When you decide to write a book you will need to have material for that book. Some people have been preparing for their book for a very long time and may have drawers full of information, pamphlets, notes, books, etc. that they have collected in preparation for writing their book. Other people decide to write a book, but then don’t know where to start.
Preparation – Gather Material
If you’ve decided to write a book, you have an idea what you want it to be about. Gather anything that pertains to this subject matter. Let’s say you want to write a book about inexpensive family vacations that are kid friendly. You’ve probably taken a few of these vacations, and if you’re like me, you have each vacation relegated to a separate box or file drawer. I keep information. I just never know when I’m going to use it. For this type of project, I pull out every piece of information that I ever collected on the family vacations we’ve taken with our kids. I’ll have maps, notes, pictures, postcards, pamphlets and leaflets of the specific sight-seeing areas. All of these spark a thought, a memory, an idea that I would want to share with the people who read my book.
Create Piles
Each vacation is then separated into piles. In my case, this was already done, because I have a tendency to keep things in separate containers. Other writer friends of mine would file this under “vacation” or “kids” and be done with it. In my case, I have separate files: “Camping in the Colorado Rockies”, “Cross-country Road Trip to Michigan”, “North and South Dakota”, etc. You get the idea. Each of these would be a basic section. In the case of this book, each section will be divided into a couple of chapters.
Then, I would take each of these piles and separate them into smaller piles based on:
- Lodging: hotels, lodges, or campgrounds
- Dining: Sit-down restaurants, fast food, or picnic areas
- Sight-seeing: Tours, museums, national monuments, train rides, etc.
Refer to Outline
As you can see, when you begin to separate your piles of information in a logical way, your outline begins to become apparent. Once you have all of this written down in an outline format, it will be very easy to see what belongs in this book and what either needs to be eliminated or used for a different book entirely.
Working from an outline is important, if you’ve read anything I’ve written about the process of writing, you already know how much I push outlining. Once you know where you’re going, you can figure out short-cuts. If you don’t know where you’re going, your short-cut could add days, weeks, even years to the process of writing a book.
For this book, the outline will begin to look something like this:
Part I: Camping in the Colorado Rockies
- Chapter 1 – Lodging: Lodges, campgrounds
- Chapter 2 – Dining: Grocery stores, fast food, or picnic areas, mining restaurants
- Chapter 3 – Sight-seeing: Bike and hiking tours, gold panning
Part II: Cross-country Road Trip to Michigan
- Chapter 4 – Lodging: Motels, RV parks
- Chapter 5 – Dining: Sit-down restaurants, fast food, or grocery stores
- Chapter 6 – Sight-seeing: Cabela’s, Amish Country, The Mississippi River Crossing
Part III: North and South Dakota
- Chapter 7 – Lodging: Hotels, lodges
- Chapter 8 – Dining: Sit-down restaurants, fast food, or picnic areas
- Chapter 9 – Sight-seeing: Cave of the Winds, Mt. Rushmore
I would continue on in this manner until I had completed as many chapters as I feel are necessary to cover this topic for this book.
Weed Out Based on Topics
The example I’ve used in this article, Inexpensive Family Vacations that are Kid Friendly, makes it pretty easy to see what material should be included in this book and what information should be excluded. I still have the information on how to rent the parlor car on the train (good only for those age 21 and up), and I also have a brochure on a beautiful little tea-room just off a lake, perfect for afternoon high tea. Neither of these ideas would be appropriate in this book. I will take them out of the piles and out of the outline for this book. They simply do not belong. I’ll just save it for my Inexpensive Vacation book for adults only!