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Start thinking of your book title as soon as you start conceptualizing your book. If you’re writing a nonfiction book, it should have two parts: the main title and the subtitle. The title is a catchy phrase that relates to the theme of the book and will attract your readers. The subtitle explains what the title means. Often the subtitle will be your working title while you’re writing the book before you’ve come up with the right catchy phrase. Then suddenly the catchy phrase jumps out at you. Book Title Not Obvious until the End For example, I wrote a World War II book about Bernard Mednicki, a Belgian Jew who fled the country with his wife and children when the Nazis invaded, moved to southern France, posed as a […]

In recent entries, I showed you how to name your files and how to freewrite. Now let’s turn your freewrite into a book. Build on Your Initial Freewrite After your initial freewrite session, during subsequent sessions, add new material to the bottom of your working file. Then use Cut and Paste to classify and sort your new ideas with the others, as you learned here. Now read the complete file from the beginning, with your fingers on the keyboard. Automatically your mind will want to expand. Let your fingertips type your expanded thoughts. You’ll add key phrases and ideas that belong somewhere in the book, questions that you’ll need to research, and clarifications of what you wrote the day before. You’ll think of experts you’ll want to interview. You can […]

Actors have an expression that they use to keep centered: “When in doubt, slow down.” For writers, the expression is, “When in doubt, freewrite.” Freewriting is especially helpful when you’re looking at that initial blank page and you don’t know where to begin. You’ve already got the thoughts developing in your mind — after all, you’re an expert in your field. But they’re incomplete, in no logical order, and bumping into each other as they fight for your attention. Get them out. We’re writers, not remembers. Don’t worry about mechanics, grammar, and spelling. You’ll get to them later. All those crazy thoughts: I’m no good, I’m not smart, I don’t have time, nobody’s going to be interested anyway…. If you have those thoughts swirling around in your mind, they’re taking […]

Writing and publishing a book is an exhilarating, educational adventure. It will transform your life no matter the topic of your book or why you wrote it. But when you’re just starting out, the endeavor can appear intimidating. Do you need a book outline? A Book Outline Would Be Nice The challenge is, writing isn’t a linear process. You don’t always do first this and then that and then the next thing. You follow a zigzag path to publication. Chapter 1 isn’t always the first chapter you write. Ideas can be developed in many possible orders. It’s true, the sooner you can crank out a book outline, and then a table of contents, the faster you’ll be able to write your book. For your high school term paper, what was […]

The electronic files you create for your book won’t all be for portions of your manuscript. They may include text that you write for the website that will promote your book when it comes out, and correspondence with typesetters, artists, printers, web developers, editors, groups that want to hire you as a speaker, and experts and celebrities who you are inviting to write forewords and testimonial quotes. You’ll create other files for your daily freewrites, questions you need to answer, and experts to answer them. All of them need to be carefully named so you can find the right file when you need it no matter how complex your folder system becomes and how old the files are. How to Name Book Files Here’s the way I name book files. […]