dream | act | succeed

I was recently asked this:

I am quite curious about how you are going to go about writing this book. You sound psyched and scared at the same time. An introduction paradox.

Question from Janet Madaka, 24.05.2020, under #330 Mindset – S1 E1 – Introduction

Well, I wanted to talk about this here anyways! Therefore, why don’t start with answering this question in todays episode.

My current writing process

During the past 330 days, I have written my blog every single day. This makes 237000 words for my blog and 24000 words for my book in around 876 hours. Additionally to that, I have written around 200000 words for University projects and my bachelor thesis.

To summarize this, I have written quite a lot!

Having this attitude in life to overdo things slightly, I most likely end up in the extreme with everything I am doing. Well, the only way how to be able to do this in addition to all the other things in my life? Right! I work with strategies and tactics.

Because writing is just a process

Having figured out that everything in life is just that, a simple process. I started to analyze my writing procedure systematically. That’s the engineer speaking, right? But anyways. I figured out a lot of things about me!

• Writing under pressure? Nothing for me!
• Writing in the night? Nothing for me!
• Writing for longer than four hours in a row? Nothing for me!
• Writing in a public place? Nothing for me!
• Writing with music! Oh yes! But not all the time!
• …

The first step might just be to figure out who you are. Well, we already got this! Now what?

We need to define the perfect writing process!

Generally speaking I have defined three different modes.

1. Writing for the sake of writing
2. Systematic writing
3. Reading and shortening

1. Writing for the sake of writing

Do I need to explain this even further? Someone might just write for the sake of writing.

Forgetting all about the world around me and dive deep into my own creative wonderland. I am just writing because I want to write. What I write? It doesn’t matter. Whatever comes to mind! Is there a system? No! Not really! I may just write!

In order to write good things you need to write a lot of bad things first!

But sure, this is a skill I needed to acquire. Therefore, I practiced it. You can have a look into the 20 minute writing challenge, because this is exactly where this has been developed.

Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes not. There are no rules. How long do I write? I don’t know! I just stop when I don’t want to write any longer! But don’t forget that I really like writing!

2. Systematic writing

This is the systematic writing style I needed for university. You get a topic and write a thesis or a paper about it. You need sources, quotes and refer to books all the time. Sure, not many people enjoy this type of writing, especially engineering students. But I figured out that it can be kind of interesting as well. At least sometimes! Sure, this is nothing I really love doing all the time, but I can deal with it.

3. Reading and shortening

My most favorite use-case! This is something I came up during writing my daily blog. I would write about something with the use of the modes 1 or 2 and on the other day, I would read through the stuff aloud and try to improve it. Most likely by shorting it and cutting out all the pieces and parts that do not fit.

I may also try to change my perspective in this mode and constantly ask myself what I am still missing in the text. Where I would need other information, better descriptions or where I do not see the point of reading it after all.

The combination is the key

I guess it is just the constant change between these three modes that is allowing me to improve so much. I may write something while listening to music, on the next day I will add something after reading through books about it and on the next, I will change my perspective and cut out everything that’s rubbish!

And it’s a lot of rubbish!

I guess I cut out more then 75% of all I write! But is this a problem? I don’t think so! It’s getting better and better over time!

Summary! How do I write my book?

Step 1: Concept

I have thought about the project for a long time, made some notes about ideas and inspirations and have created a Mind-map that represents all the topics and stuff I want to mention and write about.

Step 2: Create a document

In the next step I created a simple document where I set up the structure. I have transferred the information from the Mind-map into this document.

Step 3: Constantly changing between my modes

And now I just change between the modes. On some days I write about new topics, on others I reread old stuff and making it better. I constantly look for inspiration and try to change my perspective in order to make it better.

Writing this type of book that I currently write is of course not comparable to writing a fiction book about I don’t know what. I don’t write purely for the enjoyment of my readers. I want to teach them and myself something with it!

Will it be awesome? I really hope so! I tend to like the idea a lot! But sure, now is not the right time to talk about this!

Can’t tell you the idea now…

I hope this was answering the question above. Now it’s time for you to ask me the next thing? Should I go more into the details? What else do you want to know?

See you next time!