The Write Nonfiction NOW! Guide to Writing a Book in 30 Days (Revised and Expanded)

Published 2024 by Pure Spirit Creations

www.purespiritcreations.com

Placitas, NM

Copyright © 2014 Nina Amir

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Layout and Design by Shabbir Hussain Badshah.

Cover Design by Daniel Eyenegho.

Author photo by Rick Rood.

The Write Nonfiction NOW!

Guide to Writing a Book in 30 Days

Revised and Expanded/Nina Amir—3rd ed.

ISBN (eBook): 978-0-9835353-6-2

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Taking on the Book-in-a-Month Challenge

PREPARATION

How to Prepare for a 30-Day Writing Challenge

Get Ready to Write a Nonfiction Book in a Month

How to Evaluate Your Book Idea’s Success Potential

Four Questions to Help You Start Your Nonfiction Book

Seven Questions to Ask If You Want to Write Nonfiction

Twelve Ways to Organize Your Book Ideas

Mind Map Your Project from Start to Finish

Using a Mind Map to Plan Your Nonfiction Book

Mining Your Memories to Write Memoir

Plot, Structure, and Theme in Your Memoir

Develop the Energy to Write a Book in a Month

Five Must-Have Habits for Writing a Book in a Month

WRITING WITH SPEED AND CRAFT

Two Trains for the Nonfiction Writing Track

How to Write Nonfiction Fast and Well

The Key to Producing Good Work When Writing Quickly

Write Fast, on Point, and Nearly Perfectly in Your First Draft

How to Speak Your Book

Three Techniques to Help You Write a Book in a Month

Six Scary Good Tricks to Help You Write a Book in a Month

FAST NONFICTION BOOK STRUCTURES

How to Write a Short Book Fast

Writing Booklets vs. Books

How to Structure a Nonfiction Book for a 30-Day Challenge

How to Blog a Book or Book a Blog

Write the Draft of a Short Memoir in One Month

Thirty Days to a Short Memoir

Six Easy Steps to Writing a Profitable E-Book in 30 Days

How to Write a Lead-Generating Kindle Book

How to Write an eBook Fast and Publish It in 30 Days or Less!

FINISHING WHAT YOU START

5 Tips to Help You Finish a 30-Day Writing Challenge

How to Keep the Energy Going

How to Overcome the Only Obstacle Between You and Writing a Book in a Month

CONCLUSION

Author Attitude Ensures You Finish What You Start.

ABOUT NINA AMIR

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MORE FROM NINA AMIR

INTRODUCTION

Taking on the

Book-in-a-Month Challenge

By Nina Amir

You want to write a book in a month.

Eighty-one percent of the U.S. population says they want to write a book, but most remain wannabe authors. In fact, only about two percent ever write and publish a book.

Yet, you want to accomplish this feat in 30 days. Good for you!

My desire is for you to join the two percent and transform yourself from aspiring to published author. One of the best ways to accomplish this goal is to take on a write-a-book-in-a-month challenge. That’s why I created the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge (WNFIN), also known as National Nonfiction Writing Month (NaNonFiWriMo).

However, you don’t have to wait until November to write a nonfiction book in a month. You can do it at any time, and I encourage you to start now!

Before you can take on any challenge, though, you must be prepared. In this case, you have to know how to write a marketable book quickly, effectively, and with a fair degree of craft. Additionally, you need the knowledge, experience, and information to fill the pages of your manuscript.

I created this first book in The Write Nonfiction NOW! Guide series to help you prepare to do just that. Much of the information is culled from past WNFIN events, which annually offered 30 blog post from guest experts on the topics of writing, publishing, promoting, and building a business around nonfiction. In addition, the first and second editions included some never-before-seen material. The third edition features seven new chapters related to writing a book in a month, all of which appeared on my blog, Write Nonfiction NOW!, since the first edition was released in 2014. Plus, I have revised and expanded some of the existing chapters. The vast amount of information and expertise represented by the 11 authors in this resource provides you with a comprehensive guide to starting and finishing any type of nonfiction book in a month.

Don’t wait any longer. Read on, set your deadline, and then write your nonfiction book in 30 days! Take that first step and leave the ranks of wannabe authors behind. One month from now, you will have created the first draft of your book and be well on the way to transforming yourself into a nonfiction author.

Get It Done

Why would anyone want to write a nonfiction book in a month? To get the project done, that’s why.

You also may want to push yourself to do more, perform at a higher level, or fulfill your potential. Or you chose to take on a book-in-a-month challenge in an effort to develop greater productivity, stop procrastinating, and commit to your writing. It’s also possible that you decided to join a 30-day writing event to develop a consistent writing habit.

You may have lots of nonfiction book ideas (or just one) in your head that you haven’t gotten down on paper, published, and into the hands of readers. It’s easy to claim you don’t have time to write because you are too busy with work, family, or life in general. These excuses keep the books stuck in your head.

