What Does It Take to Get a Book Written?

Writing a book is a long-term project and like any long-term project is best accomplished when you have a clear plan and stick to it.

Courtesy of etenar.deviantART under Creative Comm

Groundbreaking novelist and literary innovator Henry Miller discovered the same thing while writing his first novel Tropic of Cancer. The11 Writing Commandments he developed to guide his work in 1932-1933 are preserved in his book Henry Miller On Writing and were featured in a recent post on Media Bistros’s Galley Cat.

Five of the eleven focus on planning, organization and focus:

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.

4. Work according to Program and not according to mood.

5. When you can’t create you can work.

9. Discard the Program when you feel like it – but go back to it the next day. Concentrate, narrow down, exclude.

10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing. 

So as you think about your book develop a plan to guide you through to its completion. While you’re thinking about it, you might want to take a look at our recent post Write, Stop, Go: How to Manage Long-Term Projects.

Leave a comment with your best tip for how to get a writing project done.