The number one reason why book projects derail is that the author doesn’t have a plan.
When I say you need a plan, I do not mean that you need to use a template that tells you what should go in your book while giving you no flexibility to include your personality and voice. We don’t want that, and it’s not equivalent to a plan.
Planning doesn’t mean setting aside an hour every week to write, either. Setting aside time to write is the first step of a plan, but it’s not a plan in and of itself. When you’re planning to write a book, you need to establish specific steps that you can follow so that after every one of your one-hour writing sessions, you can check off whether you achieved that goal.
I’m going to share some steps you can take to create an actionable plan that will move your book project forward. Before I do, let’s go over a few planning-related problems that are often overlooked.
You Aren’t Giving Yourself Time to Plan
The most common sign of not having a plan is that you’re setting aside time to write, but once you sit down, you’re not sure what to write.
You might feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, or that you should delete everything you wrote, or that you’ve put nothing on the page. Although we’ve scheduled writing time and told ourselves that’s our plan, that time is not actual writing time. It’s planning time. It’s the time you spend to figure out the bigger, detailed plan.
But because we’ve labeled it “writing time,” we’ve set ourselves up to feel like we’re a failure if we don’t write anything during that hour. The hour’s up and we need to get back to our family or job, but we feel like we failed. We started with a blank page and ended with a blank page.
This is not a sign that you can’t write or that your ideas aren’t good. This is a sign that you don’t have a plan. If you often find yourself using that writing time to do something other than actual fingers-on-the-keyboard writing, you need a plan.
You Aren’t Protecting Your Writing Time
This problem is closely related to the first problem. When we don’t feel like we’re making progress, it becomes increasingly difficult to protect our writing time.
If you feel that every time you sit down to write you’re sending an hour out into the ether, an hour that’s not giving you any meaningful results and that you can never get back, how on earth can we expect ourselves to continue showing up? It’s a frustrating dilemma. We want to see forward momentum when we dedicate time and consistency to a project. People say all the time that as long as you’re consistent, you will make progress. This isn’t true. You can be very consistent, but you’ll never make progress without a plan.
Soon, the rest of your life starts to encroach on your writing time. Maybe someone asks you, “Can we have a meeting at noon on Wednesday?” Your writing time was supposed to be from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, but you tell yourself that maybe you can just wrap up writing early that day and everything will still be fine.
If that happens often enough, the book will never get written. Again, this is an issue of planning. I hear a lot of people say this is an issue of willpower. “I have not been strong enough in my boundaries. I have not been clear enough that this is my writing time.” That’s not the problem. You can be strong, clear, and have boundaries, but still feel like this is a total waste of your time if you don’t have a plan.
If other things keep getting in the way of your writing time, don’t beat yourself up for not being able to make momentum.
You Think You Don’t Deserve to Write a Book
The third sign of a lack of planning is that you start to feel like you don’t deserve to have a book—or that you aren’t talented enough to write one. We feel bad about ourselves and indulge in this idea that we should give up. Isn’t it such a relief to give up on something you’ve been working on when you don’t feel like you’re making progress?
Think of the last time you accomplished a huge goal. How helpful was it to beat yourself up for not moving fast enough? I bet it wasn’t helpful at all. The way that our brains work is that if we’re not in a state of belief or inspiration, we lose our desire to keep chipping away at something that isn’t seeing any progress. We tell ourselves that it means we’re not a good enough writer or that we don’t have a story to tell. We assume that no one cares what we think and decide to give up.
If you’ve tried to write a book and fallen off a few times, I bet you had thoughts like that before you quit. Once we decide to quit, it amplifies those feelings. If you’ve ever told yourself that your writing time isn’t productive, or that other things keep getting in the way, or that you’re not motivated enough to write, I want you to consider whether those things might instead be an issue of planning.
I see this all the time. If people don’t have a crystal clear plan for how they’re going to move forward on their book, they won’t.
Know Everything That Your Book Needs to Include
When you create a plan, the first step is to identify everything that needs to go into your book project.
This is easier said than done, but that’s why I created a free checklist that you can use. Download our Memoir Method Checklist. It’s specifically for memoirs, but I’ll tell you a secret: it can apply to any type of book you’re trying to write—nonfiction in particular. The checklist covers every single item your plan needs to include, from the start of your book all the way through publication and marketing.
I would encourage you to not start with marketing. Instead, start by developing your concept, or what we call your six-figure book idea. You need to break that down into one cohesive and overarching structure. The Memoir Method uses quadrants, but there are lots of ways to do this.
Determine what chapters you need to cover within that structure. Then, within each chapter, figure out what components you want to have. Are you focusing on telling a story? Writing about history or philosophy? Teaching something step by step? Once you know the focus of your book, think about how you’re going to lay out your chapters in a way that makes sense.
The checklist includes a free video training. I recommend heading over to download the checklist, then coming back to me when you’ve been through your six-figure book idea. For now, I want to point out that you need to be aware of every step.
It Takes Time
Be honest with yourself when estimating how long each of these steps is going to take.
Most people need about a month to develop their six-figure idea. You may already have a general idea, but you’re going to need time to process it as you work to make the idea marketable and appealing to readers.
You can accomplish this in a couple of weeks if you’re feeling confident, but I would allow yourself a month. That’s because we’re trying to avoid feeling like you didn’t make the progress you wanted to make. It’s much more rewarding to feel like you’re ahead of schedule, so give yourself at least a month for planning.
When you get to the chapters, I recommend planning at least 100 to 150 hours worth of time for a 45,000 to 60,000-word book. That’s just for the writing, not the editing. I know that’s a lot of hours, but the reason why I want you to do that is because it’s going to help you plot out the time you need to spend writing the book.
When we assume that writing a book is a much faster process than it is in reality, we beat ourselves up. The antidote is to go in with realistic expectations. Once you know it’s going to take you 100 to 150 hours, you can be more granular about how you apply that time.
Next, schedule your writing time and protect that time like it’s sacred. You might be wondering how many hours you should set aside each week. If you set aside one hour a week, you’re going to need to work fast. I prefer to set aside two to three hours, but three can become tedious and make you feel tired. If you aim for two hours a week, it will take you two years to draft your book.
Some people don’t want to wait two years. That’s fine, but do you see how we can leverage this? If we want to write in two-hour blocks but still finish our book within a year, we need to find two days a week when we can set aside a two-hour block. We’ve laid out our plan, which means we now know what realistic progress should look like. The fact that we’ve outlined our book also means we know how many chapters we’re writing and what each chapter is about.
That’s usually enough to get people started. The checklist includes follow-up steps for how and when to get a copy editor, proofreader, designer, and so forth. I find that if people can stay focused on getting their manuscript going, they start to feel great about themselves. They know what they need to do at each stage of the process, and they know what qualifies as progress.
If you feel like you’ve already fallen short of your New Year’s resolution to write a book, let me tell you: there is nothing special about January that helps us write books. We can start any time we want. Put aside the negative thoughts and bad vibes and start your book project now. The way to start is not by sitting down to write, but by creating a plan.
If you need help or think it would be useful to have someone sit down with you to make that plan, please reach out. I would be more than happy to do a book consultation with you and discuss how we might support you in those efforts.
In the meantime, please take advantage of our Memoir Method Checklist so that 2024 can become the year you finish your book. I know you can do it.
Happy writing!
