So I heard you wanted to write a nonfiction book to publish-ready completion by a certain due date upcoming in the next year. Congratulations! That certainly is a noble endeavor to want to do for yourself. A book might well change your life and open up new doors for your writing career and avocation.
But you've heard from online blog posts and articles already that many newbie nonfiction writers fail for a great many reasons. A lot are challenged by finding or making enough time to write up their long, book draft. Some use the wrong tools and technology. Many are simply just too busy. Some find writing too difficult and challenging and quit their book project in the overhanging, awesome middle of their manuscript. Don't let that happen to you. Here in this blog post I list 47 possible reasons why a nonfiction writer might fail to complete their book project to publish-ready draft copy quality and I propose techniques and tips to solve each failure reason from my own life experience as a full-time writer.
Here is a short list of the 47 failure reasons I cover (in the blog post body below I cover solutions to each failure reason):
1. You're just too lazy and feel writing a book requires too much effort and is too difficult to stick it through
2. You don't feel motivated enough to write so you did something else instead
3. You're an incompetent writer and you write lousy copy and quit writing as you felt discouraged when you compared your writing to professional writing
4. You don't feel you are a writer so you don't adopt professional writing habits like writing regularly and daily.
5. You are not writing daily so you don't complete enough progress weekly on your manuscript and drop it as you have lost the desire and the momentum
6. You just don't want your book completed badly enough to put in all the time
7. You quit the writing project before it was publish-ready to do something else in your free time other than a book number two while book one is temporarily shelved
8. You had no working deadline for the next draft completion and the total book drafts all completed so you didn't get it done
9. You're just too busy with other scheduled activities and a full life
10. You procrastinated and put off writing the book for now to pick it up later at a more favorable time for it
11. Your ideas for the nonfiction book aren't good enough to carry a book so the project failed
12. You had low levels of minute by minute productivity in big blocks of free time so the project failed
13. You repeatedly worked on one unfinished book project for years which is still unfinished now
14. You are in a uniquely difficult situation now and thus find it hard to write a book
15. You were not keeping a time log so you allowed time-wasting activities and doing other things to creep into your schedule and were not accountable for your time usage daily
16. You were wishing you had a 25th hour and waiting for imaginary free time blocks in your day
17. You were not using the correct writing tools and technology so the project failed
18. You had unrealistic expectations of what writing a nonfiction book would get you so the book project failed
19. Fantasies about writing a book lead to bad decision making on your part and unwise behavior as you were just dreaming of writing a nonfiction book and you were not completely in reality
20. You got writing tips for writing your nonfiction book online or from books but you still failed to take that fated first step to writing your nonfiction book and still have not yet started one of your book ideas as you don't do good advice immediately
21. Writing is mentally exhausting and you get tired too quickly when writing
22. Writing is unrewarding at first so you don't want to do it and quit
23. Writing is dull and there are more interesting things to do than finish your book manuscript so you do the more interesting things instead and don't finish your book
24. You heard there is no money in writing so you don't feel motivated as what is there really to gain
25. You would rather really do other things with big blocks of free time like being an artist or a musician
26. You don't have the personal qualities it takes to be a writer
27. No one is waiting for your book or paying you for it so it doesn't get done
28. You fear you won't get enough sales and readers will not feel compelled enough to read your book once it is published as you don't know enough about writing compelling books to read
29. It's challenging to write and you just aren't sure you'll do it effectively on the first book
30. You don't want to write as you feel you will miss life itself passing you by
31. You don't yet know what technique words in writing mean like editorial calendar and distraction-free editor so you failed as you don't know your terms in your craft as of yet and don't yet understand the online discussions on writing effectively
32. Writing is not yet daily and regular (covered already I think)
33. You haven't downloaded and started to use Scrivener as of yet and not yet using the key writing software to write your nonfiction book draft in so your project failed for using the wrong tools and technology. Use Scrivener.
34. Estimating the total length of your book series gave you a big block of time total hours estimate of 750 hours and it will take you so long (1.5 months) that you don't want to progress on it and you give up as it's just too overwhelming to contemplate after you did your timed deadline plan estimated progress plan schedule
35. My book is not very well researched and is failing because of that
36. My book does not have enough original content in it and I am worried about plagiarism suits as it is entirely copied content from published sources
37. I'm not currently journaling in Life Journal 3 daily. Is that necessary to book success in the long run? You bet.
38. I'm currently not copying successful book ideas and making them my own. Should I or is that pirating or stealing?
39. I currently don't have a little back burner book idea. Should I?
40. I'm not currently using WhizFolders and FreeMind to organize idea mind maps and group related ideas from my brainstorming sessions. Should I?
41. I'm not currently reading the reader responses to blog posts I am reading on my Google query. Should I?
42. I'm not currently auto-generating an Amazon Kindle self-published set of similar books to each other in a book series with some canned text and text replacements in common between them with a model book written up first. Should I be?
