Who am I and why should you care what I say about book writing?

You've spent a long time and put a lot of work into getting your message out only to have it be ignored due to a lack of professionalism. A stigma comes with self-publishing — indie authors have a reputation for not taking their work seriously and for lacking polished skill.

This is a generalization, unfortunately, but it casts a shadow on those of us who do put in the hard work and investment to make our book stand out from the crowds and compete with traditionally-published books from the “Big Five” publishing houses.

My name is Steve, and I’ve been blogging since 2004. I have published a handful of books, including one with a traditional publisher. Over the years I would constantly get asked by friends and acquaintances for help with things related to either their website, writing, formatting their ebooks, and publishing.

I learned after an accumulated days and days’ worth of my time hopping on Skype calls and helping people with whatever they needed, that it was time to slow down and start using my expertise to start a business helping first-time writers and established professionals who just want to save themselves some time.

I have helped over 30 authors format their books for digital distribution and guided a number of them in their launch and marketing strategy. As both a self-published and traditionally published author, I understand the ins and outs of the industry. My background, experience, and passion more than qualify me to help you take your book from infancy to completion.

If you need a writing coach to help bring your book to life, or talk launch & marketing strategy, editing, proofreading, and cover design among other considerations, I’m available for a free 30 minute strategy session to see if me and my team would be a good fit for you and your book.

My calendar booking link: meetme.so/SteveBremner Email me directly: fireonyourhead@SteveBremner.com

Write Your Manuscript in 30 Days Sequential Tips Checklist

Do these things before starting the first draft of your non-fiction book so that you can focus and get it written faster.

Market Research Determine who your avatar (ideal reader) is. Find out what your audience wants, and give it to them. Answer the question: “What’s in it for the reader”?

Personal Preparation Get your head together Get clear understanding regarding the purpose of your manuscript (outline for non-fiction) Write now, edit later

The Mechanics of Writing Outline or mapping Hone in on your voice Set a goal and stick to your schedule

Strategy Tips For Focusing on Your Writing

Things that you don't necessarily need to do in a particular order. Consider these “ingredients” to your success.

Listen to music Change your position & location Write during off-peak times Use focus software (Self-control, Focus Booster, etc…) Time management Software specifically conducive to writing Create a sense of urgency for yourself Take a Break! Do other things away from the computer screen. (add more of your own….)

Detailed Version of the Checklist:

Sequential Tips I've divided this document into two sections. First, things to do in sequence, and things that are just tactical to help you focus while writing, whatever stage of the game you're in. You might disagree with the order of the things below in this sequence, and that’s fine because you gotta to do what works for you. But I think you'll be in better shape if you do these things before starting your manuscript.

Also the one-page concise checklist is meant to be something you can print and keep handy while you write and check things off if you’d like to use it that way.

Market Research

Know who your avatar (ideal reader) is

When I wrote my first e-book 6 Lies People Believe About Healing, I had pretended I was writing it to just ONE person in my mind: someone who believes they are sick for "God's glory" and that he had placed a disease on them to teach them a lesson. From there this helped me create a list of the most common lies I hear people teach and preach about why they're suffering from a physical ailment (i.e., “God's teaching me a lesson using this cancer that's destroying my body" or “I'm becoming more humble"). I was passionate about doing whatever I could to help people see that God is good and that in his goodness, he doesn't put physical afflictions on them so they'll become more humble. I had one person in mind when I wrote that and generally speaking it was someone from the Plymouth Brethren Church I grew up in, where during my youth I never really heard much about miracles or healing.

Having an avatar is not necessary per se, but you will find it to be beneficial with many aspects of the book writing process, as well as the marketing for it.

Know what your audience wants, and give it to them.

Start by going to the fourth most-trafficked website in all of the internet; Amazon. Then look at already-existing books in the niche in which you're going to contribute your knowledge. YouTube and Google are also excellent places to see what are the top 10 questions people are asking about the topic you want to write about. If you're just looking to write a book on any subject and motivate yourself with something other than a passion for the topic, you probably won't finish the manuscript. Or at least you won’t likely be passionate about marketing it to the best of your ability.

