Have you been lazy to write lately? Here’s how to write a book 1000 words at a time.
So, you may have heard this before but how exactly do you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. Now, I know that's gruesome and I'm not thinking of eating elephants but the same principle applies when it comes to writing your books.
Except for 1000 words at a time is a much better solution for that. That's what we're going to be discussing in today's article. So, when it comes to getting your book up and going, the most important thing you can do when you're writing your book is to make sure that you have a steady rhythm in your writing practice.
I always talk about the three phases, three things you should always be doing when it comes to your self-publishing business. One of them is writing or putting together your newest book. The other is the marketing side. Then, the final side is learning new things.
Continuing to sharpen the saw as Covey pointed out; is one of the seven high habits. So, the absolute most important thing you can do when you don't even have a book is to write that book. The best way to do it is to be sitting in your chair as they say “butt in chair” right?
Where you're sitting down and you're able to slowly make sure that each day you're pumping out that many words. A couple of things that I found that are especially helpful with this is first, choosing a time to write each day. If you're a morning person then morning is by far the best time of the day to do it.
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But if you say, I'm an evening person or whatever you might say about that and you find that the day goes by and you don't get it done, then it's highly much more productive if you just choose a time and just do it and you force yourself.
Some people have even asked the question; well wait, I'm not inspired, I don't feel the inspiration. Well, when do you write? You say, well only right when I'm inspired and I’m inspired every morning at 8 AM.
You'll be like, well how's that possible? The answer is they're just sitting down and they're forcing themselves to get into the practice. When we're writing stuff, we can rewrite it if we need to. We can fix stuff when we get to the editing phase.
But if you're not writing and waiting for you to have a bunch of energy, we're just never going to get this book finished. That's the reason why 1000 words is a really useful figure. You can of course increase or decrease that.
But I would probably be very careful about going too high or allowing myself to go too low. But if you find you're making no progress and you can't get 1000 words and then go into 500, go to 250, go to one sentence. For goodness’s sake, whatever it takes to start moving the ball forward on your self-publishing business.
Doing One Book At A Time
The first starting point is we need a book to work with. This brings in number two, we're going to use a timer. One of the things I like to do is sometimes the Pomodoro method where you have like 20 minutes on and then you're going to have like a 5-minute break and then 20 minutes on and a 5-minute break.
So, you're taking these breaks that you need as you're trying to get your thousand words done. What you'll usually find is that as you start to do this every day and build in the habit, you're then going to be able to get 1000 words without that much effort and that's really where we want to take this whole thing.
We do not want to have to be in a situation where everything is so painful all the time. And no matter how hard and how much work we do, we just are unable to get 1000 words out. Rather, as you keep doing it, you're going to get better at it like any skill that you're developing.
The third thing you're going to want to do is only focus on one book at a time. I can't tell you how many clients I have when I'm talking with them, we're doing a Discovery Session for free which you can check out. As we're going through our discovery session, we're looking at where they're at, which is one of the key points.
They'll say, okay, so I'm working on five books and they're sort of working a little bit on this one and a little bit on that one. I'm like, how many books do you have on the market? And if the answer to that is, I don't have any books on the market because I need to make sure these books are perfect.
But I just don't feel like editing or fixing or formatting them. So, I'm just going to move on to the next book and start partially writing it. Then you're making a huge mistake because you should start at the beginning and go all the way through until you've finished that book and then you can start your next book.
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The reason is that we're going to be building an audience. When do you want to start building the audience? When do you want to plant a tree? Well, 20 years ago would have been the best time to plant a tree. When are you going to start an audience? Well, 20 years ago again would be a fantastic time.
But if you're not going to do it, then do it now. Here's a question, if you're working on your fifth book and your first book is not yet on the market, well then how are you building readers if you have this idea in your mind that you're going to take your book and just put it onto the market and then everyone's going to start purchasing it?
So, you don't need to find readers in advance. You're mistaken because, in reality, you're going to want to have some sort of a lead magnet to get their email addresses at the beginning. They're going to help you build, they're going to help tell other people about your book.
You're going to be able to stay in touch with them. So, you can let them know when you come out with a new book. They're also going to be able to help you when it comes to getting reviews on your book which is the absolute most important thing.
If you don't have reviews, that's really where we want to put a lot of the focus on your books. It is such an important point when we're trying to get these things onto the market and selling. But you'll see these all tie back together with getting that very first book on the market.
Going Back And Forth To Fix
Some people, I even had a question yesterday, it was exactly about this issue which was when are you going to get that book on the market? They were like, I don't want to put it on the market until it's perfect. Because it's going to be the centerpiece for my entire business and it's going to keep coming back to that.
My answer is you should still get it on the market quickly. Just get it onto the market and then at that point, you can go back later and fix it. Or you may change your model, completely moving forward, and taking action is the key to winning the self-publishing game.
This is something that so many authors fail to understand. It's that we want to keep on moving forward. When I first started with my very first book, I found that I didn't have time management. I just wrote what I felt like writing and what exactly was the result? Well, the result was a book that took forever initially to get it going.
Until I implemented the 1000 words rule. So, every day, you just start, write 1000 words, and then we write the next thousand and we write the next thousand. You can do an outline or you can just try to pound it out and then fix it later.
I'd like personally to have an outline at least when it comes to non-fiction books. I know some people, I know, like the panthers, right? You do it by the seat of your pants where you're writing and you're just pounding the whole thing out and then you fix it later.
I find it easier if you have a little bit of structure and then we're just going as fast as we can as we're writing the book. Then we go back and we can fix it and have different references and citations and footnotes. These sorts of things you're going to want to have especially in a nonfiction book to establish where exactly your sources are for the books.
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You're getting it out there which is very important to do. But I would suggest just writing 1000 words even if you feel the 1000 words that you're writing are no good at all and nobody's going to like it. We're going to fix this as we go.
The more practice you get, the better you're going to be. If you want to learn how to play tennis, I would suggest getting on the court ideally having a coach. But if you don't have that, then at least hit the ball back and forth.
That's one of the things that with regards to getting your writing going, it's one of the things I do with my 1-On-1 Program clients. We can go back and forth regularly, discussing where we're at, what we want to accomplish, and what exactly is the next step to getting there.
Then, doing daily updates, really helps strengthen the overall flow of what exactly you're accomplishing here with your books when it comes to self-publishing. You're just not going to succeed if you are not making regular daily progress on your books. That's the reason why I highly recommend doing 1000 words a day.
My question for you is, have you adopted this method? If so, how many words a day have you chosen to go better to write? And check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.