God told me to write a book!

What you choose to write is, of course, between you and God. But one of the biggest mistakes I see new writers making is thinking that whatever is on their heart absolutely must be published as a book, and the sooner the better.

This is problematic for several reasons.

The main difficulty is that if you have little or no writing experience, you may simply not be ready to write the book yet. While there are a few people who’ve produced something really good on their first attempt, developing excellent writing skills normally involves a learning process. I’ve seen quite a few books and other things that “God told” someone to write that were - well, let’s just say they weren’t ready to be published and leave it at that.

Think about it. If I believe God is telling me to become a school teacher, I can’t just start walk into a classroom and start teaching - I have to first go to university and get a teaching degree of some sort. Or I may believe I should become a doctor, and I can just see myself helping people. But first, I have to go to medical school and then do an internship and a residency…

Writing a book is actually a very complicated undertaking; one that involves not only writing ability, but also organizational skills, knowledge of the market, understanding of the publishing industry, and the ability to promote oneself effectively.

So, while your ultimate goal may be to write a book, it’s a great idea to kickstart the process by joining writers’ organizations, reading books and blogs about writing, and then writing some short articles or stories on the topics that interest you. Ideally, you should have those articles critiqued, first by your peers and then by experts. Then send them out to editors of appropraite publications. As you do all this, you are slowly working yourself up to writing that book. Kind of like getting a degree.

Not only that, but creating articles out of some of the ideas for the book and selling them will actually make book editors more interested in you. And the articles can possibly be used later as chapters for your book.

The main thing is that you take your time and do a good job and not rush something into print that simply isn’t ready yet. Yes, there are all kinds of companies out there ready and willing to take your words and produce a book with your name on it. But after the initial burst of excitement, reality usually sets in, and you realize you’re in over your head. There are always people offering get rich quick schemes, too - but I hope you wouldn’t use them either.

There’s a second reason why you shouldn’t rush to write that book - I’ll talk about it tomorrow.