your chronotype, you're able to better mould your day around your optimal work style.
However, with the blog articles, I tend to do all my writing in the morning.
Although I'm not usually very energetic in the morning, I tend to tackle the most time consuming thing at this time so that I'm able to have the rest of the day to do everything else.
After all, it doesn't make much sense to write a blog post at night - unless you publish it the next day.
So the first step to being able to write an entire book within a week is to figure out your optimal work hours and leverage those when you're writing.
Write about relevant things
If someone asked me to write a book about how to raise a baby between age 0 to 5 years old, for example, I would most likely find this impossible to do.
If they told me I'd get paid 1000s for this, I can probably do it within a month or two.
Why would a book about raising children take so much longer than writing a book about the mind?
Because I have 0 experience in raising a child.
On the other hand, if you ask my mother to write this book, although her English is not flawless, she will probably be able to do it a lot faster.
When I wrote the 30,000 word book, I was writing about something I have been going through continuously for the past few months.
This gave me the confidence and ability to write non-stop during the time I allocated to writing the book.
Every day, I was making 1000s of words of progress.
When you choose to write a book, you're more likely to write an engaging book when you're writing on things that you know about.
For example, I can choose to write a book about e-commerce, forex trading, startups and SaaS, and so on.
I made an article yesterday about thinking of blog post ideas.
One of the methods I mentioned was writing about something you have direct experience with.
When you write about a specific topic which you're familiar with, you're a lot more likely to be able to go in-depth.
It gives you a certain level of confidence as the writer and allows you to talk from an expert standpoint.
All my blog articles I've written so far have been based on something I have real world experience in.
That is why it may sound like I'm confident with what I say, and I'm able to push out 2000 or more words of writing per day.
This was the same for writing the book.
I was able to coherently write about everything I was going through and frame it in an applicable way to the audience because I've experienced it first hand.
Think of a topic you have a lot of experience in and write about that.
You can even use other mediums, such as blogs or pdocasts to gain inspiration.
Find your zen
This is my favorite thing to do because it helps me dial down my work ethic and get to work.
Finding your zen is sort of like meditation.
Many people talk about the power of meditation, however, for someone who has never meditated, it can be a challenge to get going.
That is why I prefer to 'find my zen.'
When I was in my negative state of mind whilst running the marketing agency, I would often go no walks after doing a fair bit of work.
Going on a walk helped me become one with my thoughts and listen to them freely without clutter.
When you're sitting on your computer working, it can lead to an overload of ideas because there's so much going through your mind.
So I used the walks as my time to think and plan.
Once I got home, I was a little more prepared to tackle any challenge I may have faced with a clearer mind.
But the one place that never fails to work for me is the shower.
In the shower, I'm able to get my best thinking done.
I would usually go into the shower with a set of problems and leave the shower with some sort of roadmap to solve them.
When I wanted to write my book, I would often have a shower, or go on a walk before starting to write.
This helped me collect my thoughts and structure them into a plan that I executed on when I started writing.
Finding your zen can be the best way for you to get into the right state.
After I went on a walk or showered, I would then play an instrumental whilst I worked.
There are different sorts of inustrmentals, but my favorite is either Jazz or Brain.fm.
Brain.fm uses patented technology to make scientifically proven insutrmentals that are more likely to boost your productivity.
They have free videos on YouTube which I listen to, but they also have a subscription you can purchase on their site if you wanted to.
The next time you do something such as go on a walk, go on a drive, have a shower, you may want to take note of how you feel.
Finding your zen will allow you to work really well once you leverage that time for thinking.
If you have a dog, you may want to use the walking time to think.
If you have long work commutes, you may want to set that time aside for thinking.
Once you start writing, you would have already collected all your thoughts, and would be ready to get some work done.
Dedicate time
Everything you do will require time.
1-2 weeks ago, I built the skeleton of a SaaS business - Hawk - within a day.
Since then, I've been wrapping it all up so that I can launch the product to real customers.
Something I thought would initially take 1 week, turned out to take a little longer than that.
This may be the same for writing the book.
That is why, in order to get things done, you must always dedicate time for that thing specifically.
Every day, I would write my blog post, have a short break (maximum one hour), then get to work on the SaaS product - Hawk.
When I was writing my book, I would allocate 2-3 hours per day at night to only writing.
Nothing else.
Once you dedicate these hours, you will not want to spend them doing anything other than what you set out to do.
Many people talk about 'multi-tasking.'
I believe that multi-tasking is not possible.
Once you divert your attention, it can take up to 15 minutes to get back to what you were doing.
Research has even showed that when you multi-task, you get less done than if you just set out to do one singular task.
If you give yourself 1 or 2 hours a day to write, make sure those hours are spent only on writing and nothing else.
Plan & Execute
With this goal, I was able to jump from chapter to chapter so that I don't get stuck thinking about what to write and waste time.
Start
- I have an idea in an idea pad - one of the methods from my article yesterday
- In the morning, I pick the next article idea on the list and start writing
- Once I have written everything worth talking about, I go through and link the article whilst fixing any mistakes I made
- I publish the article
I just write.
Once it's time to launch, I'm going to have to announce it to the world, run advertising campaigns, message people, and so on.
I'm going to have to worry about privacy, laws, business formations, employment and so much more.
So just start.
Did you learn anything new in this article?
What is something you're looking to start and will start now?
Let me know in the comments section below!
Till next time,
Mohamad
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