Are You Writing Your Nonfiction Book The Right Way?
As someone who sometimes struggles with the writing process myself, it can be a little intimidating to think about the process involved with researching, preparing, and marketing nonfiction. Nonfiction in general tends to be a bit more unforgiving than other literature genres, and it takes a bold and confident writer to enter this world. If you have struggled to break into the nonfiction world, perhaps it’s time to break down the process into some smaller, more manageable steps to accomplish your goal. Writing your nonfiction book should be no less joyous than any other writing; look at these simple things you can do to ensure that you get published.
Choose your topic, and make sure it interests you!
Do yourself a favor, Hemingway—-choose a topic that interests you, one that you will happily research, spending long hours pounding away at your computer as you formulate sizzling content. Unless you are working for someone else who is dictating your topics and content, this should be an enormous relief to know that you can write your passions, improving the world with your knowledge and expertise. Choose carefully, and have the end in mind as you start to provide direction. Dig in!
Know your audience, and play to their interests
Regardless of how good you are as a writer, resign yourself to the fact that you will not reach everyone. If you narrow your research and writing style to draw in readers that you KNOW will buy in to your content, then you increase your chances of successful marketing your book to them. Know your strengths, market them, and see results.
Learn the art of self discipline?
Want to know a secret about overcoming writers block? Sit down and write!!!! Waiting until you “feel” like writing is not a recipe for success; schedule time each day to sit down and write something, anything, to get those creative juices flowing. Good writers don’t always write relevant content, but they do write something each and every day to keep their skills fresh and their minds moving.
Prepare for good days…..and bad days
Even the strongest writers have days when all they can produce is a few hundred words that are relevant to topic, and even those seem subpar. Don’t be too hard on yourself; think of yourself as a free-flowing channel of information that the universe can pour into at any time; all you are waiting for is for the words to come through. If you make it more about the information that you want to share and less about you, you’ll likely have more good days than bad.
Stop periodically and do some quality control
For the love of Pete, please don’t write your entire book without stopping to fact check cite sources, or check for grammar, spelling, and syntax errors. If you do, you’ll be completely overwhelmed by the enormous task of overhauling everything at the end, just when you were excited to roll it out. Stop writing from time to time and evaluate your work yourself, as well as taking your manuscript to professional for evaluation. An objective pair of eyes works wonders for pointing out inconsistencies and mistakes that you may have missed.
Have a backup system in place
In today’s increasingly digital world, we take for granted that our data will always be retrievable, and that cyberspace is the place to store your work, as it is more easily organized. You never know what is going to happen to your computer–heaven forbid you come up against a deadline with no way to recover data from a crashed circuit board. Do yourself a favor; if you have large amounts of data and valuable time and money invested in your writing, install a backup system to ensure that you have several copies of your manuscript in different places. You might even consider printing out hard copies and storing them in a three-ring binder as the ultimate fall back. Nothing is more frustrating than having to retrace your steps and recreate work that has been lost.
Keep your “why” and your vision in the forefront of your mind
Writing your nonfiction book should not be drudgery, it should be fun and exciting! You are creating something that others can benefit from and enjoy, and if you have a message to share that is burning in your soul, share it with the world! Get excited about what you are creating, keep your nose to the grindstone and your fingers on the keyboard, and get ready to see your book dream transform into a reality!