Many people want to write a book. Indeed, a survey found that ten per cent of the population want to do it. Few people accomplish it, but you can.

I wrote my first book at the age of eight. From memory, it had 270 pages and the story involved ghosts, intrepid kids, and horses. Everything I wrote up to the age of 14 involved horses.

Sadly, none of my early stories survive; I wish I’d kept them. But here’s what they taught me: they taught me to get started, and to keep going until I finished.

Most importantly of all, those early stories taught me that writing a book is easy when you have the attitude that you CAN do it. Somehow I knew that writing was simple: you sat down, and you wrote whatever came to mind.

Here are three tips which will help you to start writing your book today. It really is easier than you think.

1. Sit Down and Write

This is key. Write anything at all; don’t stop to think. Keep going. If you try to impose logic on this process, you won’t write much, and writing will be difficult for you.

Think of your writing self as someone else. Let that other self write. You can sort out the mess later (all writing is messy.)

2. (Nonfiction or Fiction) Create an Outline Before or After You Write

Some writers swear by outlines. Other writers swear at outlines.

It doesn’t matter which kind of writer you are. I use outlines for nonfiction; I don’t start the book until the outline is done.

For novels, I outline after I’ve written anywhere from 20 to 100 pages. The “outline” is just a collection of scene notes, each scene written on an index card.

When I’ve completed the first draft of a novel, I outline the whole thing, just to see what I’ve got. It makes it easier to cut scenes, and create needed scenes before I write the second draft.

3. Realize That You Can Write Any Scene or Chapter in Any Order You Like

Let’s say you’re writing a mystery. A promiscuous heiress has been murdered. Her husband and her lover are both suspects. Your protagonist, an ambitious, over-worked, and under-appreciated female detective, who has a lover of her own, and a suspicious, violent spouse, is emotionally involved in the case.

Just get started. Write the scene where the gardener, one of the heiress’s former lovers, finds the body. Or write the scene where the detective interviews the husband, and gets nowhere.

On the other hand, perhaps all you know is that you want to write a novel. You have no clue what kind of novel, nor do you have a single glimmer of a plot.

Again, just get started. Write something, anything. Describe your favorite coffee shop or bar in four sentences. The door opens. Your protagonist enters. Her white silk blouse is torn, she’s lost a shoe, and has skinned knees and ripped stockings.

Just start writing and keep writing. Describe the images in your mind.

So there you have it — three tips to help you to write a book. Sit down, right now, and write a sentence. Then another one… See? It’s easier than you think.

The Write A Book Collection — the ultimate toolbox for writing and selling your books

These days it’s crazy to spend years writing a book, without having any idea as to whether or not you can make money from it. If you want to write, you can – you have a global market, which is hungry for information and entertainment. And YOU can provide it… even if you’re a brand new author.

As you may know, I write and sell many writing guides. I also sell information products in many other areas than writing.

I want to show you how you can do the same, if you wish. Your dreams of writing a book can be the spark which changes your life.

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Are you writing a book? Books are information products, and I’ve been creating them for a decade.

I’m transitioning my own products into the Kindle/ ereader future. If you’d like to join me, you can.

Subscribe to Info Products Publisher, Info Products Publisher: Build Your Info Products Business with Angela Booth — Tips, Tools, and Resources, and receive a couple of valuable guides, including:

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Just getting started? You’ll love this. It’s one of my top-selling ebook products for beginners, and you receive it completely free.”

I’m running a poll on my writing blog (please vote) asking writers about their greatest writing challenge.

To date, 40 per cent have chosen “completing projects I start”.

My theory is that it’s hard for writers to complete projects (especially long projects like books) because it’s hard to manage all their material. Their research, notes, ideas and multiple drafts, can lead to confusion. And this confusion leads to procrastination. I give you a wonderful writing process to follow in my Easy-Write Process, which eliminates procrastination because you always know what you should be doing next.

But how do you manage all the bits and pieces you need for even the smallest writing project?

My solution, and that of many other writers, is Scrivener.

