So you want to write a book...

One of my former students just wrote to me saying he wants to write a book, but doesn't know how to get started. This is basically what I told him:

First, is it fiction or non-fiction?

If it's non-fiction, you've got to write an outline and a couple of sample chapters and put together a proposal (you can find out about book proposals online). Then submit it to some non-fiction agents to see if they're interested. With non-fiction, you don't write the whole book first.

If it's fiction - you do have to write the whole book first. To start, JUST WRITE IT. Put the pen to paper (so to speak) and DON'T go back and edit your pages until you've written the whole story. It will be a sloppy mess, but new novelists who keep tinkering with their first few pages or chapters, often don't finish their manuscripts. Get the story down. Then go back and re-read and edit it. You'll find a lot of stuff to change, add, or delete. When you're done doing that. Do it again. When you think it's perfect, then you can think about getting an agent if you want to pursue traditional publishing, or an editor, if you want to publish it yourself. Some people get an editor before submitting it to an agent, just to increase their chances of being picked up, but editors can be expensive.

Don't worry about that right now. JUST WRITE IT.

If you're writing genre fiction, know the basic rules for writing that particular type of fiction. Once you know the rules, you can break them if you have a good reason, but you should know what's expected before you start.

It's that simple. All you need is a pen and a piece of paper.