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Should you ever give up on writing your book?

It’s that feeling again.

The heavy knot in your stomach when you think about firing up the Word document that contains your book.

The book that stopped being fun several weeks ago (or was it months?).

The book that’s started to feel like a huge chore.

The book that still has seven chapters until it’s finished.

‘Maybe I should give up?’ you ask yourself. ‘After all, it’s not doing me any good to slave over this thing when I’m hating it. Writing should be rewarding and fun, not a drag. Yep, this book is doing me no good at all.’

It’s an interesting question, and one that deserves a considered response.

Why is writing your book so difficult?

If I asked you this key question, it’s likely that you’d come up with some or all of these answers:

• It feels too hard
• I don’t have enough time
• I’ve lost interest in it

Let’s look at them in turn.

It feels too hard. Writing is hard work because it involves thinking. And thinking is tiring and – at times – tough. That’s why people who’ve published books are so well respected – they have the staying power to get to the end.

Do you want to be one of those people? If so, you have it in you to carry on. Alternatively, you could find a book coach or a ghostwriter who can take some of the load off.

You don’t have enough time. Who does? And yet thousands of books a year are written. Crazy, I know.

You’ve lost interest in it. Here’s where it becomes more interesting, and where I become more sympathetic (see, I’m not so hard-hearted after all).

You have another question to answer here: is it the writing you’re bored by, or the subject? If it’s the writing, see above for a solution. If it’s the topic, and if that topic is what you do for a living as an expert, you can view your troubles as being a gift. Which leads me to the fact that…

Your hardest book is your greatest teacher

The reasons above give us a start, but from my experience of coaching numerous authors to write their books, they ignore the real reason you feel like giving up.

Which is this: you’ve probably lost sight of what it is you’re trying to say. Or maybe you were never sure in the first place.

I know, it sounds strange – even insulting. But please hear me out.

Writing a book is the best way I’ve found to expose the chinks and flaws in my thinking. If I’m not 100% sure of something, writing about it is sure to show it up. Until that moment of putting fingers to keyboard, I could float along in blissful ignorance about my somewhat woolly insights. But not once I try to write a chapter about it – no way.

This often manifests itself in procrastination, feeling fed up and thinking I don’t have time to write. All of which are fabulous ways of convincing myself that my woes are the book’s fault, not mine.

Writing a non-fiction book, whether it be a business book, a memoir, or a thought-leading guide, helps you to understand what you don’t. So take a step back and ask yourself if you really ‘get’ what you’re trying to say.

It might be that you know the facts, but it’s the angle on them you’re not sure of. It may be that your arguments don’t quite add up, even though they seemed okay at first. And it could be that there’s only one area you need to get clear on, not the whole book.

This is where you can let your book be your teacher.

In fact, it’s one of the most valuable benefits of writing a book. Developing your understanding of what you know so you can explain it to someone else in a clear and motivating way – it’s the sort of thing that sets authors up for life. And that applies whether you write your book yourself or work with a ghostwriter to put the words on the page.

Embrace it, and you – as well as your book – will be the beneficiary.

Ginny Carter ghostwrites authority-building books, memoirs, and self-help guides for entrepreneurs, thought leaders, speakers, and coaches.

Reading makes the world safer

Six of my 16 great great grandparents, on my mother’s side, were economic migrants, who came to England not so much in search of a better life as in a desperate bid to survive. They were the fortunate ones, because thousands of their peers perished due to starvation.

By the next generation, according to the comprehensive family tree that my father compiled, one or two had skilled occupations – though one was killed in an industrial accident. The third generation were a little more settled; my maternal grandfather, for example, was a warehouse manager. It was similar on my father’s side: I recall my paternal grandfather as a middle class soul, who lived in a semi-detached house with an immaculate garden – but he had been born into an overcrowded house, left school at a young age and became educated through evening classes.

Education rescued my family from poverty – extreme poverty, going back just a couple of generations and more. I can now understand more fully why my parents would say to me, over and over again when I was a boy: ‘Read more books, Philip!’ ‘Don’t just read the sports pages in the newspaper! Read the rest of it as well!’ Books were our wallpaper: thick spines displaying authors’ names – Shakespeare, Greene, Bellow, Murdoch, Lessing and many more – filled the shelves on landings and in hallways as well as the living room and bedrooms.

I wasn’t a bookish child, you see. I was outdoorsy and sporty and I got nagged into becoming an author. My ambition aged 15 was to become a professional cricketer. I think being a writer is better, though. I agree with Carl Sagan, cited in a recent UG blog, that books are a form of magic, a way in which to travel through time. For my family, they were more magical still: they were the means of survival and created a path to a better future.

Books may have had an even more positive influence than most of us realize. In a fascinating finding, aired recently on a BBC documentary The Violence Paradox, there is evidence indicating that the great humanitarian reforms of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th Centuries – abolition of slavery, torture, executions, racial segregation – were attributable to a significant degree to people becoming more literate. And the explanation extends beyond the observation that educated people become more politically aware, to include the insight that reading novels assists our ability to display empathy, and therefore identify with victims of violence and seek justice. Authors need to understand the concept of which character’s ‘point of view’ you are writing from. The point here is that it isn’t the author’s, and it isn’t the readers’ either – we are consciously escaping into someone else’s.

