by C.K. MacLeod
Updated. Originally posted at Beyond Paper Editing.
Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? If so, you’ve tasked yourself to write a book in four weeks. How will you do it?
Writing a book can happen fairly quickly, particularly if you know how to create an efficient writing and publishing workflow. I wrote the first draft of the book on the left in about 10 hours and completed the rest of the process in nine weeks. Here’s how:
1. Have a System
To get a book to publication quickly, it helps to know the essential steps in the idea-to-ebook process. As both an author and editor, I’ve discovered a few efficiencies that can save time in the writing and publishing process.
Here are the steps as I follow them:
- Collaborate (optional)
- Brainstorm
- Research
- Organize
- Draft
- Revise
- Edit
- Add Images (optional)
- Clean Up
- Format
- Proofread
- Create a Cover
- Publish
You don’t always have to follow these steps in order, but if your steps are orderly and logical, it’ll help you to be more efficient.
2. Use Efficiency Tools
You’ll be more efficient at writing books if you use the right tools for the job. Scrivener, for example, is a wonderful drafting tool that can help you organize a potentially unwieldy book.
Trust me, it’s never good news to discover at the editing stage that your book’s structure isn’t working. If you use an organization tool like Scrivener early in the process, you can sort out any structural issues at the beginning, long before the editing stage (where they can become costly). Scrivener can benefit writers in other ways, too. (See Idea to Ebook: How to Write a Quality Book Fast for more details).
It’s also worth noting that Microsoft Word is currently the best tool for the editing stage of your publishing process (I’m hoping that the creators of Scrivener will remedy that). You may not agree with me, but in Idea to Ebook: How to Write a Quality Book Fast, I think I make a pretty good case for why you might want to have Word in your writer’s toolkit.
I also recommend over 30 free and inexpensive tools that writers can use to create quality books efficiently.
A Caveat
It’s one thing to publish quickly, and quite another to publish well. Quality matters, and it’s important that you don’t sacrifice quality for speed. Your readers won’t care how long it took you to produce your book—but they will care whether your book is good.
I believe that creating a quality book fast is within every author’s reach. Your “fast” might not be my “fast,” but there are ways to create better books faster.
Want to know more about how to create a quality book efficiently? Curious about how Scrivener and other tools can help you do that? Idea to Ebook: How to Write a Quality Book Fast is a quick read, and you’ll find it on Amazon for $0.99 during NaNoWriMo.