Have you ever thought about writing a book?
Meet Charlie Wetzel. My long-time friend, prayer partner and John Maxwell’s writer. He graciously agreed to write this helpful article to those interested in writing a book or writing a better book.
He loves to help people learn to write better and that inspired his new online course of how to write a book. I’ve gone through it and learned so much!! Check it out:
Answer the Call: Developing the Writer Within You
Charlie and his wife Stephanie have been married 30 years and have 3 adult children. They’ve had up to 3 dogs at one time and recently added a horse! Charlie was previously a professional chef, he cheers for the Falcons and the Georgia Bulldogs and is currently learning to wake surf.
Now here’s Charlie Wetzel with some great advice.
People frequently ask my advice about writing because I’ve worked with John Maxwell for thirty years and completed a total of 117 books with him.
If you’ve read a book authored by John any time after 1993, I probably had a hand in it. The books I’ve worked on with him have sold 34 million copies and includes all of John’s New York Times bestsellers.
I love giving writing advice—especially before someone starts writing their book—because I believe I can save them a lot of time and help them avoid a lot of heartache.
If you’re considering writing a book, I’d like to help you. Before you begin putting pen to paper, I recommend you ask yourself five questions:
5 Questions to answer before writing a book:
1) Do I Feel Compelled to Write This Book?
If you’re a thinker, problem solver, or leader, you probably have plenty of ideas you could write about. But knowledge alone rarely provides enough fire to carry a person through the writing process. You need something more. You need to feel compelled.
Why do I say that? Because writing a book is incredibly difficult. If you’ve already written one, you know this is true. If you’re thinking about writing a first book, you may believe it, but you don’t know it yet.
I liken writing a book to climbing a significant mountain.
It’s a huge challenge that takes strategy and determination. You must sustain the fire of your passion for months to carry you through. The more reasons you have for writing your book, and the stronger those reasons, the better your chance of getting it done.
2) Do I Have Evidence People Need This Book?
As passionate as you may be about an idea, for your book to be successful, it must strike a chord with an audience. It must meet a need people feel and want to address.
How does my friend John Maxwell decide an idea is worthy of a book?
Sometimes it is birthed out of a need of his own, what he did to address it, and how he grew as a result. Other times he senses a need in leaders he mentors. Often, when he is speaking and makes a statement that gets a strong reaction from his audience, he makes a note of it and later gives the idea thinking time to flesh it out. This was true for Failing Forward.
I once had dinner with Dr. Henry Cloud, the author of Trust, Boundaries, and other books. I asked him, “Does your speaking give you ideas for your books, or do you write your books and then speak on them?”
“Neither,” he responded. “I’m a practitioner.” He explained that in his work as a psychologist and consultant with many organizations, he often saw a recurring problem. If he did research and could find no published solution, he would solve the problem and write a book about it.
At the end of day, you might want to follow the advice of Toni Morrison, who said, “If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Just be sure others also need it.
3) Am I Willing to Write So that People Want This Book?
Every year in the United States, four million new books come out, including self-published works.
Poet and critic Samuel Johnson said, “The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.”
How do you do that?
To make something familiar seem new, find a unique angle or hook. Put your personal stamp on it. Share insights based on your own failures and successes. Share experiences and stories from your personal journey. To make something new feel familiar, seek common ground and connect it to the experience of your readers so it’s relatable.
I have a lot more to say on this because it’s a very big topic. In fact, I recently created an online course called Answer the Call: Developing the Writer Within You. It takes a new writer from ideation to publication, and a significant part of the course focuses on helping them make their book distinct.
4) Do I Have Enough to Say to Fill a Book?
Have you ever read a book where you got the message in the first two chapters, and you expected something more in the following pages, but the rest of the book had little of value? I have. And as a longtime writing professional, when I see this, I recognize the author’s idea would have been better suited for another medium.
Most publishers expect a good non-fiction book to be somewhere between fifty and seventy-five thousand words. A well written book needs every one of those words to prove its thesis, flesh out its ideas, and help its readers—and it doesn’t contain any extra words that could be cut.
As you think about your message or idea, consider which channel of communication it’s best suited for. Is it worthy of a blogpost? A sermon? A lesson? An article? A podcast or two? Or is it broad enough and deep enough that it will require seven to twelve chapters? And for each of those chapters can you write eight thousand or five thousand words?
5) Am I Willing to Carve Out the Time Needed to Write This Book?
This is perhaps the greatest obstacle most people face—especially when they have a life, a fulltime job, a family, or all of the above. Many clients I’ve worked with face this same dilemma. It takes great determination and intentionality to write when you have a full life. Dan and I have discussed this challenge many times. Even after authoring many books, he still has to fight to get writing done on top of his busy schedule.
Planning a book is difficult. You can’t expect to simply write one in your “spare time” because the time you need will not miraculously appear. Novelist Jack London said, “Don’t wait for inspiration; go after it with a club.” That’s what you must do.
Follow the advice of Nobel-prize winning writer William Faulkner: “I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.” Set yourself appointments to write. And then keep them.
By the way, that’s been my secret for thirty years.
I stay in the chair and write, even when it’s hard, even when I don’t want to, and even when I’m not very productive. I’m stubborn. And if you’re willing to be stubborn, you can do write too.
In the end, it will be worth it. Writing a book is one of the most impacting things you can do in your lifetime.
As Christopher Morley said, “When you sell a someone a book, you don’t sell them 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell them a whole new life.”
And isn’t helping people find a whole new life what God put us here on earth to do?