A 30-day writing challenge helps you carve out time to write.

You already realize that you won’t make the positive and meaningful impact on readers you could if you don’t write and publish your brilliant book ideas. Not only that, but you also won’t fulfill your potential or your purpose in life.

That’s where a month-long writing challenge proves helpful and truly important in your life. It forces you to get an amazing amount of work done in a short period of time. It gives you a reason to get that book out of your head—to tell your story, offer your wisdom or information, or use your expertise or experience—in just 30 days. It provides you with the opportunity to become the person you know you are or can be—a nonfiction author—and to serve others in the process.

A Deadline Is a Writer’s Best Friend

I’m a magazine journalist by trade and education; I know the value of deadlines. Some people hate them, but I call them my friends. They help me get my work done and make me do so fast! And when I’ve met a deadline, I get to check that item off my to-do list. I get the satisfaction of knowing I’ve accomplished my goal. Not only that, if it’s a goal that has personal significance to me, I am left feeling as if I’ve reached a higher level of performance and possibly made a difference in the world.

That’s why I love a writing challenge. It’s a deadline you set to help you reach a professional or personal goal. It’s not a contest. It’s an opportunity you create for yourself to do what you want to do in a specific amount of time. With a book-in-a-month challenge, you start and complete a nonfiction book in 30 days—because you set that deadline. You accept the opportunity. The prize is the manuscript in your hand and how great you feel about yourself for achieving your goal. Additionally, you transform in the process or writing the book, and you pay that forward by providing readers with the chance to transform once they get the book in their hands.

At the very least, at the end of a month-long nonfiction book writing challenge you can mark Write my book off your to-do list. How great is that? You’ll have a manuscript (or possibly even a published e-book) ready to be polished up for publication. And you’ll be one gigantic step closer to realizing your goal, fulfilling your potential, and providing readers with a book that could change their lives.

Generate Time and Energy

If you are afraid that you don’t have what it takes to meet a book-in-a month challenge, don’t worry. The biggest step is making the decision. Once you’ve done that, you rise to the occasion. You discover that you suddenly have more commitment, energy, time, and passion for your project. You won’t have to power through your daily writing goals; it will be easy! You’ll have set your intention, and you’ll be focused and on purpose.

Deciding to take a challenge helps you generate the time and energy you need to complete it. Once the decision is made, you become inspired. You spot holes in your schedule, or create them, so you can meet your deadline. The fact that you’ve made the commitment is exciting! That, in and of itself, raises your energy and gives you more focus. Both help you get your book written fast.

Fitting a Writing Challenge into Your Life

That’s not to say that life might not get in the way—if you let it. That’s part of the challenge. If you set up your days so you make time for your book project, you’ll see that it’s possible to write almost every day no matter what. And it’s possible to make up for lost time on other days—all because you know you have a deadline and you’re committed to meeting it.

You do, however, have to schedule time for this book-in-a-month challenge. That starts with clarity about your book. Determine the approximate length of your book; then you can do the math and figure out how many words you need to write per day. A 50,000-word manuscript requires a commitment to write 1,667 words per day every single day of the week. You probably don’t want to write a book that is much longer than that . . . at least not in a month. Most memoirs, however, are quite a bit longer, so remember that if you plan to tackle your life story in 30 days.

With this information in mind, look at your life—specifically your calendar. The only way your book will get written in a month is if you schedule in writing time. (It helps to know how fast you write. I can churn out about 1,000 words in an hour, for example, if I don’t need to call on research—and don’t research while you write!) It’s great if you can write six days per week so you have some time off to rejuvenate and stay inspired. You also can use the seventh day as a make-up day. If you don’t meet your word quota for the week, you must write on the seventh day; if you do meet your quota, it’s a free day.

Once you’ve scheduled the days on your calendar, be certain you have enough writing sessions to complete your book in a month. Calculate the number of sessions and multiply this by the number of words you think you can produce in each session (given the length of the session); it should equal the number of words in your final manuscript or come close (your word count may change when you revise). Add in a few extra emergency sessions because life happens, especially at the most inopportune times.

A Challenge All Year Long

When the 30-day challenge is over and you write The End, here’s what you will have learned: You can write a nonfiction book, and you can do it in 30 days. Not only that, you can do it again—any time you choose.

That’s a huge discovery if you have a lot of book ideas in your head that you want to get out. Just give yourself a 30-day challenge at any time of the year—maybe schedule one book-in-a-month challenge every quarter of the year, and you’re off and writing. You don’t need to wait for National Nonfiction Writing Month or any other book-in-a-month event. Just write when you want to get a nonfiction book idea out of your head and onto the page.

Using this strategy increases your productivity tremendously. Imagine the catalog of works you’d amass if you wrote a book in a month twice a year or four times a year . . .

When I wrote, The Author Training Manual: Develop Marketable Ideas, Craft Books That Sell, Become