Writing a book - My process

The easy part. And the hard part.

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I really enjoy writing. Blogs are good. Books are better.

Blogs are easy. Books are harder.
There definitely is a correlation between difficulty and joy in the outcome. Basically -

Your get out of it, what you put into it.

I've written 8 books, and have 7 of them in print right now. (Available at Amazon.com, of course.)
One novel: Marrianne Available Here is the story of a young girl, kidnapped and used in the slave trade.

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I'm considering a sequel to it, but first I have to finish my current project, a book on goal setting. (A favorite topic of mine.)
I have two that are on practice management (I'm a Chiropractor), two that relate my spiritual journey, one that is on stress management, and one that shares my recovery story.
I'll tell you about those sometime.
I also wrote another novel that I never got printed - it was too abstract. Even I made fun of it.

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Anyway

for me, the easy part is the writing. I usually have a rough outline in my head, which I get on paper as soon as I can, before I lose my great idea.
Then the long, fun, process of writing - filling the outline in with enough words in the right magical order to grab, and keep, a reader's attention, while imparting information and thoughts of value.

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The hard part

is coming up with an idea that has enough umph to first, grab my attention, and then keep it long enough to come up with those magical words and sentences.

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Oh, I forgot - the boring part

That's what comes after all the writing.
It's the re-reading, and re-writing part.
This part is where the writers are separated from the dabblers. And it has to be done.
You see, the first draft, the one that the writer is in love with? The one that grabbed the writer's heart and squoze it until the story lived on paper? That draft is usually not right.
That draft is usually too long. Or too short. It has sentences and paragraphs that must go. Sentences that I cried over, are often alive only in my mind - and nobody else's. And they have to go.
And only after reading that draft several times, does it dawn on me that those precious sentences mean nothing to any reader than myself. They have to go.
As Steven King (I think) said - authors often have to kill their babies - those 'perfect' sentences that are alive only in my own heart.

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So, writing is easy. It is hard. And it is tedious.

And it is wonderful.

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