I am sure that I am not the only freelance writer who wonders whether they will ever author anything other than the pieces that they produce for the writing assignments that they take on. Writing is enjoyable for me, and I have been able to find projects that allow me to express myself creatively while earning money. Someday, though, I would like to write something independently of work. I am not sure how and when I will ever find the time to do that, but it is still a dream of mine. Since the process of getting a traditional book published seems very long and daunting, I will most likely choose to write an ebook as my first foray into writing books.
I have heard that one good way to approach writing a book or an ebook is to write a little bit every day. That makes sense, because it is easier to find a little bit of time every day than to wait until you can spend hours and hours writing without interruption. It also makes sense because writing an entire ebook can be an intimidating task, but breaking it down into smaller pieces can make the goal of completing it much more attainable.
When I do write my ebook, it will more than likely be a nonfiction piece because that is what I love. In order to make the larger goal of writing a nonfiction book or ebook seem more doable, I have broken it into a series of mini – goals. My first mini – goal is to define exactly what I want to write about and why. What question do I want to answer for my readers? What problem do I want to offer a solution to? What experience do I want to portray? The next step is to take that general idea and turn it into a working title. After that, a thesis statement, followed by a table of contents. Once the table of contents is complete, the “skeleton” of my ebook will be in place and I can enjoy the process of filling it out with the “meat”, or subject matter. Editing, formatting and publishing come after that and make the ebook complete.
When you break the ebook writing process down into smaller steps, writing an ebook seems doable instead of daunting. Now it’s up to me to find those little slices of time during which I can get to work on those mini goals.
Photo by super on morguefile.com.