How to Write a Book: The 3,2,1 Method
It may seem obvious, but the most daunting part of writing a non-fiction book is when you actually have to write it. You’ve got an idea and you may even have a signed publishing contract, but now you’re faced with the challenge of transforming a blank document into a book.
If you’re facing this challenge, maybe I can help. There’s a method that has helped many of my authors overcome writer’s block to finish their first draft. I’ve never named it before, but why not call it the ‘3,2,1 Method’? It is three key steps after all.
But before I get into the meat of the method, you need to first break your book down into chapters. If you’re writing a narrative book, you probably want to start with the first chapter. If you’re not writing a narrative book, then you’re better off starting with whichever chapter you feel most confident about.
Now the 3,2,1 Method comes into play…
3. Research
Start with a blank document and paste into it any interesting articles, statistics, extracts or even social media posts that are relevant to your topic. If you’re writing about something that is of the moment, be sure to use the Google Search ‘News’ tab to ensure that you include all the recent developments.
If possible, it’s always best to do some first-hand research. Reach out to experts and academics (if relevant) and see if they’d be interested in a quick interview. If it’s useful to gauge public opinion on a particular topic, post a poll on social media if your network is big enough. The results that will come from these direct approaches may seem anecdotal in isolation but, combined with strong secondary research, they will create a convincing and engaging argument, or paint a comprehensive picture of your writing topic.
It can be hard to parse through research, particularly when you’re covering a broad topic. To help with this, I’d recommend a ‘dump and cut’ approach, where you dump masses of content in a document before then searching through the document to find the most eye-catching and important nuggets of insights. Delete the rest and you’re left with all the resources you need for step 2…
2. Write
Ok, this may seem blindingly obvious. But I want to emphasize that ‘write’ is literally all you need to do. This needs to be your sole focus, don’t leave any room for distractions, self-doubt or imposter syndrome.
The aim here is that you enter a flow state, where your fingers are dancing across the keys and you’re barely even noticing it. You need to write without abandon, even if you think the words you’re producing are completely idiotic or incomprehensible. You need to focus on the fact that you’re putting words on the page. Save the rest for later.
Close all your tabs. Put your phone away. Surround yourself with busy people by working in a cafe or library. Put in your headphones and play some ambient music (Brian Eno and Chihei Hatakeyama are personal recommendations) and just write. Set the bar low — you’re not writing the next best-selling book, you’re simply filling a document with words. Give yourself a daily or weekly word count goal and keep writing until you hit it.
1. Revisit
Unless you’re working with an extremely tight deadline, this is your opportunity to sit on it. Don’t think about what you’ve written for a couple of days at least — let other thoughts occupy your mind.
Then, revisit. You might expect this to be an editing stage, but it’s not. Self-editing is a myth — someone else needs to do it (and I’m not just saying that so I can keep my job as an editor!). Instead, revisit your words to see if it makes sense, to see if it flows as well as it could, to see if you’ve covered every point you want to make. It’s also worth revisiting your research document, to see if there’s any leftover quotes, statistics etc. that are worth bringing into the text.
You might want to move paragraphs around, you might want to add a couple new paragraphs, you might want to change your tone to fit your intended readership. You almost definitely will want to cut out some unnecessary asides or overly descriptive writing. Maybe you don’t want to change anything… it’s rare, but it does happen! Spend some time on this stage to ensure that you’re happy with what you’ve written but don’t be too hard on yourself. If you make too many changes at this stage, you risk stripping your writing of the authentic and natural voice that comes from the earlier writing stage.
There it is, the 3,2,1 process. Take this approach with every chapter and, before you know it, you’ll have a book. Or you might just have a few chapters — not everything works out. But either way, you’ve become a writer and shared something with the world. That’s a result!