43. My typical scene is not really short like 180 words like your scenes are. Should I make mine shorter or what?
44. I'm not currently writing short. I'm writing long instead. Should I switch back to short?
45. I'm not currently reading free books daily on Amazon Kindle for a monthly subscription of only $10 a month. Should I be?
46. I'm not currently writing better ebooks than the typical fluffy Amazon Unlimited Kindle ebooks.. Should I be writing better than the competition to sell more books?
47. I currently sometimes write too long and sometimes too short. How can I better write to word length specs?
A. First Half of Failure Reasons
I. Wanting Nonfiction Book Writing to Be Easy and Not Difficult or Requiring Effort
1. You're just too lazy and feel writing a book requires too much effort and is too difficult to stick it through
Writing a nonfiction book really can be easy to do and not require a great deal of effort. It's just a series of very long blog posts or articles, one set of 12 manuscript pages per chapter. Write your book one chapter at a time, one chapter per day. Or write one scene of one chapter at once, 180 words of copy at a time. It's a cinch, inch by inch.
Research how to write nonfiction books online by doing a Google search on the query and learn innovative, easier ways to write a nonfiction book and it won't feel so difficult anymore if you regularly spend some online web surfing time a day reading about how.
If you want your book completed enough, make writing your number one priority in big blocks of free time in a week, especially on days off. Only do other things if you are working on your health or earning an income. Do all people, chores and exercising a day in breaks from your regular writing cycles and mini sessions daily. Adopt a new writing-based lifestyle and do a regular daily and weekly routine similar to professional writers.
Copy what other hard workers do and imitate models of success. I like to try to imitate Brian Tracy, the success trainer and self-help writer, who is a very hard worker.
14. You are in a uniquely difficult situation now and thus find it hard to write a book
I read online about a writer with liver cancer that had to have an operation, was doing chemo and still finished a novel ready for publication. If he can do that in such a difficult life situation, you can find time to write and finish your book project even in hard times.
Make sure you have the tools, technology and resources to write with. It does take up a bit of money but not much. Use what you bought in the past mainly.
So what if life is now dreary and bad for you. Write anyway if writing is your true joy and passion. Finish your book unless time is so limited for you you wanted to say goodbye to your loved ones instead.
21. Writing is mentally exhausting and you get tired too quickly when writing
Take vitamins to stay energized and walk midway through your day either at lunchtime or right after work before the big block of free time at the end of the day. Walk several short sessions in a day to take up less time in a day as it's almost as effective as a single, longer walk other than endurance wise.
Write first thing in the morning when you have a fresh, uncluttered mind by going to bed earlier at night and rising 20 to 30 minutes earlier in the morning. Always start a day by composing a 25 minute mini session on your current book draft in Scrivener.
Look after your health and writing hygiene well. Sleep well, work out, eat healthy, don't overeat and drink lots of water. Use a decent, ergonomic chair for writing and don't wreck your back. Take regular standing and walking breaks while doing longer writing sessions so your legs don't cramp up.
29. It's challenging to write and you just aren't sure you'll do it effectively on the first book
Find out how to write a nonfiction book on Google by querying the subject and collect 200 pages of research notes on how to do this effectively, even for the first time. As you write more, you'll get better at it.
Don't write a first book project that is difficult or very long. Write up a shorter, easier book up first and change your book project around. Make it easier to do for yourself if unsure of your general effectiveness as a writer.
Some books are printed on writing nonfiction. I'll review some of them in this blog so look back later.
Divide up an easier book to do into little sub-section chunks, on average 7.666 sub-sections per chapter. Inch by inch its a cinch and eating an elephant is done one bite at a time. Use Scrivener's Binder hierarchy of folders and notes files to organize your structure of your book by part/sub-book, chapter, sub-section, detailed-sub-section and notes files.
II. Doing Something Else Other than Writing
24. You heard there is no money in writing so you don't feel motivated as what is there really to gain
You heard writing tends to make less money than minimum wage work per hour spent on a typical published nonfiction book. Sure but you love doing the time and there's higher paying writing freelance work than book authoring.
Find out about high paying writing gigs online. Keep your day job while your part-time income builds from your published writing so far. Have your spouse bring in the career income enough for two.
2. You don't feel motivated enough to write so you did something else instead
List writing goals in a freewriting exercise in your favorite editor. Set deadlines for each writing goal and put time for them on your weekly and monthly calendars.
Remember, you wanted to write a nonfiction book in your lifetime and have it publish-ready. The best time to do that in history is now. All the tools and technology exist now to make your dream possible. All the how to information is available online and in published writing reference books.
See online articles and blog posts about how to enhance motivation and start using motivational techniques daily.
Write in short mini sessions of 25 minutes each in 76 minute cycles in big blocks of spare time and do something interesting like Google research in between writing mini sessions. If you make each writing appointment short, you'll feel it's easier and more interesting for you to do each session.
