What is the best way to write a book? What an interesting question. What is the best way to write a book? The best way to write a book is to, da-da-da, just do it. Now, is this asking whether there are better tools than others or better methods than others, and really, there’s not clear cut answers because it depends. It depends on the writer. I, myself, have tried many different tools and I would say that some are better than others in different situations.
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If I’m just doing a blog post or a relatively casual approach to the first draft of a book, I think transcribing is an absolute fantastic method to go, or dictating and having it transcribed later. If I’m doing a technical book that has a lot of figures, a lot of thinking, a lot of explaining, and references to other sources, then dictation’s not going to work.
That’s when I plop down in front of a computer, get my classical or classical gas music going on in the background, get rid of all distractions, maybe use the OmmWriter program to completely drown out everything, put some headphones on, and set aside a two hour block to jam out at least 1500 words.
Does that work at every case? No. Do you want to do that for a casual fun blog post? Probably not. Other times, it might be best just to outsource the parts that you aren’t very familiar with, or at least the research, and then with that work out of the way, you take that data, turn it into a presentation that you know your readers will enjoy and put that translation of the data into your book.
Really and truly, at the end of the day, it just depends on what is the least resistive path to getting your finished product out there, or at least the first draft. If for you that’s talking, typing, or getting someone else to help, who’s to say until you’ve tried all the way through?
I am approaching two dozen book products, not all on Amazon, some on my webpage, out there at the day of this video, and I have to say that I’ve tried all methods and I can’t say that I have a preference for each one because they each have their own place, depending on the time and the purpose. So my depends answer at the very beginning hopefully has a little more detail behind it now, so you can see.
If you’re at least talking nonfiction. If you’re talking fiction, I don’t have much experience other than a short story here or there and I’ve tried dictation on that and it just didn’t seem to jive well, especially when I got to the dialog portion of it, but your mileage may vary there.
I know of quite a few successful authors that are big proponents of the use OmmWriter or Scribner and just go to town on it for two hours, at least. And then, just adding that on top of each other until they get to a finished product and that works for them.
So, you have to figure out what works for you. You’ll never know until you start doing some stuff. So get started already. I know no one likes that answer, but that really is, brass tacks, what it matters, in writing a book, at the end of the day. Good luck, I know you have something good in you, even if you don’t believe it. Get it out, get it out to the world, and then get started on the next one. Peace out, have a good one. Bye.