The Proper Expectations For Writing Your Book

“The art of good decision-making is looking forward to and celebrating the tradeoffs, not pretending they don’t exist.”

— Seth Godin

Before you start writing your book, let’s talk about what can you expect during your journey.

At Scribe, we’ve helped over 1,200 authors write their books (as of summer 2019), and probably the #1 thing that separates those who finish their books from those who do not is having the proper expectations going in.

Why?

Because writing a book is hard, and if you’re not prepared for that fact, you’re far more likely to stall, and even quit. But if you know the difficulty of what’s coming, you can mentally prepare to get past those obstacles when they come (and they will).

These are the major expectations you should have as you write your book:

1. EXPECT THIS TO BE HARD

Anyone who tells you that writing a book is easy is either trying to sell you something, has never written a book, or writes really bad books.

Books are hard to write.

And writing a good book is even harder.

To overcome this, you’ll need to work hard. Yes, this should be obvious, but there are many people who seem to think, if only subconsciously, that there is some “trick” to make writing your book easier.

There’s not. There is no hack or trick or workaround.

If you want to write a good book, then expect that it will require hard work from you.

2. EXPECT TO GET TIRED

Writing is tiring (especially if you do it correctly).

Expect to get tired when you write, and expect that it will drain you. Make sure to take the steps you need to be both rested and energized when you write.

I can’t tell you precisely what to do for proper self-care; that all depends on you. Maybe going for a walk with your dog is fine, maybe you need to get more sleep.

The point is not the details; the point is to know it’s coming and do what you need to in order to prepare—and actually do it.

3. EXPECT TO BE CONFUSED

Writing a book is inherently confusing. It is not easy to properly position and structure a book, not to mention the actual writing. On top of that, I will tell you to do things you’ve probably never heard before, or give advice that seems counterintuitive.

But what you’ll find as you work the Scribe Method is that while some of the things we recommend might seem unusual, they actually WORK really well—which is ultimately what matters the most.

If you approach the instructions like Daniel did in The Karate Kid, you’ll be great. If you didn’t see the movie, in The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi had Daniel do a bunch of isolated tasks that seemed to have nothing to do with karate: painting fences, waxing cars, etc. Daniel got frustrated and annoyed. But then, when he started doing karate, he realized that those seemingly unconnected movements formed the basis for karate.

This book will be similar. The exercises I put you through might seem disjointed at first, but no effort is wasted. The exercises are designed to build your book efficiently from the ground up, the first time—as long as you have the discipline to walk through them and do them right, it’ll work.

4. EXPECT TO FEEL OVERWHELMED AT TIMES

There is a lot coming. It will be like drinking from a firehose. You WILL feel overwhelmed at times.

But understand this: overwhelm is NOT KNOWING WHAT TO DO NEXT—which is exactly why you are reading this book. We solve this for you.

If you follow along and do what we say, you will ALWAYS know what to do next. We’ve made this process so that there are no surprises.

5. EXPECT TO BE EMOTIONALLY UNCOMFORTABLE (AND MAYBE AFRAID)

This is a big one. Writing a book will unquestionably push you emotionally, and expose fears and anxieties.

That is never easy, and never fun, but if you want to write a book, it’s almost certainly going to be a necessity (don’t worry, we will tell you what fears are coming and how to deal with them).

Do not discount this or minimize it. Fear is coming, and if you don’t deal with it properly, it becomes the book killer.

This fear is normal and OK to have; you need to expect it and then learn to deal with it.

In fact, fear is such a big deal, it is the whole next chapter.

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

REFERENCE: If you want to know what to expect to get from your book, read Reference piece 9.1: Realistic and Unrealistic Expectations for a Book.