Month: June 2021

I couldn’t sleep till 2:00 AM last night. My mind couldn’t relax. I was thinking about the project. Which meant I woke up late in next morning. The day I was expecting the ‘chaos’ to happen. It did.

First, our nephew and niece dropped in early in the morning. Then my daughter and son-in-law came from Melbourne unannounced. Melbourne had just life the lockdown and people were allowed to drive out of the city if they were in the ‘hot-spot areas. Our kids decided to pay us a visit.

I was planning to finish writing by end of yesterday. I was hoping to reach a 20K word count knowing that half of it will be edited out. I only managed to reach 17K yesterday. Not only I hadn’t finished writing the chapters but there were lots of gaps in all the chapters.

Editing the first chapter

I decided to start working on the first chapter. If I could fix the first chapter and establish the right voice and tone, I should be able to fix the rest relatively easily.

I used every bit of spare time to work on it. Fifteen minutes here and there. Before the shower, after lunch, before afternoon tea. I deleted heavily. The word count kept on going down, making me anxious but I wanted the first chapter to be tight. It is a short book after all. I couldn’t afford to waffle.

I was done by evening. After dinner my daughter did beta-reading. She liked it. 

I never felt so much relief. If she liked it, that means it wasn’t bad.

She helped me fix the typos and I had one chapter near completed. She raised a few questions which I decided to address in the end.

After everyone had gone to sleep, I worked till midnight. Researching and filling some gaps. I was too tired to do editing. 

I know I am behind. But there are two consolations. One, the cover is done. Second, I have my daughter here for the next few days. Which means I have a free beta reader and proofreader.

Read the previous posts to catch up on the story of writing an eBook in a week.

I Am Writing An eBook In A Week

Day 1 — Writing An EBook In One Week

Day 2 — Writing An eBook In One Week

Day 3 — Writing An eBook In One Week

Day 4 — Writing An eBook In One Week

Photo by Anna Demianenko on Unsplash

A very quick note today to let you know that yesterday’s panic continues.

Austin Kleon always says that he finds the best quotes and best stories for the book after publishing the book. The same thing might happen with this project.

But the good thing about self-publishing and publishing in eBook format is that I can update it whenever I want.

Why publish in one week then? Why not take time and do it properly?

Because then it will never be done.

The book cover is decided.

The winner is the yellow cover.

Many people liked the image of Ms. Jolly with the torch. So I combined the two and here is the result.

Let me know what you think?

Read the previous posts to catch up on the story of writing an eBook in a week.

I Am Writing An eBook In A Week

Day 1 — Writing An EBook In One Week

Day 2 — Writing An eBook In One Week

Day 3 — Writing An eBook In One Week

Photo by Frank Holleman on Unsplash

The first two days were great. The excitement of a new project. So many support messages. 

I thought I have all the time in the world to write. 

I didn’t want to give up any of my regular commitments. I wanted to continue to write one article a day. Continue to make a sketch a day. Keep my appointments. Keep watching TV at night. Vacuum clean the house, iron the clothes, cook, and do the dishes. 

I had written more than 10,000 words in two days. I was on the mark, wasn’t I?

I woke up on Day 3 and the panic started setting in. I had been working on the assumption that by writing 5000 words a day I will finish the first draft by the end of Day 4. 

The problem was I had only written three chapters. They, too, were incomplete. Four chapters were absolute blank. 

No problem! I will write two chapters a day and will be done by tomorrow. I told myself. 

When you are in panic mode; your productivity decreases dramatically. 

If I tried to write, I worried about editing. And when I edited, I worried about writing. 

Frustrated, I tried to document all this struggle in the Diary chapter of the book. The Diary is the eighth chapter of the book where I am documenting all the struggles I am going through while writing the book. I hadn’t figured a consistent way to write it and it was all over the place. Two hours later, after almost a complete rewrite, I fixed the Diary chapter.

Cover Design

I had some good feedback on the cover design from Medium readers. Mid-morning I shortlisted three covers based on the feedback and sent them to social media to pick the final winner.

Running to the appointment.

I had an appointment around mid-day, which in my infinite wisdom, I thought I could make it. 

I drove like mad to get there. I made it on time. But the lady at the parlor was running twenty minutes late. 

I don’t have extra twenty minutes, damn it! 

That was then I realize, if I want to keep my commitment, I will have to cancel all the appointments and concentrate only on the project. Completely.