What's in it for the reader?

People ignore content that doesn't suggest a benefit they're looking for. They have to know what they're getting out of the book, and you can answer this question best when you have an idea of who your ideal reader is in the first place.

Personal Preparation

Get Your Head Together

The first thing to do is get in the right mindset. You are going to write and publish a book, nothing else. And if you follow the tips and strategies outlined in this short manual, you’ll do it quickly. There’s not really a right or wrong way to write your book, but you will figure out what works best for you the more you write. Well, if you decided not to put spaces between your words and not indent anything, then sure, that wouldn’t fly with your readers. So I guess there are some right and wrong ways to write it. But pick and choose some of the steps outlined below. The only way you’ll know how to write your book is to write your book. Period.

Let me remind you; you have something unique to share that nobody else — not even the people who’ve already written the same subject matter as you’re about to embark on — has ever written from the viewpoint you’re going to. The world needs your message!

Clear understanding of the purpose of your manuscript (outline for non-fiction)

Take your findings from researching whatever you think is currently a trending topic to write about, and combine those findings with your brainstormed topics. Where your personal passions & experience match what’s trending.

After determining your book’s topic, you may be tempted to cover that subject as broadly as possible. This is based on the idea you want to reach as many people as possible with your writing. This is in fact a bad idea, and instead you need to get more specific. For the most part, people read nonfiction books to learn. Or to “hate read” someone they dislike so they can trash the book on their blog or whatever. At any rate, they don’t want to hear the same old broad subject with a generic solution.

Provide specific solutions to specific problems. You also need to establish why it’s an important issue to solve, who you’re solving it for, and without being too self-absorbed, why you are the expert and your solution is golden. Don’t take it too far with showing your credentials though, because if you over do it you could wind up making your readers think you’re some kind of narcissist bragging about their accomplishments.

The Mechanics of Writing

Outline or Mapping

There are a lot of writing gurus who will tell you to get a blank piece of paper or a white board and write ideas down, starting with your main one in the middle, and then draw branches with other ideas that are connected to that. I personally work better with writing an outline, preferably in my word processor. From there I may try answering questions like:

What is the problem that this chapter solves or addresses? What is the solution? What objections might the reader have to the information I present in this chapter? How will I counter those objections? Can this material be combined with one of the other chapters or does it merit its own?

When I was writing myTongues book, and my healing one but particularly with the former, I wrote down a list of all the reasons and answers I could think for why people didn’t believe in speaking in tongues. From there I found after I had written many of the chapters, that I just didn’t have enough information for some of the misconceptions, so I made an “other objections” chapter which included the ones that I couldn’t flesh out in whole chapters of their own.

You may even find as you go that you change the order you originally planned for the chapters.

Examples of ways you can outline your book at this stage are:

1. “How to” books (Kinda like this one about writing your book fast) 2. A strong stance on a hot button issue 3. An interesting or relatable story.

You may think this should come earlier in the process, and you may be right. I find whenever I'm brainstorming or mind mapping for a book or a series of blog posts, I prefer having done some of my market research before I've determined things like the chapter breakdown or what order I want them in, and what points, in particular, in which I want to focus. But if you don’t determine your primary and specific goal in writing your book, you’ll quickly lose focus and forget why you’re writing it in the first place or have less resolve when discouragement and writer’s block hit you.

Hone in on Your Voice

Many bestselling non-fiction books are written with a casual tone. I know, you were taught to in high school to use proper English, but that was mostly to prepare you for how to write your college papers. In real life, the books that resonate best with the average reader are casual. Knowing your ideal reader should help with this. When people read your book, it should feel like you’re speaking to them, like you’re both having a coffee or tea together and chatting. Granted, you’re the one doing all the talking in his case, but still, you get the idea.

