See the Trees in the Forest; Where to Start Writing Your Book

When you want to write a book, figuring out where to start is one of the most problematic obstacles. When I talk to aspiring authors, this is one of the most common challenges that comes up. And it can hold back even the most motivated people.

You know writing your book will be good for you--it will attract more ideal clients to you, it will make your business more visible, it will allow you to make more money, and it will get your message out to much bigger audiences. You want to write the book and you have lots of ideas, but when you sit down to do it, you just can't seem to get anything done.

Why is it such a struggle when the desire is there? Because writing a book is such a big project that if you sit down thinking, "I'm going to write my book," you'll end up overwhelmed. You won't see an easy entry point. It's like trying to see individual trees in a vast and dense forest--the task seems so big that it's hard to see it for its smaller pieces. But forests aren't just one big thing; they're a collection of many smaller things all working together.

Books are the same way. They're not just a big idea written out; they're many smaller ideas compiled and arranged so they communicate something larger. Books are created sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page, and chapter by chapter. When you understand this, the idea of writing a book is more manageable. Just like you'd have to plant a forest one tree at a time, you can't write a book by sitting down to write a book-you have to break it down into smaller pieces and write them one at a time.

So where do you start? Once you understand that a book is several smaller pieces put together, you just need to figure out what your smaller pieces are. What stories are you going to use? What strategies are you going to teach? What examples are you going to give? Then when you sit down to write, you work on one of those small assignments.

You're not writing an entire book; you're writing an example of how your readers can apply your first strategy, or you're writing about the importance of the third step in your system, or whatever your assignment is for that day. Only after you break the bigger task down can you truly grasp where to start and what it will take to get it done.

When you approach writing a book as many small pieces, the task is no longer overwhelming. You can sit down to write with a sense of purpose and a manageable task to complete. Then you can come back and do the same thing the next day. And before you know it, you're no longer thinking about writing your book-it's actually done.