Here is a sample entry.

Do you want to be a writer? Really?

I watched an interview with J. K. Rowling.  “If I wrote when I felt like it, I would have written two pages,” she said.

My teenage son plays the bassoon and piano and aspires to be a professional musician.  I told him. . . If you stop almost anyone on the street and ask if she’d like to be able to play the piano like Horowitz, (or Billy Joel, Elton John, you pick), she would say, “Of course I would.”  If you ask if she’ll practice 4 hours every night after work for the next twenty-two years, she’d tell you, “Yeah, right.”

Soooo many people want to write a book.  But how many of them are willing to work at it every night (or high-noon or whenever) until it’s done?  How about you?  But you don’t have to put in 4 hours a night, that’s the good news.  You should say hello to your work each night, though.  If Rowling can push herself to type over 4,000 pages, you can make yourself write 300.

Just write.

It is none of your business if your book will make money or not, or any of that jazz.  Not when you are writing.  That’s for another moment.  Just do your tap, tap, typing for the day, your scribbling, mapping, doodling.  Repeat tomorrow.  Woody Allen said, “80% of success is showing up.”

80% of your success as an author is writing each day.

Listen to Unberto Eco

“First, Create a World,” he said.

You don’t have to invent whole languages of Middle Earth, or spend 8 years researching before typing your first word as Eco does.  But know your world, how does your novel greatly or subtly differ from the history of our blue planet?  This should be fun.  Don’t be perfectt.

And when you start writing, you don’t have to impress the readers by telling them all about the world.  It’s enough that you know.  Tell them a little by little as it fits.

Now, if you are one of the 537 literate people in the world who never read J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone, read it.  Or reread it.  This is a great example of how to unwrap your world a layer at a time.  You are giving them a beautiful present of your story world, let them enjoy unwrapping it with delight.

Take Your First Step

Choose one book you want to write.  You probably have a lot of brilliant + amazing book ideas.  Decide which is the most important to you.  Commit to it.

As you sit reading this, would you rather have 7 books half done right now, or one completely done and polished, ready to be sent out in tomorrow’s mail?