The best time to start writing a book

When’s the best time to start writing your book?

Bad news: it’s before you’re ready.

“Ready” is one of those tricks our mind plays on us, trying to keep us safe/comfortable. 

“Ready” never comes. There’s no convenient time. There's work to be done, people and pets to be cared for, and on, and on... We'll never be "ready;" there will never be a "best" time. There will always be something (or many things) that are competing for our limited resources.

What does it mean to be “ready”?

There’s a difference between taking on yet another resource-sucking activity and making a strategic choice. 

Saying “no” to one thing means you can say “yes” to another. And vice versa. So now may actually not be the right time to start making your book a reality - but what if it is?

One part of writing a book is figuring out how much time and resources you have to dedicate to it. I know not everyone can take several hours a week to do work uninterrupted on their writing, but what time do you have available to you? Do you have an hour a day? 15 minutes a day? One hour a week? Half of a weekend day? What time of day is productive for you - and can you block it off? Can something else be moved (or deleted) to make room for this commitment?

Perhaps there’s a bit of anxiety about “writing a book”?

Writing a book is a huge undertaking. It’s a journey of unknowns. How long will it take? Will it be any good? What if it’s bad? What if it takes ten years? 

I don’t like uncertainty. I want to know what to expect so I can be prepared. Because I am an anxious person, I subscribe to a great (free) email newsletter by Amanda Stern, the author of Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life. 

In her July 27, 2022 newsletter, she says:

“We need things to be concrete; we need to know what’s going to happen. This is what anxiety is—the dread of uncertainty. The dread of discomfort. The fear of feeling fear. . . We don’t know what to do in the face of uncertainty, and being able to have a plan, or talk things through, both soothes and alleviates anxiety.” 

A book coach can provide a newer writer with what to expect from the process. A safe container. Guidance and feedback and accountability. A step-by-step process. A hand to hold when it gets hard; someone who will be with you on the journey.

Measure progress by actions, not outcomes

Nobody sits down and writes a book. As Matt Bell says in Refuse to Be Done (and as I’ve quoted before), “The task of any individual day is never to write a book.” 

We start by figuring out the container that will hold the scope of your book. A book can't contain EVERYTHING - it's actually a very strategic and intentional selection, structuring, and organization of content that makes it a magical thing to read. Doing this will help you write the book because you know exactly what fits in the container and what doesn't.

We figure out SPECIFICALLY what the book will be about and who it will be for. It can't be for EVERYONE - it will be for a type of person with a specific problem or pain or challenge and they want to see how you solved or overcame or developed a strategy for the same thing. And knowing who it's for helps you write because you've always got that person in mind.

This is what a book coach does: works with you to figure all of the tricky stuff out before you start to write so that you have a clear path to your destination.

Where could you be in two months if you start before you feel ready?