How I Write a Book Fast – and You Can Too
How I Write a Book Fast?– and You Can Too
I’ve written and published 7 full length books and eBooks. I write them very fast. Here’s how.?
When I’ve decided what the book’s about, I record that in an email to myself. I use a Subject line that very briefly identifies the book, such as “How to Get Money Fast.”?
Then, using iPhone keyboard shortcuts, I set up a three-character shortcut such as "htg" for "How to Get Money Fast."
Pretty soon ideas start popping up at random times. I jot each down right away in an email with the same Subject line by writing htg. ?
For example, in writing my most recent book, my ideas included: “Key to clearly frame the amount,” “Never specify how,” “Translate via imaginary experiences” and “Resolving self-defeating unconscious habit patterns.”
Recording them immediately is key because these ideas can disappear in a flash if you don’t.
?So, using iPhone keyboard shortcuts, I set up a three-character shortcut such as “htg” for “How to Get Money Fast.”?And then I record them in an email with that subject line and send it to myself.
?Sometimes they come in clumps and sometimes nothing for a day or two before the flow continues.?
?Every day, I read my initial email describing what the book is about. I do this several times to trigger a continued flow of ideas.
?Within a few weeks, while leading my normal life, I get lots of such hits. Usually, in about 3 or 4 weeks, I intuitively get that I’m ready to take the next step. Sometimes its just a feeling like eagerness and other times it’s an intuitive urge to read through all of the idea emails.
?(Intuition is the way that your unconscious mind communicates with your conscious mind when it can’t otherwise get it point across. It manipulates your body to give you intuitive feelings. If you imagine asking those feelings what they’re trying to tell you, you’ll usually consciously get the point.)
And when I get that I’m ready, I copy and paste each of the ideas in the “How to Get Money Fast” emails into a Word document and rearrange them on the fly.?
?Pretty soon, chapters become intuitively obvious.?Various of the ideas just seem to fit together into a whole and that becomes a chapter.
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?What’s missing also becomes obvious as I read what I’ve written. So, I jot down a brief description of what’s missing and ideas start popping up again – ideas that I grab by sending myself emails with a slight modification of the same Subject line.
?In my iPhone Keyboard Shortcuts, I change “How to Get Money Fast” to “How to Get Money Fast 2” so I can easily find my new ideas.
?I rearrange the ideas into chapters, read through the ideas making up each chapter and come up with a title for the chapter. Then I fill in the blanks, edit and lickity split, I have the first complete draft of my book.?
?If you look on Amazon under Gloria Walther (my wife), you’ll see the “Eye to Eye” series of books on lovingly parenting 3- to 5-year-olds. I completely wrote each of these books, starting with recording a brief summary of each of the “war stories” that Gloria told me every weekday about what had happened in her preschool. And, as described above, in a total of about 250 hours or so during a few months, I had a complete final draft.
?It was easy and quick.
Of course, I’m always interested in hearing from others about their writing process. Have you ever written a book? How long did it take you? What method did you use, and did it work for you.
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