I accidentally wrote two books and so can you

I never intended to be an author. I disliked writing and avoided it my entire life. However, I had to learn to write for business and had some great mentors to help me develop some skills, at least for business writing. My business writing was in the form of PowerPoint presentations, business development proposals and client reports. But I never thought I could write a book, let alone two (and working on my 3rd and 4th)!

My first book Still Stupid at Sixty (written under the pseudonym, Blake Stevens) started as a personal plan (notes to myself) to focus on improving my financial management. I was making a lot of money, but was in a on the edge of bankruptcy. My accountant advised me to to declare banruptcy, but I just couldn’t. I was so pissed at myself for being in this situation that I sat down one Saturday afternoon and started to develop a plan to focus on paying down massive debt, significantly reducing my monthly spending, and converting my exisitng assets into cash where I could to pay the bills.

About eight hours into writing, I realized I had developed a structure that looked like it could be a series of advice columns for people in similar situations. My anger fueled me and within two weeks, I had written 75,000 words and realized with some help and proper editing, it could be a book! I never thought I could write a book, but I had (or at least the draft for one)! I spent two months rewriting and making it better; got an editor to review and improve it; and slapped a cover on it. My wife helped me to convert and upload it to Amazon and I was a published author! It felt good – damn good! I never thought I had a book in me and here I was, now a published author!

My second book came about ‘accidentally’ through different means. My wife asked me to write a guest blog post for her cooking blog DAZ in the Kitchen. I spend 45 minutes writing a 500 word blog post and enjoyed it so much, I decided to write my own blog SAZ in the Cellar about wine. I had been doing this for about two years, had written about 150 wine posts during that time, and was starting a blog post on how the senses work and are used to appreciate wine. This post became too long, so I decided to turn it into a 5-part post series and it was still too long. It was not my intent to write a book on wine, but I thought I had enough to be able to do so, so kept writing and writing and 1.5 years later published Wine Sense: The Art of Appreciating Wine.

I had never intended to write a book in my life and now within 2.5 years I had written two! There are books on how anyone can write a book in a weekend and I think that is total crap. Writing takes skill and it takes time. I worked on improving my writing craft, learning the publishing game and worked diligently to complete my books, once I realized I was writing them! But if I can write a book, then you can also! What does it take for you to write a book? I think there are a few things:

You need to start writing things down, be it in a journal, a set of notes, memos to yourself, etc.
You need to have an interest or passion in what you are writing about
You need to have enough and a structure to what you are writing so it can be turned into a book and completed
Then you need to realize it is a project to finish a book and get it published
You need to recognize and fill in your skill gaps or get help in some areas, be it grammar, research, graphic design for the cover, etc.

But if you are willing to start and focus on the things I mention above, then you too can accidentally write a book!

InkIT Publishing

I accidentally wrote two books and so can you