A peek into the background of my book writing.
My dad says I don’t know when to stop. I’ve been called driven, intense, and sometimes I refer to myself as ‘a little crazy’ because of what projects I take on.
When I finally buckled down and gave in to writing Created for This, I knew two things: One – God had placed the right people and resources into my life to help me publish my book. Two – I needed to write my book quickly so I could get the words off my heart and on to paper because they were too important to sit there any longer. I also had created a deadline with the help of a friend who said I could sign books at her event – free publicity, yes thank you!
The writing resources
I only have so much bandwidth and capacity, just like you. With my schedule, March turned out to be the best time to launch my book. If I’ve learned one thing as an entrepreneur that has benefitted my writing, it’s outsourcing and asking for help when you are not the expert so you don’t waste time and money when you don’t need to.
As I’d mentioned, I had resources. My friend and writing coach, Alexa Bigwarfe, was a previous client and I learned a lot from her about writing and publishing! She has a group coaching and accountability program that was really helpful as I was picking my book cover and working with someone as knowledgeable as Alexa made it easy to complete my writing process. Alexa also formatted my book and uploaded it to Amazon Createspace and Kindle for ebook.
My editing was done by my friend Liz Thompson. There was no way in the world that I would have edited my own book and I knew Liz was someone I could trust not just because of her excellence, but because she knows the Bible and that was really important to me.
A book’s cover is probably the most important visual thing about it and I wanted something that stood out. Jena Holliday is an artist who I follow on Instagram, and I’d met her through the Influence Network. She was able to take what I described and made it into the beautiful cover that it is now. We had important themes we wanted to highlight and she nailed them down perfectly!
My brother, Ben, is currently attending seminary and he provided my biblical references and checked for errors in my writing. It doesn’t get much closer to home than a brother and it was so awesome to work with him through this process! I honestly couldn’t have written the book so quickly without him. God gave me him as my brother and I couldn’t be more thankful. I guess I should take back all those wedgies I gave him during childhood.
Balancing time
During the writing process, I had to make time for my writing. Obviously, with three kids, a husband, taking a college class and a business, “finding time” to write is about making time and being really intentional about your available time. I had some long days of writing and basically no social life in November and December when I did the bulk of my writing.
If writing as an entrepreneur is in your future, be prepared to have a lot of your time used by writing, depending on how fast you plan to write it. Something I did that I was really happy about was setting an end date. Having a deadline helps plan your schedule AND get the book written. This was also how Alexa helped me because being a first time author, I had no clue what to expect.
A lot of prayer went into my devotional and I know a devotional might not be what you are writing but it’s still a representation of who you are and what you stand for.
I really enjoyed my writing process and if you’d like to chat further, feel free to contact me! I’m happy to pass on other names and helpful information.
Also, Alexa has all of her resources on her website and you can check out her write a book in 90 Days program, Just Write It! through my affiliate link.
My schedule looked like this:
October: Outline, topics, title
November/December: Write, nail down cover, create a launch team
January: Beta (pre) readers and editing
February: Finish editing, formatting, pre-sales
March: Printed to check layout and cover, launch March 7
Good for you!