What is planning, anyway? (you know, for your book)

This is an excerpt from an eBook I’m writing at present, that you’ll be able to download for FREE pretty soon.

If you’re short on time and just want me to give you a nudge when the eBook’s available, pop your name in the box on the right to get the news as soon as it hits. If you’re on the list already, chill. I’ll let you know. (hint: it’s over there——–>)

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This might seem like an odd question to ask writers, and a little simplistic. But it’s a necessary one, so that you know what I’m talking about, and can understand it in your own way.

What is Planning?

Planning can mean all sorts of things. To some, it’s scheduling. To others, it’s one line, an intention in one sentence, pinned up where they can see it. Still others see it as a detailed scaffolding on which to hang their creative work. It’s different things to different people. But there are a few common points that are worth covering.

Firstly, planning your book is important.

Whichever way you do it, and we’ll get to that later in this blog series – and you’ll have it all in one place for free when the eBook comes out – having a plan will almost always make the difference between getting a book project off the ground and done, and having it still hanging over your head for years.

Secondly, a plan also gives you a structure, a map to work with. It lets you know what to put in, and what to leave out. It also lets you know when you’re finished, which is an important thing to know.

More specifically than that, planning a book is the intentional writing down – or depiction in some way – of the journey that you want to take your reader on.

It’s a detailed map that provides you with a thread to follow in the days that you work on your book, and you can’t see where you’re going for the forest of words you’re surrounded by.

It’s the document that reminds you of where you were going when you forget.

It’s what you refer to when you realise that you’ve followed a tangent without noticing, and need to figure out how to get back to your point.

The act of writing or making a plan makes concrete your intentions, not least of all to yourself.

It commits you to a project.

Not to the many ideas and inspirations that are floating about in your head and that wake you up in the middle of the night in flashes of brilliance, but to one specific one. The chosen one. The idea that, above all others, at this point in time speaks loudest and needs writing the most.

This is a necessary thing.

If you don’t choose one idea, you won’t write any. (I know this first hand, remember? And I bet that if you let yourself admit it, you do too.)

By choosing an idea, and squirreling the others away for the winter to incubate nicely until their own Spring, you let it bloom.

Planning your book lays out the stringlines that will show you where to put the foundations, and how to build on it so that when your reader looks at it, they know it’s a solid house.

There are a number of techniques that you can use to plan your book, which is great news, because you can choose whichever suits you. But before we go into the nitty gritty of types of plan and how to use them, we need to talk about the one person without whom you just don’t have a book.

Your reader.

I’ll be covering finding your Most Treasured Reader next week. They are the key to writing that ‘lands’ with the people you want to reach. If you’re writing for yourself, fine. Go to it. But if you’re writing because you’ve got something to say that might just help someone? Then you need to focus firmly on them, not you.

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Hope you enjoyed that! It’s just a taster – the rest of the planning topics I’m covering in the eBook are: Your Most Treasured Reader (what this is, how it helps); Types of Plan and how to use them; What to include; and Getting the Most from Your Plan. Essentially, it’s the total plan your book, own that thing, and make it work for you eBook.

If you’d like to sign up to receive the heads up that the ebook is on the downloads page for you to grab, the signup box is just over there on the right. You know what to do. —>

Comments: Tell me what planning looks like to you. I’d really like to know.