Compose a better working title for your book project that will motivate you better. The book title should be very compelling, to the point, genre specific and include keywords in the subject topic. It should not be a title picked already on Amazon under a query for the subject in the top 3 pages of query results. Pick a unique title related to your angle or slant for your nonfiction book.
6. You just don't want your book completed badly enough to put in all the time
Encourage your burning desire to write a book by switching to a shorter book project or making a sub-book or series of ebook sub-books out of your big book 36 chapter long big project. It really helps to make your book manuscript a lot shorter for the first publish-ready manuscript draft.
Complete one short project and it will motivate you to restart the longer one.
Remember in childhood you loved books and reading so it would be a real thrill to have one of your own books published.
Change your current book project to work on a book idea you are passionate about and have a compelling, unique angle on. Write about a top 20 percent out of a long list of book ideas important book project to you. Drop writing something that is not top 20 percent priority for you at the present time.
7. You quit the writing project before it was publish-ready to do something else in your free time other than a book number two while book one is temporarily shelved
Use the butt in chair technique to just go to your writing work station, sit down, put your drink down and start your timer and just write. Write all the time in little bursts and chunks 25 minutes at a time, in 76 minute cycles in big blocks of free time.
Finish what you started unless something more important came up as a better book idea to work on and don't start a new book idea unless it is more important than the previous book project and is the top book to do out of 4 top books to do out of a list of 20 possible book titles.
9. You're just too busy with other scheduled activities and a full life
Make optimum use of daily waiting and dead time. In dead time think about your book main topic like before falling asleep at night. Bring a research journal with you when you leave the computer and write in it when out of the house and waiting.
List ideas for your next section or scene while cooking and tidying up in the kitchen. Do all chores in 3 minute sections in between writing 76 minute cycles so you don't take up a complete 15 minute section of time. Do people, exercising, and chores in breaks from writing in your big blocks of free time.
Write while your family is asleep, on the computer or watching TV.
Try going to bed earlier and setting the alarm for 20 minutes earlier in the morning and writing first thing for 20 minutes or more. Writers go to bed between 8:30 PM and 9:30 PM and rise 8 hours later.
Learn how to do Google research and writing in small chunks of time in between scheduled activities and only work on book projects that are easy to divide up into little notes files or scenes. Inch by inch it's a cinch. You only eat an elephant one bite at a time.
See my previous web post yesterday on Mega Strategies to Make Time To Write for more hints on making time to write.
22. Writing is unrewarding at first so you don't want to do it and quit
You probably wanted to write a book as you do love the activity of writing, at least some of the time. Write for its own sake, because you need to write and you love to write.
Write about a book idea you are interested in, researching currently on Google and are passionate about. Finishing it is its own reward.
Reward with Amazon purchases the major milestones of completed progress on your book 3 chapters at a time. Reward yourself with a restaurant meal out or movie date with your spouse.
Reward several writing mini sessions with one 15 minute block of time on an alternate to do task or a few minutes outside on the back deck reading. Get a new drink every 2 writing cycles as a simple reward.
23. Writing is dull and there are more interesting things to do than finish your book manuscript so you do the more interesting things instead and don't finish your book
Research a high percentage of each 76 minute writing cycle in big blocks of free time like read one article or blog post after each 25 minute writing mini session on your book draft in Scrivener. The Google research feeds your mind and keeps you interested in your book main topic. Don't write a book that there is no Google keyword content about.
Structure your day differently than other people do like do your exercising midway through your day not first thing in the morning and only take 15 minutes for meals not a full hour. Do reading and research after your daily word count quota is reached for the day in the later afternoon and evening.
Go to bed early at night. All writers go to bed from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM.
25. You would rather really do other things with big blocks of free time like being an artist or a musician
Really. I thought you wanted to write a nonfiction book. Why are you reading this far in this blog post? Sure I do love design work myself and used to spend time with architectural drafting but I now spend my time writing recently rather than do that.
Is what you want to do instead of writing really more important to you than writing? If so so be it. Take up a book opportunity where you can write it 250 words a day only and put writing on the back burner for now.
30. You don't want to write as you feel you will miss life itself passing you by
Write at half speed when your spouse has the day off work to get in some valuable people time. Spend some time on all half speed days doing rewarding, really living to do's like I enjoyed recently doing my longer blog posts.
Travel and make liberal use of opportunities to change your scene. Go outside on the back deck or in the sun room to change scene and read out there.
Do something to learn a new thing or for fun.
Don't completely give up what you enjoy most to write. Do it as a reward for meeting a milestone twice a week.
III. Deciding to Put It Off and Do it Later
8. You had no working deadline for the next draft completion and the total book drafts all completed so you didn't get it done
Set a deadline every 3.5 days or so for completion of 3 to 4 chapters and one full part or sub-book of a longer book and a complete set of chapters. Divide your longer book into sets of 3 chapters as parts or sub-books. Create a series of ebooks on each set of 3 chapters with one common good introduction and a common good summary and conclusion chapter fleshing out the 3 chapter only books as a set of book series titles that are all related to each other.