There’s an excellent case study on managing lots of drafts and information here. This article, Literature and Latte – Scrivener Case Studies, describes novelist Monica McCarty’s process. She keep’s her series’ Bible in a separate Scrivener file:

“McCarty’s Series Bible is divided into three folders: ideas, proposals and books one through to 12. ‘When I transferred the information from Word it consisted of about four different folders containing some thirty plus documents from all over the place,’ she says. ‘Now, if I suddenly have an idea for book 8 I can go straight in to the right place and add it rather than having to scroll down an entire document and look around all night for it.”

If you don’t want to splash out for Scrivener, I suggest you keep a project journal.

John Steinbeck’s journal for East of Eden, kept as a series of letters, has been published: Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters, of course.

Your aim in writing your book’s journal shouldn’t be to have it published; it’s to keep you “in” the book as you’re writing it, and to keep track of all your materials.

Before Scrivener, I kept all my project journals in MS Word documents. If I misplaced a piece of research, a simple search helped me to locate the section of the document in which I linked to the research on my computer, or on the Web. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it proved effective.

Big tip: do keep all your thinking about the book in Scrivener, or in your book journal too. Get all your complaints and angst out of your head, and onto your computer screen. (Don’t delete these.) Making your thought processes conscious in this way keeps you writing: your negative thoughts don’t get a chance to fester.

Writing a book is a long project. You’ll complete your book if you stay organized.

Amanda Hocking has just signed a four-book $2 million deal with St.Martin’s, for the world English language rights.

This article, Amanda Hocking Sells Book Series to St. Martin’s Press – NYTimes.com, reports:

“‘I’ve done as much with self-publishing as any person can do,’ Ms. Hocking said in an interview on Thursday. ‘People have bad things to say about publishers, but I think they still have services, and I want to see what they are. And if they end up not being any good, I don’t have to keep using them. But I do think they have something to offer.’”

Let’s see… she earned $2 million from her ebooks, and then St. Martin’s paid $2 million for the rights… that’s $4 million in around a year. And her books are still earning, AND she’s being launched by a major publisher…

Very nice.

There are many lessons you can take from this, the primary one being that the gatekeepers are gone, and that you can publish what you like, when you like.

Huge congratulations to Amanda, who’s still very young. I can’t wait to see where she goes from here; she has an amazing future.

You want to write a book... But you’re not sure what you want to write.

Each time you face a blank word processor page, your mind goes blank too.

Some authors know exactly what they want to write. They tap the keyboard, and an hour later, they’ve created a complete outline for their book, or novel… or they’ve written at least one scene, and know exactly what will happen in scene two.

Other authors sneak up on their books. If you’re suffering from “empty mind” syndrome, chances are that you’re this kind of author.

Here are five easy and fun ways sneak up on your book.

1. Write Titles

You don’t have to write a book. You just have to write a title. The titles are just meant to jolt your imagination a little.

Brainstorm 20 to 50 titles; they can be as weird and wacky as you please.

2. Describe an Image

Working with images is a brilliant way to kickstart your imagination. I love browsing museum sites, to look at great paintings. They’re evocative.

You’ll find that as you’re describing an image, you’ll drop into a creative mind state, and before you know it, you’ve started writing your book.

3. Become a Collector

I’m an index card fanatic. I always carry a stack of index cards, and I note down ideas, quotes, and insights.

When I want to start a new book, and have no idea what I want to talk about, I grab a new stack of cards, and just write down sentences, descriptions, titles.

As the cards mount up, I enter them into a database (I use Bento). You can use a spreadsheet, if you don’t have a database application.

I usually create around 40 cards before I can see a definite pattern emerging, and know what I want to write.

From then on, I create a dozen or more cards a day.

When the time’s right, I create a synopsis or outline from the cards, and I’m ready to write.

4. Describe Your Greatest Fear (or Delight)

Emotions trigger creativity. (See Describe an Image, above.)

Write about what makes you happy, what upsets you… Before you know it, you’ll have an idea for a book, then you can start collecting cards, as we discussed above.

5. Use the News for Inspiration

Years ago, when I subscribed to a couple of daily papers, I’d clip anything which gave me an idea for an article, an essay, or a book. I had a filing cabinet crammed with clippings.

These days, I still clip, and still get inspired, but I use EagleFiler. (If you use Windows, OneNote is useful.)

You can use news stories to provide inspiration for many books.

Start clipping.

So there you have it; easy ways you can conquer the blank page, and sneak up on your book.

Do you have a favorite way you conquer the blank page? Please share in the Comments.