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.

I’ve collected everything I know about writing and selling your books into my brand new Write A Book Collection: it’s the ultimate toolbox for anyone who wants to write and sell books in 2010 and beyond.

Want to write a book? You can. Someone once said that if you’ve survived your own childhood, you have more than enough material to write all the books you want.

You can turn your life into fiction, or nonfiction. Your choice. Your thoughts, your ideas, and your emotions, come together as creative inspiration. All you need to do is allow it.

If you want to write fiction — a novel or short stories — your emotions are key. Readers read novels to feel, rather than to think. They also read in order to make sense of their own lives. Novels are not real, they’re constructed. However, they can feel intensely real to readers, and this is what readers what — an emotional experience.

You may feel that you have the world’s most boring existence, and that nothing exciting has ever happened to you, but you can use everything you are in your fiction. It’s the only way to write novels which touch others.

One point: you’re not using your life as it is. Real inspiration lies deeper than your thoughts and even your memories. You’ll explore your life, and use your emotions as the basis of your fiction.

The best way to get started writing your novel is just to start. Let’s look at three easy ways you can fictionalize your life.

1. Uncover Evocative Childhood Emotional Experiences

Ready to write? Think of a childhood experience — a pleasant one. Perhaps you remember a holiday, or a special family event. Recall the experience. Allow yourself to be there.

Allow the emotion to come back to you. Now start to write.

Write whatever comes: don’t control your writing.

At this stage, you’re just aiming to touch the experience. When you keep writing and allow yourself to feel your emotions, sooner or later a story will come to you. When it does, go with it.

2. Use Triggering Images from a Photo Album

Take out an old family album. Leaf through it slowly. Allow emotions to arise. Remember the day each photo was taken.

Now, choose one photo to which you have an intense emotional reaction, and start writing.

Again, don’t try to control your writing. Let your writing take you where it wants you to go.

By the way, once you start writing your novel, if you get blocked, take out your photo album again.

3. Let Music Inspire You

Music is inspirational for many people, especially music which was around in their childhood. When you listen to music which you heard in your youth, you’ll find that you’re taken right back to those long-ago days.

Sit down to write. Then close your eyes and listen to the music. Images — memories — will arise. Start writing.

You now have three ways in which you can access your emotions. These emotions trigger your imagination, and deepest inspiration.

Not only will writing your novel be fun, it will be meaningful to you, and to your readers.

Turn Your Words Into Gold: Write and Sell An Ebook In Just Eight Hours

Here’s what I love about writing ebooks: you write them once, and they keep on selling forever.

I know several writers who’ve taken to the Kindle platform like the proverbial ducks to water. One writer friend turns out a new Kindle ebook every month, like clockwork. The last time we spoke, she had 11 ebooks selling — and her income is rising month by month.

Another writer friend mixes writing her own ebooks, with writing ebooks for others. Currently she’s been commissioned to write a biography, and a family history, for the same client. She’s finding it huge fun, and she’s making more money than she’s ever made.

The benefit of writing and selling ebooks is that once written, they can keep on selling forever. Would you trade eight hours for an income stream?

Do you want to make money writing a book? It’s easier than you think. However if you want readers, you need to write what appeals to them. If you choose the right topics, you’ll sell thousands of copies of your book and your publisher will love you.

Here’s how to decide what to write, so you know that you’ll make money from your book.

1. If You Want Readers, Target Those Who MUST Read Your Book

Targeting sounds complicated, but it’s not. If you can get the hang of targeting, you’ll know without a doubt that every book you write will sell.

Here’s how to target: look for readers who are desperate for a solution to a problem.

Your own problems can be a source of income for you, if you solve them, because any problem that you have is likely to be shared by hundreds of thousands of other people around the globe.

For example, perhaps you’ve managed conquer anxiety, or you lost weight with your own method. Either of these topics would make a great topic for a book because there are thousands of people who are desperate for solutions to these problems.

2. You’ll Find Your Best Ideas in Your Own Backyard

Ideas are everywhere. You can find them when talking to friends, or when watching TV.

Here’s an important tip: develop a solution for a specific problem, rather than one which is too general.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s imagine that you want to write a weight-loss book. There hundreds of weight-loss books published each year. Therefore a book on general weight loss is too broad; there’s too much competition.

However, if you decided to write a book on kids’ weight loss, or a book on losing weight after having a baby, your topic is much more targeted and is much more likely to find readers.

3. Set Yourself a Daily Word Count Goal

Writing a book, even a relatively short one of 50 or 60 pages, can seem intimidating. Relax. Although you may read a book in an hour or two, it will take you much longer to write it. That’s fine. You write every book one word at a time.

