The Difference Between Being a Writer and an Author.

byDBCrist

451 followers

5 years ago

A Writer is Born

If your tired of putting off the life you want, the life of being a published author, than you need to start by staying connected to the idea of why you want to write a book in the first place. Write out your why in three sentences and post it where you see it every day.Three simple sentences is all it takes.

1. I'm writing this book because....
2. This book will....
3. With this book I will

Your Emotional Why

There are many reasons why people want to write. Maybe your curious to see if you can just do it, maybe you want to help people, by telling your story, or maybe you have a business idea or perhaps you just have a message you want to convey, but whatever your why, it must be important to you. Writing your why should inspire you, if it doesn't than its not the right why. If your not emotionally invested in your why, your book will never get writing, period.

Compared to a Book, Blogs are Easy

To be a writer you need to write. With blogs, I have never agreed with the idea that a good blog should never be less than 1000 words, its about content not quantity, and if you can get your point across in 200, 400, 600 words more power to you. With peoples limited attention spans today, shorter is usually better, but its hard to be economical with words and still have powerful content. A blog, in essence is an essay, on a very specific topic, a book is a totally different animal

A Book Takes Months

Writing a book is different than writing a blog obviously, you can write a blog in an hour or so, a book takes months. For example, the average book has 240 pages. 200 words a page, 20 pages a chapter or 4000 words. 240 pages divided by 20 equals12 chapters, this comes in at 48,000 words. Committing to 4000 words a week, you can have your book or at least a rough draft, completed in 3 months.

Track your Word Counts

In order to accomplish writing 48,000 words in 3 months you have to have a routine of when, where and how you write. Set weekly word count goals and track your word count progress. Keeping track is vital otherwise we tend to overestimate our progress and without realizing you can fall to 1000 words a week, suddenly your rough draft went from 3 months to almost a year. Tracking your progress is important.

Techniques to Writing

It's incredibly difficult to focus on writing for more than three hours in a day. Using different techniques can help. The Free Writing Technique, 20 minutes writing as fast as you can on the topic your working on, than switching to The Pomodoro Technique using a timer set at 25 minutes than a five-minute break can help break three hours down into manageable bites. The average person should be able to write 250 words in 25 minutes. 4000 words a week can easily be accomplished in eight hours.

Know Where Your Going

In order to meet your word count goals its important for you to know where you are going. When, creating a rough draft you don't have to follow any particular method. Find a method that works for you, rough draft, mind-map or outline each has its drawbacks and advantages, but its key to know where you are in your story and where your going. The goal is to write all the way through your first draft. Write without editing from the beginning of your rough draft to the end. Resist the urge to jump around.

Expect Resistence

Beware the resistance of becoming an author, all writers feel the resistance of not being good enough at the end of a first draft. It's the impersonal force that makes it difficult at changing something in your life, from the you, you know, to the author, you don't know. Take pride in the fact that you have completed the first draft of your book. Revising the first draft is where the writer becomes an author.

As always thanks for visiting, Dave