WRITING ... The First Two Steps

Love Has A Lot To Do With Both

MONDAY

WRITING is a wonderful exercise whether writing for legacy or leverage. It engages all the areas of your brain and offers you the opportunity to stretch your imagination and put yourself in someone else’s life, visit a place you love or one you have never been to before, or create a world that doesn’t exist. It allows you to explore emotions: anger, pain, happiness, sadness, jealousy, excitement, despair, joy and many more.

The question I have gotten most often over the years is “What do I WRITE about?”

So it bears repeating. WRITE about something you know about or love. WRITING is about process it is the journey not just the destination and if you expect to stay with it through the struggles, and complete the finished product; then you really need to love the subject, topic or story and want to share it with others.

STEP ONE: Just Start Writing

If WRITING fiction, you can start by WRITING down a summary of the characters, storyline, location, tone (serious, humorous, emotional, tragic, happy), conflict and outcome. Maybe you need to do some research about the location to find out some more details to make the scenes more real or if an imaginary place just start creating that world with your pen or keyboard.

If WRITING non-fiction, you can start like I do from a journalistic point of view with the 5 W’s and H: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. That is the reason I don’t have white page syndrome … fear of a blank page … writer’s block … I can always sit down and start writing without any hesitation. Maybe you have knowledge, a system or a process that will help someone else overcome a challenge or be successful with health, money, relationships, career, volunteering or spiritual issues. WRITE about that.

If WRITING a children’s book, you can start by WRITING down an experience you had as a child, teen or adult. Or maybe you want to share a story (real or imaginary) with your children or grandchildren, a niece or nephew, or just children in your neighborhood, community, city, state or world. You don’t have to have children to WRITE for children.

STEP TWO: Know Your Reader

The second critical consideration is AUDIENCE. Who do you want to WRITE for or to help educate, inform or entertain? Who is your reader? Let’s get it out of the way up front. Your book is NOT for EVERYONE! If you are WRITING a book to help educate or inform Young Mothers then I am not your audience. I am a single, mature woman with no children.

And, even if your book is for everyone. Most of you don’t have enough money to MARKET and DISTRIBUTE to everyone which we will talk more about in future articles.

I recommend you get a journal, notebook or open a document so you can take notes. I want you to WRITE down everything you can think of to describe you IDEAL READER.

• Age

• Gender

• Education

• Profession

• Single, Married, Divorced

• Children, No Children

• Income

• How much disposable income do they have

• Where do they live

• What are their hobbies

• Where can you find them

• How and where do they spend their free time

• Who do they spend their free time with (alone, family, friends, other)

• What are the habits

• What are their values

• What is their character

• What are their life experiences

Once you have written down some of these things you will begin to get a picture in your mind of your ideal reader. Now you can WRITE to that person. WRITING becomes so much easier when you are WRITNG to a specific someone. If you would like to get a template from my 5 Day Writing Challenge. Comment I want the Audience Avitar Template or send me an email at authoradventure@gmail.com.

I hope this has been helpful and will jump start your WRITING project.

Tomorrow I will talk more about LAUNCHING your book for those who might be close to finishing your manuscript or moving toward the PUBLISHING phase of your Author Adventure.

Remember if you have specific questions, please comment below. You can also check out my Notes Post, or join my weekly chat, which should show up at the top of each article on your dashboard.

Cheers to your WRITING success, Liz