Aim to complete one chapter a day.
Blog your book as I am doing now. Do one long chapter like blog post a day. Use the blog posts as chapter material for your finished book.
Set up a spreadsheet or table with names of chapters, chapter word lengths, number of total big block of time hours to complete the chapter at current rate of throughput or output per big block of free time minute in the day and compose a set of related word count estimated timed deadlines to meet while preparing the next book draft in Scrivener. Aim to complete two sets of 3 chapters each in one week on average.
10. You procrastinated and put off writing the book for now to pick it up later at a more favorable time for it
Do your writing now unless you are working on another book project or blogging. Just figure out what is the very next step or the first step and work on it. Don't worry if you need more content ideas. Spend some time doing Google research for them.
Read half the free time in a day to feed your mind and you'll feel less like putting it off.
Do a higher priority, most important book project like I am working on a current 60,333 word book project titled: "Make Time to Write Compelling Nonfiction." List 20 book titles and select 4 as the top 20 percent then choose the most important first book project to complete and the one that will be completed the fastest out of the top 4 out of 20 book titles and do that first. You'll stop putting things off if you have the correct book title and the correct book project to work on now.
Read online tips on fixing up procrastination on Google.
16. You were wishing you had a 25th hour and waiting for imaginary free time blocks in your day
Write as your default habit in big blocks of free time all the time and don't wait for an imaginary 25th free hour in the day. Write for 25 minutes in every 76 minutes of big block free time you have in a day.
Write on days off and weekends. On weekends you have 48 hours off and 4 hours on Friday night for 52 hours off in a row. With 24 hours for sleeping that is 28 hours of free time on weekends. Using one third of it for composing means you can get almost 9 hours of composing time done a weekend. In 9 hours of time you can write 3 chapters. So start writing 3 chapters a weekend in your free time.
27. No one is waiting for your book or paying you for it so it doesn't get done
Set a deadline for completion of the overall book draft. Remember it takes 25 percent of the time to complete the first draft. So after measuring the time to complete a first draft, estimate 4 times longer for completion of the tweak draft.
Finish what you start just to get used to accomplishing goals. It's a good habit to have.
20. You got writing tips for writing your nonfiction book online or from books but you still failed to take that fated first step to writing your nonfiction book and still have not yet started one of your book ideas as you don't do good advice immediately
Figure out what the first step or the critical next step in the book writing process is and schedule a time to do it on your calendar, planner or schedule. When you read decent book writing advice, always put it into use within 3 days after reading the advice and noting it in your research journal. Don't take in good advice and don't do it.
Compose a new writing lifestyle around the hints you read online about making the time to write. Do your life the way professional writers do their everyday lives.
Make good use of your research journal and keep track of all writing advice under a lettered page of the alphabet for its sub-topic.
Continue to read online for 4 - 7 hours a day in your days off, doing almost as much total time a day in Scrivener composing in 25 minute mini sessions. I do 10.333 mini sessions of 25 minutes each a day for 258 minutes a day composing in Scrivener and about the same time in Google research daily.
IV. You Wanted Too Much Out of Your Writing: Maximized Expectations or Goals
18. You had unrealistic expectations of what writing a nonfiction book would get you so the book project failed
Average nonfiction books only sell 250 copies a year and 2,000 copies in a lifetime. So you won't make much money per completed book. Success in self-publishing comes by writing a great many books in a row and publishing them regularly over a five year time period of publishing books on Amazon Kindle.
Learn more about how to write compelling copy and titles that make the reader want to read and buy your nonfiction book. Research that on Google.
Write up better book titles. Brainstorm 300 book titles before choosing your own. Don't pick a book title that already exists online on a Google Amazon Kindle search. Make up your own that is not picked already that emphasizes your unique angle on your book's main topic and is an original book title.
19. Fantasies about writing a book lead to bad decision making on your part and unwise behavior as you were just dreaming of writing a nonfiction book and you were not completely in reality
You just recently published a book with a traditional book publisher to critical acclaim but then fantasied about author success and quit your day job to write a second book then the second book failed and you had no income but your spouse's income that continued for you.
Don't allow your fantasies to trick you into writing decision mistakes. Look for online blog posts about typical writing mistakes and keep a sub-topic page in your research journal about mistakes other writers made you want to avoid. That is the key subject this blog post: avoiding writing mistakes.
B. Second Half of Failure Reasons
V. Incompetent, Bad Quality Writing Work at Doing the Job of a Writer
3. You're an incompetent writer and you write lousy copy and quit writing as you felt discouraged when you compared your writing to professional writing
Your book has a lousy hierarchy structure and organization and contains lousy copy. Fix the organizational structure by reorganizing the project into a better chapter layout and do a Google query on how to write better to learn how to write better copy. Remember, you are judging your first draft too harshly. All first drafts are shitty and rough drafts. All writing is rewriting and you will improve your copy over many drafts in a row in strengthen or lift up drafts.
