How Do Authors Write Books? A Non-linear Book Writing Process

How do you eat an elephant? The answer is relatively the same for writing a book.

How do authors write books? One word at a time.

But where do you get started?

I suppose all writers and artists have to figure this out on their own. I must have blocked it out of my memory in the last year or so.

During my Friday weekly review today, I was trying to sort through some old notes in Evernote when I came across my writing to-do list for my first book dating back in July 2012. I honestly can’t remember how much I referenced this note while actually writing the book and I didn’t even create it until well after I had brainstormed what I would write for the majority of the chapters/days of my 31-day book.

It got me thinking. . . How in the heck did I get this book written?

How Authors Write Books: Not from A to Z

Maybe I’ll go into more detail about how I use Evernote to write (now two) books someday. It was an incredible tool. I will say, that taking a look at my book’s “notebook” says a lot about how I was able to write the book. You can see from this screenshot, sorted by the first note I created in November 2011 and into 2012, that I didn’t work in a linear fashion. It shows the order I worked on the book had nothing to do with the order of the chapters:

The first number is the section (1-4) and the second number is the day/chapter (1-31).

(Funny, this screenshot also shows what time of day I do my writing: 4:45 a.m to 6:30 a.m.! I wake up early.)

I used a non-liner process to write the book. It was a 31-days book, but I definitely didn’t write in chronological order. In fact, the four parts of the book didn’t present themselves until I was probably half-way through the writing, probably about the time I wrote day one and then thirty-one.

Here was the key to getting this massive project done: I started with the days that came the easiest to write, then got to the harder ones and the ones that needed more research.

Here is what worked for me:

1. Write what comes easiest, first.
2. Build momentum.
3. Tackle the hard stuff.
4. Fear the deadline.

Writing the Introduction

Thinking back, I remember now that the Introduction was the hardest thing to write. I could knock-out the bulk of one of the thirty-one days within the 1-2 hours of writing I did each morning, but I put that Intro off until the end. In fact, I remember it taking me multiple days and some painstaking writing through the parts where I had to say what this book really is. If you look closely at the screenshot above, you will see that I started the into early, but put it off until the end.

I started with the easy stuff (how to use this book) and leaned on some quotes that got me through the writing. I made a number of hardcopy revisions based heavily on my re-reading of it and my wife’s first glance.

The Home Stretch: My Writing To Do List

Here is a copy of the note from Evernote. I found this morning. It shows the final steps I needed to take to get the book done. It was a lot of returning to what I had written and adding in the TK research and quotes I left out initially.

I needed this to do list in the home stretch. I need a step-by-step process to follow at the end, after the non-linear creative work was done, to meet that deadline and hand in the book.

Oh, the memories:

The finished product: