If you don’t have time to read, then you don’t have time to write. These are the words of thriller writer, Stephen King from his book, ‘On Writing’, and I’m sure he’s correct. Reading feeds what you write. So, if […]
Depending on the project, when rewriting and editing, I try to remove as many words and punctuation marks from my copy as possible. Do this and you clean through to the bare bones of your writing making it tighter and […]
A three-month book project divides roughly into three phases. The split between them isn’t exact, but overall, I think this is a good approximation of the different stages Longer books go through the same process but more time is spent […]
Here’s an interesting thought I came upon from behavioural scientist James Clear that certainly applies to the non-fiction book writing process. He said: “Deconstruction creates knowledge. Recombination creates value, which I think is a pretty good summary of what you […]
The reason people read non-fiction books is to learn stuff and gain insights. And generally, you need to make that as easy as possible for them. Not doing so seems counterproductive. If you want an analogy, it would be like […]
Ideas are all around us. So, you don’t need to create them, you just need to find them and then put them together. As Stephen King put it in his book ‘On Writing’: “There is no Idea Dump, no Story […]
Whenever you doubt whether you should write a non-fiction book or not, take heart from this quote by thriller writer, Stephen King: “What you know makes you unique . . . Be brave.” The lesson I think here is to […]
When you care passionately about something, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking it’s your way or the highway. You could be right of course. But then again, there will almost certainly be others writing the opposite of […]
One of the ‘rules’ of writing is that you shouldn’t be wishy-washy in your writing. Everything should be written with certainty. No perhaps, or maybe etc. But how does this square when the world is wishy-washy? Not black and white […]
Some writers embellish their writing with what American author, Mark Twain, called five-dollar words – big words, that many readers don’t know or understand. Use them, and your writing can easily come off as pretentious. They certainly won’t make it […]