Learn how to prepare to write better by learning brainstorming and outlining techniques and use software for Windows online to organize ideas like WhizFolders outliner or FreeMind mind map software and plan your documents professionally. Put your ideas in order professionally by using a method of development like chronological or importance. I will be writing later a blog post on preparing to write on this blog so stick around for hints as to how to prepare to write a nonfiction book any better.
You currently are not spending enough daily time reading books and reading online web pages, articles and blog posts doing a Google query and doing research note-taking in your 200 page research journal under letters from A-Z by alphabetically order of sub-topics in your main, big topic or subject. Feed your mind and you'll write better and have better content. Spend almost as much time reading as you do writing and composing.
Do a Google search on how to write a nonfiction book to learn better how to write a nonfiction book more effectively. Have a research journal just for this query alone. Online it will tell you how so you have no excuse here.
46. I'm not currently writing better ebooks than the typical fluffy Amazon Unlimited Kindle ebook. Should I be writing better than the competition to sell more books?
Yes. Apply all you can find out about writing good quality books and notice what made other books great that you liked very much and copy what worked for them in your own works. Proofread your copy on Grammarly and Hemingway and use a spell checker to catch typos. Structure your copy carefully in a logical way so it builds to an effect at the end.
Practice makes perfect. Write for a full year full-time then publish when you are a more experienced, better quality writer. Don't publish your very first work as it will be horrible in quality. Publish your tenth book as each book will improve in quality as you grow as an author.
47. I currently sometimes write too long and sometimes too short. How can I better write to word length specs?
Cut liberally from a too long piece until you have stated just the core, most critical ideas. Delete, delete, delete. Tighten and make it more concise. State just the idea not the life story and the fluff.
Maybe your word length estimate was wrong if your copy turned out to be longer or you should split a segment into Part A and Part B.
Do liberal freewriting to add content to too short chapters or blog posts. You can sometimes make it nice and long by adding a key, brainstormed list to the blog post, telling an anecdote or giving an example.
11. Your ideas for the nonfiction book aren't good enough to carry a book so the project failed
Make liberal use of listing ideas to get content like list ideas in a freewriting exercise in your favorite editor. Spend time doing Google research for your big main topic online and keep research notes under A-Z in your 200 page research journal.
Freewrite on your main topic for quite a few days in a row until you are getting no new ideas. Keep your freewriting exercises to mine them for book content.
Shelve the book for now to let it gestate and incubate for a while.
If the ideas are failing, maybe the book idea is too small and would make a better short ebook, pamphlet, booklet or longer blog post. Write it up in another format or on your blog.
13. You repeatedly worked on one unfinished book project for years which is still unfinished now
I have an unfinished Roy and Emily Harrison novel and it is still not yet done and I have been working on it for more than ten years now. If you can't seem to finish a book project, perhaps the idea is flawed or its in the wrong genre for you.
Were you in the past using the wrong writing tools and technology? Use Scrivener and outline your book in a month tools and you might complete it now using the correct tools.
Why work on it even longer? Drop the project that is repeatedly unfinished and work on a short-term short book project and finish the alternative book project in a different genre you can do.
17. You were not using the correct writing tools and technology so the project failed
Get the books on writing a novel outline in 30 days to write a novel with the correct tools. See "First Draft in 30 Days."
Download Scrivener and write now in Scrivener except when composing by freewriting in your favorite editor.
Stop working in yWriter5 and start working all the time in Scrivener like I do now.
Study online research to figure out which writing tools and technology other writers are now using and use them as well.
40. I'm not currently using WhizFolders and FreeMind to organize idea mind maps and group related ideas from my brainstorming sessions. Should I?
Yes you should definitely. I will be improving this blog post and chapter outline by grouping the failure reasons under categories myself.
WhizFolders is a Windows outlining software program and FreeMind is a free mind-map tool for Windows.
Scrivener can also be used for outlining but you need to start a new book project for that and export the project to see the outline printed out.
You can also draw the mind map to categorize ideas by hand. Perhaps this works best.
26. You don't have the personal qualities it takes to be a writer
Set growth goals as a writer to challenge yourself and write up many shorter, book projects to publish-ready completion. Writing takes the character qualities of:
A. determination
B. self-discipline
C. patience
D. perseverance
E. time to do the writing
F. being a hard worker and putting in daily effort
Suppose you truly are lazy and don't like the hard work of writing. Set reasonable, smaller sized writing goals and aim for smaller sized book projects and complete 3 chapters as a set of chapters, a sub-book or part of a book at a time. Set these sub-book 3 chapters completed goals twice a week on average according to estimated word counts.
If the goal is made smaller, like just do one chapter a day in your days off, you will find it easier to have the character qualities to complete the goal. So aim lower and do a bit each day on your big book manuscript.