Schedule your your daily writing time. If you just have 20 minutes, that’s fine.

Next, set a daily word count goal. When you’re starting out, make this goal very low. For example, you could aim to write 50 words each day.

You can write 50 words in a couple of minutes and this goal is so low you’ll easily complete it, no matter how frantic your life is. When you set such a low goal, you’ll find that you easily exceed it, and this gets you into the habit of writing.

Want to make $500 a day from your home office? You can when you write and sell ebooks. Angela Booth’s Info Product Maestro
package reveals her secrets for creating and selling HOT ebooks.

In her free weekly ezine, Angela covers writing and selling ebooks and much more. Discover how you can turn your skill with words into money.

Recession-proof your freelance writing career

“Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process” gives you all the tools you need for a thriving writing career, no matter what the economic climate.

Three weeks after completing the class one student wrote:

“Thanks Angela, for all your help and advice in class. I’m quitting my job next week. I printed out my letter of resignation tonight after landing a contract writing job that will pay me more for three months part-time work than I earned in from my day job in the whole of 2008! You were right – the great gigs are out there, and now I’ve got the skills to land them. Your class opened my eyes. Bless you…”

“Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process” shows you how to thrive as a freelance writer. Would you like to write five times more than you’re writing now, and sell to higher-paying markets? Take the class.

You’ve started writing your book, so it’s time to sell it.

Selling your book on a partial (three chapters and an outline) is common practice whether you’re writing fiction, or nonfiction. However, if you haven’t published a novel before, be aware that you’re unlikely to get a contract until you’ve completed the novel. Publishers aren’t as picky with nonfiction — you should be able to get a contract even if you’re unpublished.

Your primary sales tool is your query letter, which you send out to publishers and to agents. You’re hoping for interest: for a request to read your partial. The ONE sentence describing your book is the most important part of your query letter.

If you can’t sum up your book in a sentence, it’s unlikely you’ll make a sale.

So what does that ONE sentence look like?

Here’s an example from Publisher’s Marketplace, New Deals for March 19, 2010.

Edgar Nominee Pat Rushford’s ARTISTIC LICENSE, in which a woman working to turn an old northwest mining town into an artist’s colony discovers a murderer intent on staving off development at all costs, to Susan Downs at Summerside Press, in a nice deal, for publication in 2011, by Sandra Bishop at MacGregor Literary (World).

(By the way, in Publisher’s Marketplace’s terms, a “nice” deal is one in which the advance against royalties is somewhere between one dollar and $49,000.)

Write your ONE sentence NOW

Can you sum up your book in a sentence like: “a woman working to turn an old northwest mining town into an artist’s colony discovers a murderer intent on staving off development at all costs”?

If you can’t, keep thinking about your book until you can. Not only is that one sentence vital in selling your book, if you can’t summarize it, you’ll have trouble writing it.

Practice summarizing — summarize five books which you’ve read recently, similar to the one you’re writing, into one sentence.

Write more – become a pro writer

Yes, you can write more and become an expert writer – even if you’re a world-class procrastinator.

Did you know that when you write more, your writing improves? Many of my writing students experience this. They find that when they write more, writing is easier for them – they’re not dominated by their inner editor.

My new writing class, “Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process” is based on lessons I developed for my private coaching students to help them to write more, improve their writing, and make more money writing.

If you’re struggling with your writing, the class will help. The techniques you’ll learn in class with help you write fiction, nonfiction, and copy for business.

Discover how you can write more, improve your writing, and sell more of your writing to higher-paying markets.

Want to write a book and get published? As I’ve been telling you for a while, it’s simple… start a blog.

An author interviewed in this article, From Blog to Book Deal: How 6 Authors Did It, reports:

“How did the book deal come about?: ‘Both agents and book publishers approached me once the site hit it big. I signed with an agent the next month, and had a book deal within weeks after that, so it all moved very fast.’”

No one reads unpublished authors, except their mothers, and then only under protest. But if you’ve got a reasonable idea for a book, and blog it, you will get publisher’s interest once you get readers.

The days of authors starving in garrets are long gone.

Write more – become a pro writer

Yes, you can write more and become an expert writer – even if you’re a world-class procrastinator.

Did you know that when you write more, your writing improves? Many of my writing students experience this. They find that when they write more, writing is easier for them – they’re not dominated by their inner editor.

My new writing class, “Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process” is based on lessons I developed for my private coaching students to help them to write more, improve their writing, and make more money writing.

If you’re struggling with your writing, the class will help. The techniques you’ll learn in class with help you write fiction, nonfiction, and copy for business.

Discover how you can write more, improve your writing, and sell more of your writing to higher-paying markets.