Deciding what the First Book will be

(Read this post or listen to the audio below!)

How do you decide what your first book will be?  Whether it’s non-fiction or fiction and whatever the genre, I believe the first book is one of these three types:

1. a Small Book

2. a Big Book

3. a Fast and Easy Book

Maybe you’ve already decided on what your first book will be – three cheers for you!  I thought I had decided too, several times.  I had chosen a topic and started to work diligently, writing every day and loving every moment.

That is until I started doubting myself and my writing.  Several times – after years of work, I stopped writing my book and began another book, another story. Oh yes, that first story was a great idea, I said, but this one, now this is really it.

Another year or two, and the same thing happened.  I lost heart, lost faith, lost trust in myself and the story I was writing.  I thought I could improve my book, perhaps by adding another twist, another slant to it.  How about if I tell the story from this person’s perspective?  How about if I have these two main characters.  Oh, but shouldn’t I have just one main protagonist?  So if there are two main characters, is my hero Jane or John?  Or maybe I should write it this way instead?

To cut a long story short, from 2014 to late 2018, I started six Big Books and eight Little Books.  You may think that’s not too long a time to be working on writing books. Yet I’ve wanted to make my living writing for longer than that.

I think if I pick up any one of my diaries I will find a reference to wanting to be a writer. I chose a diary at random today. It was in 1982 and I managed to get a chance to do some copywriting for an advertising agency. I’d written letters to every ad agency I could find. One agency responded and gave me a chance.

I thought I did a good job but it wasn’t good enough. They didn’t take me on. Probably just as well, as I don’t think I was cut out to be a copywriter.

Instead, I continued to write in my journals. I dreamed of turning my journals into stories but never did.

Around 2014 I bought Scrivener.  Scrivener is a super-duper tool for organising your thoughts, and preparing your manuscript for publication.  I was excited.  Real authors were using Scrivener and now, so was I.  I loved it and I loved writing each book I began (and didn’t finish). 

The big books I wrote were all going to be a series, in at least three parts.  The little books were short stories or ideas for future big books.  Five years later of playing with wonderful Scrivener and having fun ‘Writing my first book’, I lost heart and literally lost the plot.  I was getting nowhere. Not in terms of finishing and publishing my first book anyway. I wanted to give up but somehow I couldn’t.

Now one thing I know is that you have to keep going at a project to succeed in it – and I did keep going. Because I don’t know many people who would plug away at something for five, twenty or forty years.  Yes, friends, 1982 was nearly forty years ago.

Yet I know, that no matter how much effort you put into something and how much time and energy you spend, once you stop (let’s say for more than a month), then all that previous effort is worth naught.  If you don’t consistently tend to and nurture your project, then it all goes to pot.  Or rather, the pot goes off the boil.

My problem is I have spent years writing big books and years writing little books but I have finished none of them.  How the hell, I wondered, (fretted) am I going to finish and publish that first blasted book?

I wanted to get something published and I wanted to do it fast.  Oh yes, and it must be easy, or as easy as possible.  After mulling this over for a while I had an idea.  One way, would be to write a book that is fast and easy to write.

How?  A bit more pondering and this is what I came up with:

Idea number one:

Choose for the first book something that is already written.  All that would need to be done would be to edit, rewrite or expand upon it.  

For me, this could be my journals. For you, it might be poems that could be gathered together – poems you’ve written over many years perhaps. Or that time you wrote poetry when you were in love.   Maybe there is a great blog post, or an article or essay that could be expanded upon?

Idea number two: 

Choose an activity you already love to do and document it.  Something easy and enjoyable.  Blog about it and then turn the blog posts into a book.  

I liked the idea of blogging about my allotment garden.  That way I could feed two birds with one bit of bread: 

1. Feel okay about spending time getting the work done at my allotment and not feel guilty that I was gardening instead of writing, as it’s all part of the same project.  

2. This idea would mean having a topic to blog about and a topic to create a book around.  I am still exploring this idea.  It’s not a new idea.  I just need to feel really enthusiastic about how it might work.  Because in some ways it feels like I’m following my habitual pattern of starting another new First Book again. Again.

Of course, this blog is about the dilemma of getting from draft manuscript to published manuscript – and that could be a book in itself – perhaps with entries taken directly from my journals, illustrating the angst of the writing and publishing journey – and hopefully the joys!

Idea number three:

Choose something short.  Hopefully, a short book is easier and faster to write (but I suspect this isn’t always true).  

The shortest book I’ve come across was only about twenty pages and happened to be a book of poetry. Another book I read was more like a long chapter.  

If you price your book as low as you can go, letting the reader know that it is a short book, then all should be fine.  

I’m not too concerned with selling lots of copies at this stage.  Whilst it would be wonderful for your short (first) book to go viral, as many lengthy blog posts have done, the main aim in my mind is to break that publishing duck.  

