Writing A Book: Part One — Bring Sherpas!
Time to unpack...Image by emmamccleary via Flickr
As we were leaving a friend’s home after Thanksgiving lunch, a fellow guest turned to me. Like almost everyone I meet socially, she had sighed wistfully hearing I’d written one book and was now writing another. “Oh, I’d love to write a book. I’ve got such stories,” they tell me. Only a few seem to get that it’s not quite as simple as pounding away at a keyboard for a few months.
“How do you write a book?,” she asked. “Do you have an outline? Do you just start writing?”
Writing a book is to daily blogs or daily/weekly/freelance reporting as a Tibetan trek is to a leisurely stroll through your local park. Bring Sherpas!
The former demands a sort of extremely solitary discipline, your writing life — minus competitors, colleagues, editors. You now have only one deadline, and it’s soooooo far away (mine is September 2010) it feels a little unreal, a shimmering oasis on the other side. Of course, you can write a lot faster and turn it in early, which also gets to you the Holy Grail of your next payment; they may eke it out in four bundles over two years. But it also has to be really really really good. No pressure!
I’d lined up my five first readers as soon as it sold; these are five friends and colleagues whom I trust to read carefully and thoughtfully and offer me helpful feedback. They’re essential, in my view. By time you’ve finished a 75,000 or 90,000 or 130,000 word manuscript, you’re often sick to death of it and it’s become far too familiar for you to capture its flaws and omissions.
To sell a non-fiction book most of us sell a proposal, call it a very, very detailed outline, with one or more sample chapters allowing acquiring editors to decide if they like your tone, voice and story. You tightly compress every scrap of your best stuff into this vehicle, find a great agent, send it out, and pray. After it sells, like some circus clown whose little cardboard suitcase carries far more than it looks, it’s time to beautifully re-expand those initial ideas into a book, something you hope like hell will have lasting value to others.
I love writing. So that bit doesn’t scare me. I just have to go do a lot of it now.
As I move through this process, I’ll offer occasional updates.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tweets Tube and Marie McDaniel, Freelancing Job. Freelancing Job said: Writing A Book: Part One — Bring Sherpas! http://bit.ly/8bHZIO [...]
Interesting view into the process! Please post updates. I think many would find them worthwhile.
Thanks…I think it’s often a little mysterious as every writer works so differently anyway. This book is a very different creature from my last, a memoir versus a ton of national reporting and interviewing.
I like the sherpas. Do they copy edit, too? As for that retail customer (more recent post), I’d recommend little white pills behind the counter to hand out to the overwrought.
I wish sherpas did copy edit! These days, with editors stretched so thin, you’d be surprised and horrified what can make it into the permanent pages of your book. Which is why, even as much as I feel thrilled with my new publisher, I still have five “first readers” who I hope will also backstop me.
Those white pills need to be ready for the staff, too!