How To Write a Book in 30 Days
3. Plot Your Course
Arranging your ideas – logical progression
In Module 2, we talked about getting our ideas out on paper via our ‘analog modular capture and recording system’ … otherwise known as Sticky notes!
“There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.”
Now it’s puzzle time! We’ve got our ideas out on paper squares where we can sort, rearrange, look for continuity, look for ideas that don’t belong, look for redundancies, etc.
Module 3: Plotting Your Couse
How do you share this with a friend?
Imagine that you and a friend have planned a series of visits where you can explain your message (the theme of your book) to her one visit at a time. Your friend doesn’t know anything about your message, and it’s going to take more than one visit for you to unveil it in full. What are you going to share with her on that first visit? How are you going to introduce her to your idea – get her set up for future visits?
Do you have an idea written on one of your Sticky notes that introduces her to your message for the first time? That’s Sticky note number one. What would you share with your friend on her second visit? You’ve already introduced her to your message during visit one; what is the next idea you want to share with her that will lead, eventually, to the core of your theme? That’s Sticky note number two. Imagine the third visit, and so on. As you tell your story from beginning to end, you will see a logical progression unfold before you, like stepping stones on a path (going through this exercise, you may need to add a Sticky or two or take a few away). Remember, your friend doesn’t know anything about your story; you can’t assume that she has the same context you do as the author – that’s why you have to begin at the beginning, introduce your message, and lay it out, step by step in a logical progression, using your Sticky notes as the stepping stones.
Culling out duplicates and irrelevancies
As you arrange your ideas into a logical progression, you’ll begin to see some ideas repeated, some ideas that are really sub-ideas of a more central idea, and some that don’t really fit into the theme of your message.
For example, you may have a Sticky that says, “Preparing for my journey,” and another that says, “Planning my trip.” Those two Stickies may be just different ways of stating the same idea. If that’s true, then you can delete or archive the redundant Stickie.
Speaking of deleting of vs. archiving: Have you ever deleted a file or document, or note on your phone or computer only to realize that days or weeks, or months later that you needed it again? Probably so. I’ve done it and regretted it plenty of times. These days I create an extra folder inside the main folder of whatever I’m working on (in this case, it will be the folder that holds all the files related to your book) and name it “Archive.” Rather than send a file, I don’t think I’ll need to “Trash,” I’ll send it to the “Archive” folder, where it can live out of sight and not clutter my main folder. If I discover later that I may need something in the archived folder, I can still retrieve it. I suggest, for now, that you “Archive” the Stickies that you don’t think you need.
Hierarchy – sorting ideas and sub-ideas
For those Stickies that you determine are really sub-ideas of a main idea, you can merge the sub-idea into the main idea sticky and archive the sub-idea Sticky.
For example, you’ve got a Sticky that says, “What I’m packing.” “What I’m packing” is really a sub-idea of “Preparing for my journey.” Add “What I’m packing” as a sub-item to the “Preparing for my journey” Sticky and archive the “What I’m packing” Sticky.
If you’ve got some Stickies that seemed like a good idea when you were creating them but now don’t seem to fit into the theme of your book, put them in the “Archive” folder. This is a good reason for archiving and not trashing your old notes and files. The idea that may not fit in this book may fit into a future book or be of some other use down the line.
At the end of this process, you should have a collection of “main idea” digital stickies with some of those listing sub-ideas below the main idea, and your digital Stickies are arranged on your screen, pretty much in order of how you plan to present them in your book.
Homework
- Pretend you’re explaining it to a friend.
- Cull duplicates and irrelavancies.
- Archive, don’t delete!
- Sort into Chapters and Subheads