Set a goal and stick to your schedule

Your writing target depends on the kind of time you can carve out of your schedule and how fast you can type, but I'm challenging you to write at least 40,000 words in 30 days. Horror novelist Stephen King wrote in his book, On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft that he writes 2000 words a day, starting around 8 am, whether that takes him into the afternoon or whether he finishes it all by 11:30am.

Sidenote: I recommend reading his book. Read my detailed review of my reasons why.

Write now, edit later

Once you get into the writing, just write and don't edit. You may be like me and every fibre in your being fights against this urge, but trust me on this. Just write until you have no more writing in you, and then go back and edit. Write all you can in the times you've set aside for churning out your manuscript. On the other hand, don’t beat yourself up over the time aspect of it. I look at it like working out at the gym: I've never spent more than two and a half hours at the gym in one visit, but I have gone weeks in a row going to the gym for at least half an hour every day my gym was open. I don't have expertise about whether that's beneficial or the best way to do it, but at the beginning of my weight loss journey, it helped make working out more manageable for me when I broke it down into doable time chunks on a near-daily basis.

I recommend something similar to this with writing. Like the previous point of setting a goal or a schedule, you'll find that writing at least 1000 words per day can be done in less than an hour if you’re an average typer.

Strategy Tips For Focusing These are things that don't necessarily fall into a sequence and are intentionally not listed in any particular order for that reason. These are merely writing hacks you can use for focusing and getting the writing done, assuming you've done the steps in the previous list first and are ready to get down to the content creation part of your book.

Some of these are common sense time management tips, but I'm just here to give you a reminder that you CAN get your book done.

Listen to music Specific music helps creativity, such as baroque music or Mozart. Try different styles of music to determine what works best for you or what you enjoy working with the most. There are Playlists on music apps like Spotify and Google Play Music which contain curated lists based on genres and tempo and other things that help with getting the creative juices flowing. I need to use headphones in my home office to tune out the noise that comes from having two daughters under the age of 4 in a house with concrete walls.

I suggest not listening to your favorite bands and music you’re familiar with because even though it can help you focus and block out the world around you, there are studies that suggest higher productivity when listening to certain styles of music with songs or melodies we are not familiar with.

Change your position

I read somewhere — and the internet doesn't lie — that many people are more creative when they lie down. I also learned that if you write standing up, it's also great for your health. I don't know who to believe, but if you choose to write for extended periods as opposed to short bursts, you may get tired of sitting in the same position for long periods at a time. Mix it up a little.

Write during off-peak times

I am not a morning person, in fact it’s about 12:31 am local tie as I write this. I wrote the majority of my Tongues book between 10 pm and 2 am during the weeks when I was writing fresh new content for it. Others tap into that creative flow more so when they do it first thing in the morning. Well, I read another study or article that suggested to try doing the opposite of what works for you. If you are a morning person, write at night. If you are a night person, write in the morning. Again, mix it up a little.

Stay Focused

For help with this, I used to use FocusBooster while it was a free app (it’s still pretty cheap). It uses the Pomodoro Technique, which is a time management system that challenges you to focus on a single task for 25 minutes and then give yourself a 5-minute break. The method comes from the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility. When those 25 minutes are up, the app sounds an alarm and counts down the 5-minute break as well. I take advantage of these breaks to get another coffee or go to the bathroom, or just not feel guilty about checking my email or Facebook for just that break. Then, when the alarm sounds, get back to working. I wrote the lion's share of Nine Lies People Believe About Speaking in Tongues with FocusBooster turned on.

Nowadays I primarily use a Mac app called Self Control which blocks out websites and apps of your choosing -- in my case, social media profiles — for an hour or two at a time. The self-control app I use allows for sites to be blocked out for up to 24 hours at a time. Alternatively, you could also use filters like Net Nanny or porn blockers to block out all internet or specific websites during the chunk of the day you are committing to focusing on your writing as well. Not having the ability to go to distracting sites helps me not to bother trying to, and I stay focused on what I'm writing.

