Find Your Passion

A couple of questions I see a lot from people interested in writing their own ebooks are…

1) What do I write about?..

And…

2) How do I do it?..

Many people like yourself simply give up before they even start to consider writing anything, even a paragraph!, they just don’t attempt it convinced in their own mind that its a waste of time and wont get them anywhere, and that attitude is GOOD news for those of us that actually attempt what they so easily gave up on.Let’s tackle the two questions head on together, because to be honest they have both come up probably for all of us at one point.

1) What Do I Write About?

I waste no time in telling you that to try and write something you have no interest in is just not going to work!, you must have heard the line “their heart is just not in it”, right?. To try and attempt to write about a subject that just leaves you with no real interest at all, if you do actually finish that book with this mindset “no real interest at all” is just what your readers will have.

Your finished book if completed at all will lack any passion or real feeling to transfer over to your readers, so how would you expect your readers to really have passion for, or even like your lackluster work?, you cant right?.

However its not all doom and gloom, their is an answer. Do me a favor just for a couple of minutes……. I want you to think about something you hate doing, just for a few seconds, maybe its grocery shopping or cutting the grass but whatever it is in your mind put yourself in that situation right now.

Once you find yourself in that situation within your mind I want you to notice how it makes you feel, once you are feeling those feelings I then want you to think about something you LOVE to do!, something that makes you happy and excited when involved in it, and also when you think about doing it.

When you find yourself feeling great and excited again I want you now to write down what it is you are currently thinking about, go ahead write it down on paper;).

After you have taken a note of this situation down on paper I would like you to repeat this a few more times, again taking notes of what the situation is that makes you feel good. Repeat this about 5 times at first and then review your notes to see what you came up with.

You should now have a list of 5 great things that really bring out good things inside you, it’s these “things” we will want to approach as maybe a topic we would like to write about.

The point of this exercise is to show you how it would make you feel to write about something you just don’t have any love for, and at the same time this exercise also shows you just how much passion you can muster about a subject you really enjoy!, now when you think about writing about that subject it will greet you with the same happy feelings you encounter when participating in your passion.

My best advice is to write about a passion you have, this will make the process of writing about it so much easier for you and will also stir up excitement to get it done. Even if you lack knowledge in your passion, because you are so into this subject it wont even seem like a chore if you have to research and learn more all about this topic of yours.

Study your list of passions and break them down into possible book topics, and also listen to your heart or as some say your gut feeling, which will probably lead you to your first topic on that list. The way you know you are writing the right book is while you are working on it you are not thinking about any other subject but that one you are currently participating in.

I know this may seem new age and crazy to some, but give it a go and see what it brings for you;).

2) How Do I Do It

We have already gone over the tools you could use in earlier posts on this blog, this question however is more about your approach to writing your ebook rather than what to use;).

You probably have a title in mind for your ebook, but you also need to figure out chapters that will enable you to break down your book into smaller sized chunks.

I see chapters as a set of stairs, almost like a natural progression through your ebook from the first chapter to the last. For instance with my first ebook The Twitter Technique which was basically a guide to using Twitter, I started the very first chapter(or step) as the sign up process to join the site, I then noted down what natural steps it would take a reader to get from that sign up point, to then finally gain a ton of new Twitter followers, its these natural steps that became my ebooks chapters.

This is a great technique to have your books progression come up with its own chapter, so you don’t have too, you just sit back and think about where your reader needs to go next. This not only works great for guides like I wrote, but you can also use this for story books too, you just need to think about where you want to take your character next.

Once you have a list of your chapters you now need to put pen to paper, or finger to key;). We actually now need to write this ebook, but instead of looking at it as an entire book to write we can now approach it as a series of chapters, see much more manageable now.

While writing your ebook spend as much time as you want on each chapter, never force yourself to write when you don’t feel like it, this will only turn your passionate book subject into a chore, and just like cutting the grass we don’t want to do that!.

Whatever you put into these chapters make sure it makes sense in that section, double check that you put all the information your reader requires to get through this part, and then it should naturally lead them on to the following chapter without any unanswered questions.

De-Brief

Keep the thought of writing your ebook as a fun one, fill it with passion and even better content and you will come out the other end with an outstanding ebook that shines brighter than one of those Oscar type things;)).

Im not saying its going to be easy, but keep yourself on the right track, don’t overdo it and always see a positive outcome!.

GOOD LUCK!!!.