I rescheduled and came back home. Half of the day was already gone. I had two chapters to write and an article for Medium.

I calmed myself somehow and worked on the Outline chapter. While writing the chapter, I did the second level outlining the whole book. That really shaped the book. I finally figured out how to structure the book properly. That also showed me where I need to spend more time and which bits have gone too long.

Recap

The total word count at the end of the day is 13526. I only managed 3000 words today. But one more chapter is done (or partially done).

I am hoping to catch up tomorrow. I am planning to populate all the chapters, even if partially. Then use the last three days for editing.

Photo by Perfecto Capucine on Unsplash

I started the morning going through yesterday’s work to give me an idea of where I was up to and started editing. I was going to edit just for half an hour and ended up editing for two hours.

I had to rewrite most of the things to figure out the right voice I want to use in the book. I realized I was using two different voices in the book. My hesitant and struggling voice in the Diary section and authoritative and more confident voice in the book. 

A visit to idea factory

During the shower, I remembered several things I wanted to include in the book. By the time I got out of the shower and was going to jot them down in the notebook that goes to the bathroom with me, I had forgotten half of them. 

I am hoping they will come back to me. Fingers crossed. 

Evening scare

I spent the afternoon researching and writing one chapter. In the evening, Reedsy’s Editor started playing up. It scared the hell out of me. 

For the next half an hour, I copied everything in a Word document. I couldn’t do “Select All” and had to copy chapter by chapter.

ISBN

An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is a unique number that is assigned to every published book. An ISBN identifies a book’s edition, publisher, and physical properties like trim size, page count, and binding type. 

I do not need an ISBN to publish an eBook on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). But I do need an ISBN to publish a paperback. KDP can provide a free ISBN, or I can purchase from multiple sources on the Web. Since I am not thinking paperback at the moment, I am not going to worry about it.

Draft Bookcovers

After dinner, my battery was running on low. I wanted to start writing another chapter, but I knew I would tire myself. So started working on the book covers in Canva along with watching a movie on TV. 

I struggled with moving objects and using different fonts in Canva. I was tempted to learn from YouTube videos, but that would have wasted a lot of time. After playing with Canva, I figured it out. 

I am thinking of including an illustration of Ms. Jolly’s on the cover. Ms. Jolly is a character I created while learning to draw cartoons last year. She is my alter ego, a much daring and wiser than me but also comical and witty. 

I created 4 different covers with a bit of variation. None of them is complete, though. But here they are. I need your help to choose one.

I also need a subtitle for the book.

I came up with some: 

“An eBook writing guide for first-time writers.”

“Writing and eBook made easy.”

“A beginner’s guide to writing an eBook in a week.”

“An easy to follow guide for writers who are intimidated by the book writing process.”

“Write your first book fast.”

“Write a short book and write it fast.”

“Intimidated about writing your first book? Make it short and make it fast.”

Please help me choose or suggest something totally new. 

Because I am not completely happy with any one of them.

To Recap

By the end of the day, I had met my daily quota of writing 5000 words. Altogether I have 11,478 words. But I am very conscious that a lot of them will be either edited out or rewritten. 

Photo by Perfecto Capucine on Unsplash

Yesterday I announced that I would write an eBook in one week and share the daily progress on Medium.

I have been procrastinating writing eBooks for three years now. The main reason for that was I thought anything that has the word ‘book’ in it should be written by an expert and it should be a unique and great idea.

In my daily meditation, I have been asking the universe to help me get over this hurdle. This morning I heard a tiny whisper, “Write the damn book. Start today, and do it fast.”

Startled, I opened my eyes.

The message was clear. I shouldn’t ignore it.

If there is one thing that I have learned in my creative life, it is to act while the idea is still hot. It may not amount to anything, but at least I would have tried. There would be no regrets later that I didn’t give it a go.

I opened my laptop and got to work.

I decided to use Reedsy’s Free Book Editor as my writing tool. It has a clean interface, has auto-save functionality, works well with Grammarly and takes care of the formatting and conversion to most publishing platforms.

Next was the structure of the book.

Luckily I have a structure that I use with most long-form writing, which I knew will work well with this book.

I spent an hour outlining the book. While doing that, I came up with an idea to keep a diary while doing the project. I had read a similar diary with one of the books and found it very interesting to read about the author’s struggles and the decisions he made while writing the book.