Time Management

Oh gosh, if I've heard it once I've heard and seen it hundreds of times: “I just don’t have time to write a book" - says that friend who binges watches every new Netflix Marvel show the very weekend they come out. I talk to people ALL. The. Time (yes I wrote it that way on purpose) through Facebook Instant Messenger who somehow can find the time to engage in internet debates about theology, or post about some other questionable use of their time like playing video games, but tell me they'd love to write a book but don't have time.

Seriously?

We can all decide how many hours of sleep we'll get. Whether we genuinely need to binge watch shows on Netflix. Whether we really should bother engaging in specific time-wasting activities. How much time and energy we'll invest in our future. Nobody else will come along and give those desired results to us with no effort.

I hate to sound lame, but that book won't write itself.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and it's up to us to choose what is worth cutting out of our schedule to make the time to write. Some people remove a portion of their sleep by getting up half an hour or a full hour earlier or by staying up that much later. Or they remove something else they deem unnecessary from their schedule to make learning a new skill or fixing something that's currently an obstacle in their going forward, or writing that book. You could always give up, oh I don't know, Facebook and see how much that helps? There are a lot of things you can nix from your schedule to replace with writing time to get your book completed. And want in on a little tip I've learned? Netflix and Facebook are pretty much always there whenever I come back from hiatuses, and I've never missed much.

Software Conducive to Writing

If you're happy to use Microsoft Word or Apple's Pages or Open Office for either Windows or Mac, then power to you. There’s no point in buying something you don’t need. But I recommend finding writing software that works best for you and has specific features, like allowing you to block out or at least ignore other apps & notifications, and use full-screen composition mode on just the word processing you're doing.

My personal preference is to write using Scrivener, and usually with the full screen composition mode on, which a lot of sites like WordPress now include. You can see my detailed recommendation here.

Scrivener is an ‘all-in-one' writing app created by writers for writers. As I said, it can appear complicated at first and challenge to use, but trust me, it's worth learning how to get the hang of it and in almost no time at all, it becomes second nature to you. It's like getting the hang of using a Mac when you have been using a PC for years. At first, it seems daunting and has a bit of a learning, but then after a while, you realize how great it is.

Create a sense of urgency for yourself

One of the best ways to accomplish anything is when you have deadlines — whether self-imposed or from outside sources, like someone holding me accountable asking me to show my progress. Whenever I've had assignments due in high school or Bible college, I found that the closer I got to the deadline, the more productive I became. Imaging that! I believe a lot of people are this way as well. So, in a similar vein to creating goals and sticking to an editorial calendar, give yourself deadlines, and some "consequence" that works for you that will help trick your mind into doing all it can to motivate you to meet your deadlines. Like say, your spouse or roommate can cut off one of your fingers if you don't finish that chapter or word count by the time of which you've committed.

Just kidding.

About the finger cut off, not about giving yourself deadlines.

Do other things away from the computer screen

Take a break. Get away from the screen. Stop sitting on your heinie for prolonged amounts of time. If you’re like me, then the tips in number 1 will help you when you take advantage of those 5-minute breaks to have another coffee. Stephen King walks every afternoon after having spent all morning writing. Jeff Goins reads for an hour before hitting the keyboard. Now get up away from your computer screen and take a walk. When you come back, I am willing to bet you have your creative juices flowing.

You’re Just Getting Started

These are some tools of which I hope you find as you implement them, that you can quickly and easily get your manuscript written in under 30 days.

But that's just the beginning.

As you edit and re-edit, and send your manuscript to beta readers, an editor and proofreaders, not to mention as you work on your book launch and promotion among other things, you'll find writing it was just a fraction of the battle. When I launched my first Kindle book over 5 years ago, a mentor told me that a successful book is 20% writing and editing it, and 80% marketing it.

If you would like help bringing your book to life and launching it, or to talk launch & marketing strategy, editing, proofreading, and cover design, I’m available for a free 30 minute strategy session to see if me and my team would be a good fit for you and your book.

My calendar booking link: meetme.so/SteveBremner Email me directly: fireonyourhead@SteveBremner.com