Books do have the capacity to spread evil ideas, but in aggregate reading makes us more tolerant, more aware, and less violent. Some people might say that the wheel, or the ship, or the electric light bulb, or the programmable computer, is the greatest invention. But truly the most brilliant invention in human history is the printed and bound book.

• Philip Whiteley is an experienced author of non-fiction and fiction, and a ghostwriter. He writes novels under the byline PJ Whiteley. More at www.pjwhiteley.com

The pros and cons of naming your chapters

Perhaps you know the feeling. You’ve finished something that you are pretty proud to have written. Trying not to give away just how damn good you feel about your incredible creative powers, you give it to someone else to read. Then, they come back with a suggestion for a small tweak that will improve it many times over.

How infuriating is it not to have thought of it first?

In my case, the small tweak in question was to give the chapters titles. I’d submitted a manuscript to the publisher and that was the immediate response. I went back into the document, crafted some chapter names and, what do you know, he was right. It really did make a big difference. 

The experience did make me think. I do sometimes write chapter titles, but not always, as this example shows. What are the pros and cons of including them? Let’s begin with the pros.

In the case of non fiction, in say a self help, or how-to business book, chapter headings are a great way to get the key messages of the book across. It is quite likely the chapters will be broken down into themes, and this is a quick and useful shorthand to say: this chapter is about ‘growth’, or ‘adapting’ or ‘starting a movement’. Chapter names give readers a better understanding of what to expect.

Continuing on a similar theme, these clear signposts may also be a helpful sales tool. We all know how useful book titles and cover images can be in selling to the reader. If someone is curious enough to flick through the book, the chapter titles could be what helps get them over the line. Chapter titles, if you get them right, have the power to elicit feelings of curiosity or excitement.

When it comes to fiction, interesting chapter titles can help readers engage with a book. Each subsequent heading could add suspense, or suggest a change in plot, which draws people in and encourages them to read on. Compare:

Chapter 15

With

Chapter 15 – The Last Stand

This could, of course, backfire if not done well. Which brings me to the cons part. It is possible to be too descriptive. My favourite example of this comes from The Children of Hurin by J.R.R Tolkien, where no less than three chapter titles are ‘The death of (insert name of key character here)’. Spoiler alert!

Another significant con is that writing chapter names is not easy. As everyone involved in book production will attest, just getting the name of the book right is tough. Some people will agonise over what will go on the cover for weeks, if not months. Now, times that process by 12, 15 or more. If you are not sure that you have the creative abilities to name your chapters well, it may be better not to do it all. It will be worse to end up with weak chapter titles, or a combination of some strong, some very weak, or titles that completely give the game away. Likewise, it is a big mistake to write really long chapter titles in a bid to flag what next. If your chapter title becomes a story in its own right that is a bad thing.

Perhaps the final con to consider is: if you are inserting chapter headers to properly explain or clarify what a chapter is about, maybe the content is not quite right.

It won’t always be the right choice to include, or exclude, chapter titles. You will need to take it on a case by case basis. Sometimes they will add something, sometimes not. It is something to consider though. Lesson learned.

Teena Lyons publishes a regular blog at www.professionalghost.com

A Clear Vision

For a successful ghostwriting collaboration, both parties need to be on the same page. This is why it’s crucial to establish, in advance, what the client expects from his/her/their project, in order that the ghost has a structure to adhere to. With a clear direction in place, each person has a roadmap of sorts to follow; and while some deviation from that is expected – and, often, necessary, if the prescribed structure needs some refining – a complete overhaul is not only unhelpful, but a highly disruptive process.

In preparation for the actual writing, the client will need to be able to instruct the ghost as to the various intricacies of their story. This will include character descriptions/traits, and their arcs/overall plot, if fiction; and a well thought out rundown of content if non-fiction. Memoir is a little different, as the story is already in place, so in this instance, it’s more a case of what to include, and what not to, for personal and, sometimes, legal reasons.

When a client changes their mind about a project’s direction, though, it puts the ghost in a very difficult position. It might be comparable to, say, asking a plumber to fit a new boiler, only to request an alternative model once they have all but finished the job they were originally tasked with. Not only does it jeopardise the trust that has developed between both parties, it means the ghost’s work to date potentially counts for nothing, while loading them up with what could well feel like an entirely different story.

It’s fair to say that this has happened to me very rarely, with the overwhelming majority of clients sticking to their original idea; but on the occasions it has, it has resulted in my workload effectively doubling, which doesn’t strike me as a fair outcome. There may be some rescuable elements from work already laid down, but that can feel like crowbarring content in, and that’s something I avoid.

Building a good structure is like constructing a house. Solid foundations are essential for the resulting premises to stay in place and, likewise with a manuscript, those foundations need to be strong, so that the end product is as robust as possible. It helps that most of the people I’ve worked with have had their stories in their heads for years, and are thus at least fairly well established. But for anybody with only a vague idea of what’s required, I would advise that you take some time to work out what it is that you wish to say, and how, because the end result will be so much more pleasing, and save your collaborator a potentially enormous workload. And that extra work might well be chargeable, which isn’t in the best interests of either person.