How To Write Your Own Self Help Book in 12 Days

By Te-Erika Patterson

Anyone can publish a book these days. With the emergence of POD (publish on demand) companies where authors can write and upload their books for sale to customers on an as needed basis as well as the Kindle book publishing method, many are realizing their dream of holding their very own books in their hand and adding the word AUTHOR to their biographies. In this article I will teach you the process behind writing your own self help book in 12 days.

Organizing Your Book – Day One

Organizing a book will only take one day as you prepare the outline. Decide on a topic for your book. I usually decide on the name of my book first and it inspires me throughout my writing process.

After you have your topic, write down 10 questions your book will answer concerning your topic. Each of these questions will become your book chapters. Since most books have 10 chapters you can add more if you’d like, but you don’t have to.

Now you should have a book title and a list of questions (chapters). For each question write down as many answers to the question as you can think of. List these answers as bullets under each question. Move through each of your chapters this way until you have outlined all of them.

Writing Your Book – Day Two through Eleven

You can write one chapter a day by deciding which day you want to write and sitting down to do it. You already have the topic questions and the answers, all you have to do is expound on each answer. Use examples, share stories, resources and information to validate your views.

Write out one chapter per day and don’t worry about editing anything, that will come later.

Polishing Your Book's Structure– Day Twelve

Now that you have the guts of your book written you can go ahead and change the chapter questions to statements. Be creative with your chapter headings. Write headings that will grab attention and also support your book title. Add an introduction to your book that explains why you wrote the book and how the reader will benefit from reading it.

The rest of the process is editing and you’ll have to develop your own strategy for that. For tips on structure, editing, formulating plots for fiction books and how to market your book, I highly recommend that you order Nick Daws' Course How To Write A Book in 28 Days. This will become your new book writing bible. It was extremely useful to me. I wrote my first self help book in just 6 weeks while a full time graduate student and single mom.

Happy Writing!

Posted in: Books,Do It Yourself