28. You fear you won't get enough sales and readers will not feel compelled enough to read your book once it is published as you don't know enough about writing compelling books to read
Do Google research on writing to the reader, aiming at an outcome of each part of the book and how to make your book more interesting to the reader so that the reader feels compelled to read it in full and possibly will buy more of your published works.
It says on Google how to write compelling, interesting to read copy. Do a query on this subject. Make your chapter builds properly and rewrite it if it doesn't seem to have the proper effect once you read it back.
Read your work aloud to catch errors and flawed copy in it. That really helps.
Write in 4 big genres about what you are most interested in and passionate about and what consumes your everyday life. If you are interested in it, so will the reader.
31. You don't yet know what technique words in writing mean like editorial calendar and distraction-free editor so you failed as you don't know your terms in your craft as of yet and don't yet understand the online discussions on writing effectively
Do a lot of Google reading a day like 4 - 7 hours of Google reading a day on your days off. You'll learn the vocabulary of writing soon enough. For now, list unusual terms on their matching sub-topic page and define them if defined in the blog post or article on writing. Read as many printed books on writing as you can and learn your craft.
33. You haven't downloaded and started to use Scrivener as of yet and not yet using the key writing software to write your nonfiction book draft in so your project failed for using the wrong tools and technology. Use Scrivener.
What are you waiting for? Download Scrivener today or tomorrow and start using it on the Mac or Windows like I do myself.
36. My book does not have enough original content in it and I am worried about plagiarism suits as it is entirely copied content from published sources
To fix plagiarism, try typing in each segment into CopyScape to see if it is published online. Put research notes in point form only and entirely in your own words and the most common words and just note ideas only, not the actual wording of the idea.
Change all wordings from your original research notes. Combine ideas and synthesize to muddle up that it's from other sources. Accumulate detailed longer lists of data covered bit by bit on other short sources.
When you have completed noting the chapters covered in other books published in your same topic as your own planned book, freewrite on each chapter for original content with some ideas generated from research sub-topic notes in the freewriting. Do the freewriting repeatedly and look for original ideas in your freewriting that you came up with yourself.
Write only on things related to your reading interests and personal life experience. Write about what you know well: your skills, knowledge and expertise.
Do liberal ideas categorizing and grouping and generating of related ideas through liberal use of listing, mind mapping and outlining classifying ideas into groups. Fill in the missing background ideas in the chapter from categorizing some ideas found already and brainstorming on the grouped category sub-topic ideas.
Wait for brainy new ideas to come to you and when they do, note them immediately in your big idea notebook. Make up your own processes with your own unique acronyms. For example, I made up the SIMPLE writing system recently (more on that later).
38. I'm currently not copying successful book ideas and making them my own. Should I or is that pirating or stealing?
You should copy successful book ideas out there and write your first book about a book nonfiction book idea that has about 4 - 6 books on it that you have found so far, but there are several Amazon Unlimited ebooks on the book query on Amazon. Don't fix what is isn't broken. If it worked as a successful book topic in the past, it will work again. Use what works.
Keep track of all book titles you find out about online in a book titles list under T in your research journal and aim to write up your own versions of them as you understand their main topics after researching the main topic online or doing liberal journaling on the main topic yourself first.
When others book ideas are flawed and you can definitely improve them, go ahead and write up your own version. Just don't steal actual book headings unless it is a great book heading to include. That is plagiarism. Make the content of each chapter stolen researched Google content or make it your own freewriting content from your own knowledge and research expertise. For example, my SIMPLE Writing System book idea is from FAST Writing but has 6 phases in the writing system, not only 4 like in the FAST system. I added phases for research and for idea realization to the four in FAST.
When you can come up with unique twists and variations to published books already done, go ahead and write up your unique version of it. You have a unique situation. Take advantage of your unique perspective and write plenty of material that is not written already from your perspective and life experience.
41. I'm not currently reading the reader responses to blog posts I am reading on my Google query. Should I?
Yes definitely. Readers each giving their best ideas in response to a blog post can write your book content for you if you research note from many reader comment responses for the best submitted reader ideas on a subject. Reader responses on your own blog's blog posts can write some content for you as well so don't ignore your own blog's reader responses and feedback.
43. My typical scene is not really short like 180 words like your scenes are. Should I make mine shorter or what?
Yes aim at short segments of text in a scene or notes file. Mine are about 11 sentences long on average of sentences 16.3 words in a sentence. I can write up one scene on average every 4.5 minutes of composing time on average and do 5 - 6 scenes in one 25 minute writing mini session.
44. I'm not currently writing short. I'm writing long instead. Should I switch back to short?
Yes definitely. Keep each book part or sub-book small in size like I write my sub-books or parts to 3 chapters only in average length. I aim to complete three chapters around 3.5 days in time later and do two sets of three chapters in a typical week. A segment of three chapters can be the majority of the text for a unique ebook in a book series on a larger topic.
Write ebooks not books and publish them on Amazon Unlimited Kindle.
