Writing a book: 4 Roadblocks to Overcome

Oct 10, 2016 | Writing A Book

There are lots of savvy businesspeople out there with lots of ideas for what might become great business books. Most of those books ever see the light of day. There are a few common reasons why.

They Never Start the Project

I think I’d be a rich guy if I had a dollar for every person who has told me they had a great idea for a book but who never got any further than that. It seems everyone I meet at a party has a great idea for a book. So many fine ideas, so few finished books. Why?

The reason is simple. If you want to write a book you have to make it an important project. You have to start the project. You have to capture ideas for the book and put them in some kind of order. If you don’t do that, you never get on to the rest of the project.

They Never Start Writing

If it’s in your head, it’s not writing. Many of the people who have the great ideas for a book and who start their project don’t ever actually write anything. You can’t have a book unless you write it and that won’t happen unless you start writing. Simple, huh?

They Never Finish Writing

That’s right, you can’t have a book unless you finish writing it. Half-baked prose won’t do. Random ideas thrown into a file aren’t enough. Some people never finish writing because they never get to the re-writing and revising that turn good ideas into great books.

Then there are the perfectionists. They keep revising and adding and subtracting. They won’t publish till it’s perfect and we never get to perfect. The best we can do, as Vince Lombardi said, is to chase perfect so we can catch excellence. You’ll never write a perfect book, but you can write an excellent one.

They Never Get the Book to Publication

Many would-be authors don’t even think about this part. No matter how good your book is, it won’t make a difference for anyone unless it gets published. That takes more discipline and work.

I actually had a client like this. I wrote several pieces for the client, but only a couple of them saw a publisher or the light of day. Whether you want to publish with a traditional, mainline publisher or you’re going to self-publish, you have to do the work to get it out to the world after you finish the manuscript.