5 Tips to Help Stay Motivated Writing a Book | Brian Tracy

Hello, I'm Brian Tracy, and today I want to talk to you about how to start writing your book by setting goals. The hardest part of writing a book is always the first few pages. No matter how strong your motivation or how compelling the topic, motivating yourself to start is a huge task if you're struggling to overcome your fear of writing a book. The simplest way to get past this hesitation is to break the writing process down into a series of small objectives. You can then focus on the goals that come first, gradually working your way up to more advanced objectives. While your specific goals will vary based on what you're writing about, almost all authors can benefit from setting certain objectives such as this. If you're wondering how to start writing your book, the first step must be to gain a clear idea of whom it is intended for. Only when you have defined the likely reader will you be able to write in a way that they find compelling. Remember, a written book is a solution to a problem. It's something that enhances the life of the reader. It makes them happy, it improves their life or work in some way. It even if it just entertains them. But you must be clear what it is. Based on the topic of your book, ask what would motivate someone to buy and read it. This will help you to get into the mind of likely readers and write in a way that engages such individuals more effectively. Once you've figured out the reader's motivation, consider what sort of background someone with that motivation might have if you're writing a book about your experience improving your health. For example, likely readers might be people who have tried to lose weight and quit smoking or achieve other healthy but difficult goals. Consider the reading habits of your likely audience. Will these people want to read the book cover to cover, or will they read portions of the book and keep it for reference? Are you talking about a fiction book or a non fiction book? How you answer this question will help to determine both your style of writing and and how you organize your material. The better you are at defining your market at the outset, the easier it is to produce a work that will appeal to the people most likely to benefit from it. Even if you already know exactly what you want to write about, you have to be able to distill that idea into individual points that are easy to understand. The simplest way to do this is to come up with two or three core concepts. Sometimes one idea is enough. This should give you enough detail to expand into a full book while remaining simple enough that you do not have trouble including all concepts in A concise, effective way. Let me give you an example. I have written and published 86 books. I am one of the most prolific authors, I think, in history. And I started off with one book and one publisher. And the publisher sent me a list of questions and said, you have to answer these questions in your proposal, and only then will we decide whether we're interested. And the questions were basically, what is the book about and who is it for, and what benefits will the reader get, and what other books have been written on the same subject, and how is your book different and superior to those other books, and what are the ideas you have that make it unique and superior to anything else? So they ask me all of these questions which you ask and answer in, in producing or offering any new product or service. And I had to answer them clearly. And if you don't answer them clearly, they will say, we're not interested. Because remember, publishing a book is a business. It costs a lot of money. It costs 50 to $100,000 for a publisher to say, yes, they'll publish your book, and that's before they sell anything. So they've got to be convinced that they're going to make money from this book, and the only way they'll make money is if people buy it and read it and tell other people to read it as well. So say you're writing a book that will help readers found and run their own business. Consider all the advice you plan to offer readers and then distill that advice into overarching concepts. Pieces of advice like pursue all sales large and small, or reduce costs whenever you can, even if the savings are minor, could be combined into a concept like take advantage of small victories. Likewise, if you offer advice like hire on trustworthiness over intelligence or conduct background checks for all new employees, you might synthesize it as put together a team you can trust. Core concepts will guide you while writing. They make it easier to tell what information has to be included in the book, as well as how that information can be organized. Putting together an outline at the start of the writing process, it's like putting together a blueprint before you start building a home. It will prevent you from having to rethink and rewrite the book. It also lets you be more confident about your ideas so that you can write quickly and effectively from the beginning. To create an outline, first decide the order in which you want to address each core concept. Then flesh out these concepts, listing all the points you have to include to illustrate and defend each of them. Finally, figure out how each of those points relate to each other and the order in which to make them. Then follow the outline while you write, making sure to include every piece of information unless you find a clear reason to leave it out. When I write a book, what I do is I write and I use 7, 12 or 21. Now I have often written books that have 10 chapters, but mostly it's 7, 12 or 21. So the first thing I do is I write down the chapter titles, the headings, the subjects, and then I organize them. What would come first, what would come second, and so on. And then I start to organize the material that would be in each chapter. Sometimes I will start off with 25 chapter titles or even one case I had 36 chapter titles and what I did is I found I could consolidate and consolidate and consolidate and boil it down to 12 and then consolidate that and then put the 12 in a particular order and you can do the same thing as well. Having addressed common publishing questions like who is this book for? Or what are my core ideas? The final step is to come up with a timetable for your writing. Consider roughly how long it will take you to accomplish each item on your outline, and then assign a date for when you intend to have that item finished. While you may not stick exactly to the schedule, it will help you to figure out whether you're ahead or behind and stay on task throughout the writing process. So before we wrap up, I'd like to leave you with a thought to share with your friends and followers. If you can dream it, you can do it. Your limits are all within yourself and there is no limit to what you can do except the limits that you place on yourself. Now, I'd love to hear from you. So my question today is, have you ever thought about writing a book? 84% of adults have thought about writing a book, and only 1 or 2% will ever start because they don't know where to start. Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action and take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable in teaching you about how to write a book, subscribe to my channel like this video and share this video with your friends. 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