Write shorter chapters to the length most chapters are when studying market competition books in the same main topic as your own book. Break all longer chapters into two chunks in a logical division of content and do part A and part B.
My new book project has chapters of 4,026 words in length on average and so far this blog post is the length of two chapters in it so this will be split in half. One of my preparing to write chapters in my long tome was more than three times this new proposed chapter length so writing shorter chapters is a good idea for me to work towards myself.
VI. Not Doing the Lifestyle of a Writer
4. You don't feel you are a writer so you don't adopt professional writing habits like writing regularly and daily.
Act as if you were a published author and call yourself a writer just because you write regularly or daily in big blocks of free time as your main lifestyle choice.
Get an inscribed mug to keep your writing session drink in it with "Got Scrivener" or "Writer" inscribed on it and get a writing t-shirt to wear while writing. These products are available on Amazon and will inspire you to write.
Have a writer's home office and dedicated space for writing and use your own computer to write. Keep it tidy and organized and having a spot for your writing will make you feel like a writer.
Have dedicated times in your week to apply time to prepare a book draft in Scrivener. Keep your writing scheduled appointments a high percentage of the time and write early in your day and first thing.
5. You are not writing daily so you don't complete enough progress weekly on your manuscript and drop it as you have lost the desire and the momentum
Fix that by starting to write daily. Find even one half-sized 12 minute chunk of time, or preferably one full-sized 25 minute writing session to do daily even in your evening off work. Chunk by chunk you'll work through your manuscript.
At one mini-session of 25 minutes a day, you'll complete one chapter in five weekdays of writing. You can do three more chapters on the weekend or on your days off. There's no real excuse here. You must be doing something in your free time off work other than writing like entertainment, social media, email or web surfing. Spend less time on those time-wasting activities and more minutes a day and a week writing.
You need to give something up to complete a book draft in a short term marathon to write up the first draft. Television, watching movies and computer games is a good thing to give up as well as optional projects you really don't have to do. Big tasks like cleaning out your closet do one rack at a time or bit by bit when you got some writing done and need a break.
Spend some time between writing mini sessions preparing for the next writing mini session by spending almost as much time researching on Google and freewriting brainstorming as you do composing your draft. Always prepare to write so you don't have to write cold. Just do your preparing after composing the next little bit.
12. You had low levels of minute by minute productivity in big blocks of free time so the project failed
Write for longer writing sessions at one slew. Do more writing sessions in one day in big blocks of spare time. Always work on your writing in big blocks of free time unless working on your health or earning an income.
Research a bit less in a day on Google and spend less time on time-wasting activities and give something up like an optional.
Put off a book you are reading until later or for outside or just before bed time. Write instead of reading the book.
Set a daily word count and time minutes count based on average days of production so far and always aim to meet your daily word count quota before stopping for the day, even if you have to do a double session at the end.
Try learning to type faster. Use a typing tutor like Mavis Beacon.
Stop doing what you are doing instead of writing and you'll improve your number of words produced in your book draft per big block of spare time hour in a day and a week.
Use a time log and repeatedly track and measure how many writing sessions you did in a day, their total time and individual word counts for each. In your time log it says what you are doing instead of writing. Stop that.
15. You were not keeping a time log so you allowed time-wasting activities and doing other things to creep into your schedule and were not accountable for your time usage daily
Keep a time log of all the time in a day and you'll know what you do instead of writing when you are putting things off like I am blogging this chapter-length blog post now. Time and do word counts of each 25 minutes writing session in a day and aim for one 25 minute writing session for every 76 minutes of big block of free time in a day.
Keep a summary of your time log records and word counts in your daily entry in your project journal. I use a Younghusband travel journal with 50 2 page daily entry spreads for keeping track of 50 days on my project at a time. The dedicated pages for arrival, departure and research I use to keep track of my deadlines and chapter outline.
32. Writing is not yet daily and regular and I sometimes take whole days off writing
Write every single day at least one 25 minutes session a day on your book draft in Scrivener and don't lose momentum. Writing daily is a recommended habit of all writers advised frequently on all posts about making the time to write so do it.
Now and early is the best time to make time to write so write now.
Schedule your writing and follow a type of writing schedule.
34. Estimating the total length of your book series gave you a big block of time total hours estimate of 750 hours and it will take you so long (one point five months) that you don't want to progress on it and you give up as it's just too overwhelming to contemplate after you did your timed deadline plan estimated progress plan schedule
You are feeling discouraged after estimating the total length of time of a very long book manuscript project. Imagine it takes much less time in total to do a book draft. Make the book much shorter and still make sure it contains the key details of the main topic. Find out the format of other books published on the main topic. I am sure they are much shorter. Write to the average published book spec on the market, not to really long book length targets.
