Ghost Writing

You’d love to write the Great American Novel. Or a New York Times best seller. Or a money-making e-book. Or a book you could see in Barnes and Noble or Borders. Or–just a book, for crying out loud!

But the idea of finding the time or the creativity to sit down and crank out 80, 128, or 256 pages worth is just plain intimidating. The prospect seems overwhelming. How on earth do you even start? And how do you get that many pages written?

Well, I’ve written and published more than 20 books of my own, and I “feel your pain.” I know that cranking out a book is no walk in the park. It takes discipline. It takes effort. It takes a plan.

Where many just throw up their hands and forget their dream of authorship is not having a clue how to do it–how to write a book. So let’s take a look at some ideas that can help. All of them assume you’ve already done your needed research and heavy-duty thinking about where you want to go.

First, make an outline of what you want to include. The way I do this is to just brainstorm every possible idea or thought I’d like to see in the book. I don’t worry about organizing or prioritizing at this point. Just get it all out there on paper (I so hope you’re not still using pen or typewriter, though) or on the screen. Then set aside all this verbiage for a day. Come back the next, and ask yourself which of these ideas are the more important, and which actually are sub-ideas of a larger one. Once you have your main ideas, you have your chapters. Next, arrange these main chapter headings into the order that seems most logical to you.
Next, add to your chapter list an introductory chapter and a summary chapter. Remember, you’re not writing chapters at this point–just listing them. Decide also if your book will need a bibliography or index. 
Third, for writing the chapters, try my “salami technique.” You’ve seen those huge logs of salami…well, have you ever sat down with the intention of eating one from one end to the other? If you didn’t kill yourself in the process, you’d probably end up so sick you’d wish you had. No, no one eats a whole salami. The eat it in thin slices–a slice at a time. So write the same way. Thin slices–a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter at a time. Break the huge job down into manageable parts. Some writers set a goal of so many words a day. Others like to write till they’ve drafted out a full chapter. Whatever works for you.
As you write, please–PLEASE–turn “off” your inner editor. Just let the words loose and get it all out there without worrying about making everything nice and proper. Once you have a first draft, switch gears, turn on your editor, and go back over your writing to fix things the best you can. Run a spell checker. Revise. Rewrite. See if it sounds OK to you when you read it out loud.
Even as you begin writing, but especially when you’ve finished, bone up on how to format your finished manuscript for an editor, agent, or publisher. Don’t use fancy-schmancy fonts just because you like them. Use something standard, like Times New Roman, 12 point. Double-space your lines. Single-space between sentences. Use a one-inch margin all around.
Finally, consider doing what I often do to boost my writing output into warp-speed drive: use speech recognition software. Most people can speak three times faster than they type. 

If you approach writing your book this way, you’ll be surprised how quickly you can turn out your book!