I wrote about 350 words in the diary. An outline and few paragraphs in the diary, that was all I could manage in an hour. But at least I made a start.

Time to attend to other important tasks, i.e., housework.

While washing dishes, I made a few decisions about the book.

1. I will write this book as a fun project, which means no pressure for perfection, or spending money.
2. The book will be 15,000 to 20,000 words long. That means 60 to 80 pages. No more than 100 pages with acknowledgments, references and other such pages. No one has time to read long books.
3. I will self-edit using Grammarly and ProWritingAid. I already own both software.
4. I will self-design the book cover. Later on, if needed, I can replace the cover with a professionally designed one.
5. I will self-publish the book on Amazon.

I know from experience I will only get four clear days in a week. Some sort of chaos will happen on at least three days. So practically, I have four days to write the book. If I could do that in the first four days of the week, I will be able to use the last three days for editing.

That means I will have to write 5000 words a day for Day 1 — Day 4.

Sweet.

No problem.

Bring it on.

Hell no!

In those four days, I will have to do the research as well. If I had planned the project properly, I would have done the research first and then would have started writing the book. But now I have to do both side-by-side.

Research is one thing that makes most of the writer give up their projects. Not because they don’t like it or are not good at it, but they get sucked into it. That is one thing I need to watch out for if I am to finish this project in time.

That is exactly what happened on the first day. I got sucked in research on the very first day. There is so much information on publishing on Amazon that my head spun.

But I manage to get enough information for one chapter. Then I wrote the Introduction and Chapter 1, basically information dumping without worrying about fluency or grammar.

By the end of the day, I had written 5543 words written. More than half of them will be edited out.

I worked on the Publishing chapter first to give me a roadmap of things I need to do in-between writing.

Three things I need to address straight away:

1) Book cover — Design it early so that I have time to share it and get a vote on it, leaving me enough time to tweak it if needed. As I have no experience in cover designs, the sooner I start better it is.

2) ISBN — see whether I need it or not. And how long it takes to arrive.

3) Kindle Direct Publishing — Start filling the form and see if there are any surprises there.

I will write about the progress on these tomorrow.

Photo by Spencer on Unsplash

I have wanted to write an ebook for months now. But every time I start, I stop after a few days. I convince myself that I don’t have the skills. That I don’t have a good topic to write about. That no one will buy my book, so why bother.

These are all excuses.

The reason why I want to write an eBook is the same as why I wanted to write on Medium.

Back in March 2020, when COVID had just struck, I wrote an article on Medium. It was an innocent attempt. I knew very well that I don’t have the skills to write on a platform like Medium and of course, no one will read it.

To my surprise, many people read the article. Some even clapped and started following me.

I felt so encouraged that I started writing more often. So much so that nine months later, I decided to write an article a day. That helped me win $500 bonus just three weeks later.

My reservations about writing eBooks are the same. And I have to counter them the same way. Just write in and publish it.

This morning I decided to write my first eBook. And I want to write it quickly. Before my left brain has a chance to talk me out of it, I want to announce it here, so that my readers keep me accountable.

Selecting a topic and a niche.

The biggest problem for writing an eBook is finding the topic. The common advice is what are you good at and what people want to read. I don’t know the answer to both of them. At times I feel I am not good at anything and I have no clue what people want to read for which they will be willing to pay money.

The second way to ask is to figure out what problem I can solve. My mind goes blank at questions like these.

So I tried the third way. What would I like to know for which I will be willing to pay money?

That made it a bit easier.

There are many things I would like to know and will pay money for them.

One of them is how I can write my first eBook quickly. I want to do that along with my other commitments. So if someone can show me the way, give me a repeatable process, I would happily pay for it.

That seems like a good enough topic to write about — how to write and publish a book quickly.

I am sure there must be many books available on the topic or the information can be collected by researching on the internet, but if I could give it a bit of twist I can write a useful eBook and learn a lot in the process.

That settles it then.

I have my topic now, what about the niche?

My niche is new writers like myself.

Writers who want to write a book but are intimidated like me.

I want to take them on a journey along with me.

If I could make the process simple and easy enough, they might be able to write their first eBook within a week too.

That’s it then.

I will be writing a book titled — How To Write And Publish An eBook In One Week, and will share the process right here with you.

The twist I am going to give it is that I will write and publish the eBook in seven days, starting from today.

I will do that to prove that it can be done.

Today is Day 1.

Wish me luck please.

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu on Unsplash