Why You Should Write Your eBook Before You Feel Ready

We love control.

We don’t leave the house without the GPS cued up, and we like to be able to text if we’re running five minutes late. Confusion is frustrating and uncomfortable, especially when accompanied by IKEA instructions. We like to feel that we know what we’re doing, that we are on the right track.

And by we, I mean me.

After helping clients complete their eBooks, I figured I had the process nailed down. What I found that I lacked was clarity about what my own message would be. When I set off to teach people how to come up with relevant ideas, make them interesting and organize them into a compelling eBook, I was forced to examine every vague idea I had and make it concrete, just as I was asking my readers to do.

If you wait until you’re ready, or until you’ve got the right idea, you’ll never start.

Penelope Trunk recently wrote on her blog: “I coach so many people who tell me they can’t move forward because they don’t know where they are going. And I tell them, make something up. I tell them to commit to a goal, any goal, and move toward it until you think of a better one. The act of moving toward something helps you crystallize where, exactly, you want to be moving.” (Emphasis mine.) This applies to most areas of life, of course, not just eBooks, but it rings especially true for writing.

Creating is a messy endeavor.

Writing is a process of expressing your point of view, your ideas, your methods. If no one has ever asked you for your opinion on a particular subject, the very act of writing down your thoughts begins to shape them.

You are a miner and your brain is a deep, dark, twisty goldmine. Gradually, as you keep chipping away at the cavern walls, veins of gold ore will reveal themselves. You have to go through a lot of rock to get to the good stuff.

Start saying yes to your ideas.

Seth Godin observed: “No one gives you permission or approval or a permit to lead. You can just do it. The only one who can say no is you.”

In our Internet age we have no barriers. There’s just you and your people, no filter. Why doesn’t everyone jump up and put their brilliant thoughts into an eBook for the masses?

The barrier is now ourselves.

We have to face down gnarly fears:

• We may think our ideas aren’t brilliant enough.
• We may be afraid our ideas will be unpopular.
• We may not be really sure what our ideas are since we’ve never articulated them.

Once you see these fears for what they are, which is self-sabotage, you can say yes in spite of them.

The sooner you start mining, the sooner you’ll strike gold.

Start now.