At some point in their lives, many people are confronted with a big question: what if I wrote a book?
Writing a memoir, murder mystery or steamy romance is an accomplishment. Like running a marathon or successfully filing your taxes, it speaks to grit, determination and hours of research and effort.
But thinking about writing a book and actually doing it are two very different things. According to a 2021 survey by ThriftBooks, more than half of respondents thought they had a good idea for a novel, but only 15% had started writing, and only 8% had finished.
So how does one get started and follow through? We asked experts.
Why do so many people want to write a book?
“So many reasons”, says Jami Attenberg, bestselling author and founder of the annual writing project 1000 Words of Summer.
For some, it’s a necessary form of artistic expression. “They’re born writers, and this is how they communicate with the world,” Attenberg says.
For others, she says, there’s a story in them that’s dying to get out, and writing provides “that cathartic release”.
Still others are motivated by the difficulty of the task.
“Writing a book is a powerful act of imagination and self-affirmation,” says Marita Golden, novelist and co-founder of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, which fosters and celebrates Black writers. “It is demanding, scary and the kind of personal challenge that many people find irresistible.”
That there are so many different reasons for so many different people is encouraging, Attenberg says: “It means people still read, love and value books.”
What stops people from writing books?
And yet, lots of people who talk about writing books don’t actually do it – or they start, and never finish. (For example, without naming any names: me.)
For a lot of people, “it’s difficult and they don’t know how to do it”, says novelist Christopher Moore. “Once you’ve written one, it’s difficult, but you know how to do it,” he adds.
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Often, Golden says, aspiring writers are stopped by their own negative self-talk. Perhaps others have questioned their abilities, or they feel writing a book is only for “certain types of people”, she says.
Some fret that they won’t accomplish what they set out to do. “People fear that if they begin the process, they won’t complete it, and that will reinforce their insecurity or open them to criticism and judgment,” Golden says.
And, Attenberg says: “Life can get in the way.”
If you want to write a book, where do you start?
Read. While everyone’s writing process is different, experts agree one practice is non-negotiable: reading. A lot. This allows you to figure out what you like and don’t like, identify the different tools authors use, and get inspired.
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“Figure out who your influences are, what kind of books you want to be writing, what genre, what length, what kind of vibe,” says Attenberg, adding that she starts every workday by reading someone else’s writing. “Literature, to me, is a big, beautiful, noisy conversation, and we can all learn from and be inspired by other people’s work.”
Figure out why you want to write. “Having something to say is important,” says Moore. Even if you’re not writing a polemic, Moore says, in the process of writing a book, you should regularly be asking yourself: “What am I saying here?”
“It doesn’t have to be profound,” he says. “It might be showing your unique perspective on a topic that’s been covered.”
Research. “Some kind of research is where I start,” says Moore. This is more than looking up dates and places, he explains – it is finding out “what has been written before on the subject I’m interested in”, and then “creating characters to carry the story”.
More from How to start:
Set a start date. It’s easy to slip into a trap of endlessly preparing to write – telling yourself you’re just going to do a little more reading or add further detail to your outline before you start. To escape this, Moore suggests setting a start date. “On that date, I begin,” he says. Sometimes, all he writes that first day is a paragraph: “And that’s OK.”
Take a writing class. In addition to learning the basics of the craft, taking a writing class can help you meet other writers who can support you on your journey, Golden says.
If you started writing a book and stopped, how do you start (again)?
Write yourself a letter. “Try to recall what your intentions were when you began this project,” Attenberg suggests. “Think about why it’s important to you to finish it. What would it mean for you to complete this project?”
Then, she says, set a reasonable but firm timeline for yourself and get going.
Write a scene. Even if it’s not in order, even if it’s a hundred pages from where you last stopped writing, “giving your characters a chance to talk to each other or make decisions will give you guidance for where to go next”, says Moore.
Don’t rewrite. “People get stopped because their expectation for themselves is too high,” says Moore. Allow yourself to write until you have a full first draft, and only then go back and edit. “Once you have a thing that vaguely resembles a book, you can always go back and shape and polish it until it’s what you want,” he says. “No one will ever know that, for a while, your masterpiece was absolute shit.”