Email Course: From Daily Writing Habit to Book - Day 1 of 5 - Getting Started

Let's get started!

Quick Intro

This 5-day email course (also posted publicly on Substack, so feel free to share!) will cover how to turn your daily writing into a book you can self-publish and sell.

Disclaimer: While I will be sharing how I did this myself and the resulting publication, this isn’t a New York Times Best Seller. My entire book catalog is in dire need of an update, so I’m not doing this to sell books.

Writing Time and Writing Space

First things first, when are you going to write?

In order to establish a daily habit/routine, you need to decide what time you are going to dedicate to writing.

I chose first thing in the morning. I find that this is the best time to get fresh ideas since my mind hasn’t had a chance to get clouded with everything else I have to do or whatever might be going on in general.

Next, where are you going to write?

You need a spot. It doesn’t matter where it is as long as you can use it to write via your chosen method.

I sit at my desk, but I could go anywhere with my coffee, notepad, and pen.

Once you have these two things established, be in that spot, ready to go every day, come hell or high water.

Life happens.

You’re going to miss some days. Don’t beat yourself up. Jot down a few words when you get to it or simply push on to the next day and start anew.

Brainstorming

One of my favorite things is to write a list of ideas when I’m feeling particularly inspired about something. I do this for almost everything new I start. I even brainstormed for this course.

My notebooks are full of brainstorming sessions and I’ve revisited these sometimes years later and come up with new ideas based on old ones.

Sure, sometimes the ideas are outdated or obsolete, but it’s still interesting to look back and see what I was thinking about on a particular day. (I date EVERYTHING.)

Brainstorm topics you want to write about in your daily writing sessions.

Whether you are just brain dumping your thoughts or writing seriously about a certain topic, make list of everything that comes to mind that you can write about on that front.

If you already know what direction you want to go with your future publication, then you would create a list of topics around that.

If you’re at a loss, think about it for a day or two and jot down any ideas that come to mind over that 48-hour period.

NOTE: Including time to think in your daily habit when you are without distraction is a great way to come up with fresh ideas.

A lot of people will use this time to do daily reading or catch up on industry news, and that’s fine, but consuming content at the same time I am trying to begin the process of creating content doesn’t work well for me personally.

If you’re still stuck, try some prompts. We will discuss this further tomorrow. Your goal for now is to JUST START.

How Will You Write?

Now that you’re established where, when, and what, it’s time to plan how you will execute your daily writing habit.

Are you a notebook kinda person or is everything digital for you?

When I turned my daily writing into a book, it was all stuff I’d written to my email list. So, I had it all on the backend of MailChimp.

It was copy/paste, a bit of editing, some bad formatting, and boom! Book.

Most operating systems have robust Notes apps for general notes. You may choose to do as I did and write somewhere that people can consume your content as you are creating it. I highly recommend Substack.

It’s super easy and intuitive to get started. It’s free. You can monetize it. They add new features all the time. There’s just SO MUCH here. I did a write-up on this a last year:

Let's Talk About Substack

Writing in a place where you can receive feedback on your writing can be beneficial, however; there are some caveats.

If your writing is available freely on the web, Amazon may possibly reject your book.

Substack is different from other email marketing platforms in that it does post your content publicly to the web unless you put it behind a paywall.

If you’re just starting out, you probably aren’t ready to monetize.

So, if you do decide to go with something like Substack or Medium, you can’t just copy and paste your content into a book verbatim. It will need some heavy editing and elaboration, so keep that in mind.

I use a combination of handwritten notes, DayOne app, and public writing as my chosen methods.

I recommend either starting with what you already know and prefer or explore what’s available to find what you like.

Let’s Go!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, now that the Where, When, How is covered, you are ready to get started! Tomorrow, we are off to the races with settling into our daily writing habit.