Brian Tracy breaks down how to write a book every three months using a detailed checklist that works backward from a drop-dead deadline. He's published 4-5 books per year for nearly two decades and offers a free 20-point checklist on his website covering everything from subject selection to manuscript completion six months out.
Chapters
The completion of the task is really important to release the chemicals to feel like a winner, feel you've got that off your plate. I wonder how you break it down for when you're working on a bigger project. Say you're working on a book, you've done 80 plus, you're an expert on writing bestselling books. So part of your most important thing is, hey, I'm on a book deadline, I need to get this done. Obviously you won't be able to write an entire book in the first 2 hours of a day. So how would you chunk it down so that you get that feeling, you want to leave feeling like you accomplished something, right? That you got something done, you checked the box. How would you break down a bigger goal for the morning?
I'm assuming that everybody who is watching this wants to become rich sooner or later, and sooner is preferable. All right? The way that you become rich is you deliver results that people will pay you for. All right? Well, one of the greatest result tools in the world is called a checklist. And a checklist is very simply a list of every step in the process from step 1 to step 2 to step 3, very much like a recipe that is organized that says, this is what you do to prepare a particular dish. You do these things and you do these things and you bring out these things and you take these ingredients in this order, in this quantity and so on, and you put it all together. So some years ago I did something which was really quite ridiculous. I wrote a book, and I promoted the heck out of it. Cost me more to promote the book than I got from royalties or advances. And then after 3 months, they told me that we have no more interest in promoting your book. And I said, well, why? I mean, we're doing so well, interviews, blah, blah, blah. They said, well, after 3 months, the window closes. Is when you write a book, there's a 3-month window prior to the book coming out and 3 months after it comes out and then it closes, we go on to other books. 'Your book is now old, is an old story. It's yesterday's news.' And I said, 'Well, geez, what can I do with that?' I said, 'I know, I'll write a book every 3 months.' And I made that decision. I'm just now working today to finish my 82nd book. It'll be finished by Friday. And all with major publishers, every one is published by major publishers, no self-publishing. And I'm talking about Simon Schuster and Wiley and And I have just published 4 books with the biggest publisher in the world, Penguin Random House. And they came to me and asked for the book. So a person says, 'Well, how do you write a book?' I say, I take out my checklist and I say, the first thing I need to know, we need to agree on the subject. All right? And I only write on a subject that I put in hundreds of hours of research and experience. The second thing we need to know is when is the drop dead date? When are you, when do you plan to publish the book, release the book? And when do you have to have it in your hands, which is usually fully 6 months before the book is published. Okay? So I work back from there and then I've got a checklist. Now I know what the subject of the book is, when the book has to be in the hands of the publishers, and then I work all the way back to step 1. And step 1, and by the way, anybody who wants this, just go onto my website, briantracy.com, and just say Brian's checklist for writing. It's free. And it's 20 points because people kept asking me, how do you write so many books? I've written now 4 or 5 books a year for almost 20 years. And now I say, well, I'm out of it now. I'm done. This last 2 months I've gotten requests for 5 books for 2017 from this publisher and that publisher. And one other publisher wants 2. And I said, geez, I said, you know, I'm going to take a break. No, we want the books because these books sell. They just kind of tumble. Over each other, one sells and the second sells. So here's the formula. Just simply download the formula like a recipe, follow the formula. It takes tremendous discipline to write a book. Like, you can appreciate this because you've written your book, Your One Word. I said writing a book is like digging a ditch to the horizon. Can you picture that? It's like, you know, you just work and work and you lift up your head and all you can see is the horizon. You put your head down, you work and work and work, you look up, it's still the horizon out there, hour after hour after hour. But you got to get started.
Well, I'm going to check out the checklist. It took me 2 years to get this thing out, so I'm envious to get a new book out every 3 months. Maybe, maybe that list will help me too for the next version. Uh, thank you for the tips.