Divide your new planned book project into Parts 3 chapters at a time, grouping related chapters together like the book: "Write More, Sell More"
Eat an elephant one bite at a time. Each chapter in my new planned book is 4,026 words and contains 7.666 sub-sections for 111 sub-sections to write for the entire book. Writing the book one sub-section at a time is certainly more doable than the book project I recently estimated and got discouraged about. So switch to the simpler book project and remember to sub-divide each 4,026 word chapter.
If you are an afternoon or evening person, don't try to get up too early in the morning and work directly until bedtime then read before bed.
35. My book is not very well researched and is failing because of that
Spend time each day doing Google research in 200 page research spiral notebooks with alphabet lettered pages. Note each sub-topic of the main big topic query under its letter of the alphabet page. Fill the entire 200 page research journal with notes. Note in point form in your own words just the idea not the wording of it to avoid plagiarism and suits.
Don't write a book you can't research online on Google or that does not have Amazon Unlimited ebooks on it either.
Spend a lot of time daily doing research. I spend 4 - 7 hours a day doing Google research on all my days off.
Do some freewriting exercises in your favorite editor to generate further listed, brainstormed ideas for your book from your everyday life and research notes. Try noodling and noting anything at all related to the main topic as well.
Take out one good sentence from your freewriting and do another freewrite with the pulled out sentence as the prompt idea.
Put the book aside to gestate and incubate. Maybe you'll figure out what is wrong with it later on. Do an easier to do book project instead.
Read what is published on the big main topic of the book you are trying to write and copy the competition book's chapter topics in common and method of development order of chapters. Copy the average number of words per book, the average number of chapters and the average number of headings per chapter. Note take the information if it fills in a hole in your research notes and not if it doesn't.
37. I'm not currently journaling in Life Journal 3 daily. Is that necessary to book success in the long run? You bet.
For success with your book main topic, journal one entry on your book topic a day or do one blog post on it a day in Life Journal 3. Take time to freewrite in a journaling sense daily and collect in Life Journal 3 daily journal entries all about your main subject of your book topic you are working on now. Look for unique combinations of ideas and your own slant on the topic in your journal entries.
Sometimes you can write a whole book composed of material from repeated journal entries. More on that later.
39. I currently don't have a little back burner book idea. Should I?
Yes you should have a little book idea that can easily be written in 250 pages or so only a day. Like a good book for this is 101 (Or 242 and as many ideas and tips as there are countries in the world from A to Z) Ways to Make the Time to Write which I am working on on the back burner with 101 tips or techniques I personally use myself to make the time to write in the book. I aim to write up 250 words of it a day in 25 minutes of in between tasks scheduled time a day of found time daily and the book will be only 44,000 words long so 435 words only per tip per day so I start a tip on one day and finish it on another day repeatedly to do only 250 words on it a day.
42. I'm not currently auto-generating an Amazon Kindle self-published set of similar books to each other in a book series with some canned text and text replacements in common between them with a model book written up first. Should I be?
Yes definitely. Auto-generating book titles on Amazon can allow you to make more book sales income if they are of decent quality so thereby written on Scrivener.
You do complete canned text of entire chapters, entire sub-sections, entire paragraphs and replace text changed in each book in a series of related titles. Each book has its own unique content written for it in part of a day then is assembled from bits of text in common for all books in the book series and packaged together.
45. I'm not currently reading free books daily on Amazon Kindle for a monthly subscription of only $10 a month. Should I be?
Yes, definitely. Each lunch hour of your typical day, look at a new ebook title on your main query search on Amazon Kindle and make research notes on the content in it. Write a book report on the success or failure and what the main book idea was of each book title, noting the title and author carefully. Use the book ideas as book ideas to write up your own equivalent of with a twist on their title or an original title of your own.
Don't write books unless Amazon Kindle has similar on it on the main topic to your keyword query entered as if it is not there already, then it does not sell or you have the wrong query to find it with.
Copy what book ideas worked on Kindle as your own book ideas. Just write your own content up for your own version.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading this far in this blog post. I have combined ideas on failure reasons to complete a first draft by the original deadline with material on making writing less difficult and making it seem easy to do and ways of cheating and copying to make book ideas work out. More on making writing easy and cheating to write a nonfiction book later.
To follow up, make some notes from this blog post in your research journal about ideas you got about how to make time to write or making your writing time more effective. I sure got some ideas myself from writing up the blog post!
Select a key idea from your notes and put it into practice within the next 3 days.
You now have a concise summary of what you need to do to actually complete your nonfiction book by the deadline. Don't do any of the mistakes or failure reasons at all. Stick to it! Time will fly by and all of a sudden the short book will be all done and publish-ready!
Remember to make your writing easier to do than average and cheat, copy and pirate liberally and write your first book on a topic that already has 4 - 6 published books on it on Amazon in paper print that you have found already even if books on it are only published every 4 years or so. Use what worked already.
Go to it!
Blogger: Julie Nield
of central Ohio, United States
Indexed under: Failure reasons mistakes easier writing nonfiction book cheating copying pirating make time to write find time management of writing don't do