That duck is ‘finishing and publishing my first book’.  Getting that first book out is the aim.  Equally, I don’t want to throw any old thing out there, I want to publish a book I’m proud of.  If I’m getting real with myself though, I don’t expect the first book to be a bestseller.  

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love it if it was!

Idea number four: 

Choose to go incognito.  Fear not – use a pen name.  

Fear stops everything in its tracks, including books. The biggest fear for me about publishing my first book is that it will be crap: everyone who sees it will hate it, criticise it, and me, and I’ll be a total laughing stock.  

If I publish under a name that isn’t mine and the book is a flop, it doesn’t matter.  I can use a new pen name for the second book – which may do better.  Or I could even use my own name if I feel brave or confident enough.  

In this way, if the pen name books fail, the pen-name-person can disappear into the shadows with their failed book and live to fight another day.  Hopefully re-emerging with another pen name (or their own) and a new brilliant and loved book.

I loved the idea of a Fast and Easy book and thought I’d come up with a workable idea, using something I had already written, my own journals.  Never mind that I’m not a celebrity.  Never mind that I haven’t been through a war or been imprisoned or had a life-threatening disease.  Never mind that I don’t have some intricate and exciting tale to tell, because, I reasoned, isn’t an ordinary life – or the real thoughts of an ordinary person, pretty interesting, in a fly-on-the-wall kind of way? 

I thought so.  I think so. The problem is, I don’t yet know so.  The Not-Knowing causes self-doubt, procrastination and the changing of horses in the middle of the stream and this is something Tower of Power strongly advised against)  https://youtu.be/3szJhsa9e0Y 

Write the book you want to read

I like reading about other people’s lives. I like real.  I don’t like gossip mags but I do love some reality t.v.  I love real-life documentaries.  I love honest, open, no-shame sharing.  Memoir is my favourite genre.  Reading Ann Frank’s Diary when I was ten or eleven, moved me to begin keeping my own. 

I have read some published diaries and thought, “Isn’t mine as interesting as this?  Actually, isn’t mine more interesting than this?”  Samuel Pepys Diary, for example.  Maybe I missed the good bits?  Some say the only interesting bit was his entry about the Great Fire of London. The rest of the diary?  Well, no offence Samuel, but zzzzzz.

For a while, the idea of publishing my (honest and real) diaries felt like a good one. Until those old friends chimed in again, my doubts.  

“Are my diaries interesting to anyone but me?”

The other question was, “Where do I start?”  In nearly five decades of writing my diaries/journals, what day or year, out of all those years, do I start from?  I still don’t know.

My journals are my biggest body of written work.  There are so many stories within them.  Which stories should I tell? 

After much thought, I decided to just take a period of time, say three months’ worth of entries, and simply publish them.  Just do it. Get my diaries out there and see what happened.  

Decision made, I set to work, typing and slightly editing my diaries, thinking, “I’ll just cut out the really boring bits”.  

Then I thought, “Hang on, how do I know whether this bit is boring?  Maybe there are some golden nuggets of interest in my daily musings and ramblings?”

I wondered some more. “Perhaps I should explain this bit more clearly?  Or change everyone’s name? – oh and the place names too, so no one recognises themselves. But what if they do recognise themselves?  Will they be pissed off that I wrote that about them?”

“I know, make it into fiction!  So, it’s not a real diary, just the fictional person’s diary.  If I’m writing fiction, I could spice things up, add in some more action and excitement.  Make it more interesting.”

“How about if I choose some really old diaries and have my older wiser self, commenting on them – like, I wish I knew then what I know now.  Or: This is the advice I wish I could have given my younger self.”

Is that a good book idea?

Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe it’s already been done.  Dilemma. Indecision.  Doubts and Fears.  The writing stops again. 

I thought, through simply publishing my diaries, that I had a Fast and Easy First Book idea. Now it seems it isn’t a good idea after all.  

Now what?  Go back to one of the big books and work on that again?

Sigh.

Whether it’s a Big book, a Little book, or a Fast and Easy book, a decision must be made 

I must look at the myriad of book ideas I’ve had over the last ten years and pick one.  Preferably, once I’ve chosen, I will set myself a completion deadline. A deadline not too soon to get me into a panic, but not so far ahead that I can coast and procrastinate.  Also, preferably, I must reveal the deadline date, publicly.  (Oh God).

So now you know.  This is where I am at, with the First Book, after all these years of trying.  

I’ve yet to decide which book I’m now writing but I must decide.  I’ll give myself a couple more weeks – no more. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve come up with the answer.  As soon as I’ve made That Decision.  

It’s taken me days to write this blog post.  I was dragging my heels as I don’t want to decide on something and change my mind again. Whatever I decide, I need to see it through.  Apart from anything else, I don’t have many decades left!

Well, fellow writer and creative person, are you any further forward than me?  

Have you decided on the topic of your first book?  

Are you writing it yet? I’d love to hear about it.

If none of the above, I hope, having read this post, you’re now feeling better about your own creative projects and progress.  

Happy Writing!