I share with you five places to explore for meaning in your writing practice.

1.Make a list of five people whom you miss having in your life.

Pick up phone and call each one. Start conversation anew. Don’t allow anxiety about what to say stop you. Trust that words will come.

2.Brainstorm 100 words about a person whom you love. Next, imagine that you’re creating a painter’s palette by group similar words together like hues of color. Then, with your pen as brush and paper as your canvas, create a message that speaks to who this person is in your life. Send this note.

3.Celebrate laughter. When people laugh in conversation with you, ask why what you said was humorous. Celebrate who you’re both being in that moment.

4.Listen with unconditional love. Where do you see pain among your family members or friends? Ask what is hard for them to be with. Listen without judgment, a proposed solution or comment. Simply be there and share space.

5.Practice voice play. For one week, note all different voices that surround you: birds, wind, children, people and animals. What are they saying? What’s your heart saying back?

Without realizing it, my inquiry planted a self-discovery bulb last fall. Through cold winter months, I felt ‘wheres’ unfold gradually and I found that my voice within my heart. Now with spring buds, I am grateful for journey and I trust my heart along this continuous path.

I hope one or more of above bring you to a new place in your writing practice—the place where your voice lives. Where love will blossom next in your life?

© 2005 Melissa A. Rosati. All rights reserved.

Forget thinking about your book as one project. Think of it as XX discrete projects (one for each chapter.) Get that notion fixed firmly in your mind. 15 writing projects of 4,000 words each feels a lot more comfortable than one writing project of 60,000 words. You also get a greater sense of achievement as you're working through book, because completion of each chapter becomes a major milestone.

Planning and structure

With non-fiction of any kind it helps enormously to work to a closely defined structure. Spend a good chunk of time planning your chapters and ensuring they run in right order. Subdivide chapters down into bullet point structure of their own and flesh that out as far as you can. If you're going to use research material you need to assemble it and file it under each chapter of your book. Particularly if research material is printed on paper, assemble it in same order as running order of each chapter. That way you don't have to leaf through piles of material to find what you want.

Chapter breakdown

Using your word processing software, separate chapter breakdown into one document for each chapter. If you prefer to work with pens or pencils you can print out document so that each subject heading heads up one page, then staple those pages together in order. Now, start writing more bullets and notes under each subject heading. Leave plenty of space between them so you can add sub-notes and sub-sub-notes.

Work through this process without hurrying, but keep going for as long as you feel creative energy flow. Once you have incorporated bare bones of all information you feel needs to go into that chapter, stop and take a short break. Then go back to chapter and edit your notes as necessary.

Writing it up

Now you need to take plunge and start writing prose. Because you have mapped out content of your chapter so carefully and thoroughly, you'll find that some it has already started to write itself. Your job then becomes one of linking and smoothing, rather than having to think up stuff from scratch. This method doesn't remove fear of writing altogether (if you're that way inclined) but it certainly makes it a lot easier.

Your own edit

Take your time over your editing process. And most important of all, be hard on yourself. Put yourself firmly in shoes of a potential reader and ask yourself if - in this role - you would a) understand everything and b) find it interesting. If answer is no to either then rewrite section concerned until it IS a) understandable and b) interesting.

The external editor

If your book is being published externally, once you've finished your edit manuscript will go publisher's editor. Once edit comes back to you, you'll have opportunity to go through issues raised by editor and dispute their recommendations if you feel they're wrong. Then when everyone is happy with result, your manuscript goes into production.

If you're producing book yourself you don't, in theory, need to use an editor at all. However unless you're a professional writer by trade, if you're self-publishing it makes a lot of sense to use a pro editor to have a look at your work. An informed but unbiased extra expert on case will help you sharpen up your text and will pick up on all little details that you - being so close to material - may have overlooked.

And there you are - a finished manuscript! Now, to final stage...

PRODUCING AND SELLING YOUR BOOK

If your book is being published externally you won't have a huge involvement with production process. This means that you're relieved of hassle and expense of production, but on other hand you won't have all that much control over how your book looks. Publishers will usually send you cover designs to look at as a courtesy, but don't automatically assume they'll change designs if you happen to hate them.

"You can't judge a book by its cover" -- but it helps!

If you're self-publishing you're free, of course, to have whatever you like on cover. Even if you have strong ideas about how it should look, in your shoes I would invest in a professional design for cover. Particularly if you're going to sell book remotely (i.e. without your being there) that cover is only real point-of-sale tool you have - so it needs to be good.

Just as title and cover design are critical elements at point of sale for your book, so is jacket copy. This has to sell hard enough to make them carry your book all way to checkout and stay there until they've paid for it. If you're self-publishing and don't feel you can create snappy words required, hire a pro copywriter to do it. It won't cost very much as it shouldn't take them long to complete, and it will be well worthwhile.

Marketing and selling your book

Publishers say they do marketing, but reality is they don't do much. And it really is annoying when you think that they are taking lion's share of proceeds from your book sales. So if you want your book to be marketed, you have two choices.

The first choice is to hire a publicist. This is quite popular among American business gurus and public speakers who do not have time but do have money. Opinions are divided on whether or not you will get back what you pay publicist in extra book sales you wouldn't have had otherwise.

The second, and more realistic choice for most of us, is to DIY. To achieve that without spending big bucks you need to consider a number of points following publication of your book. You’ll get all details of this and much more from my eBook, “Get Yourself Published,” downloadable from here:

http://www.bookshaker.com/product_info.php?products_id=83

Well, that's it - with luck you'll sell a good number of books. Enjoy experience!

~~~~~~~~~~ Suzan St Maur is a leading business and marketing writer based in United Kingdom. You can subscribe to her bi-weekly business writing tips eZine, "TIPZ from SUZE" on her website - go http://www.suzanstmaur.com - and you can check out her latest eBook, "GET YOURSELF PUBLISHED" here: http://www.bookshaker.com/product_info.php?products_id=83 © Suzan St Maur 2003-2005