Dude, just write the book.

I had a discussion with a peer of mine about writing a book, in that my peer has been thinking of writing a book but never gets around to doing it.  After about two years of listening to how he should write his book, my response was “Dude, stop talking about it and write the darn book.”

His book idea is a nonfiction technical book and is about **secret topic** (of course I’m not leaking the topic or title!).  He is an expert, or at least knows a heckuv a lot more about the topic than I do.  I would buy the book tomorrow.  I even said that if he had written this book when he first told me about it, we’d be talking about the next edition and I would have already bought the first edition.  “Dude, you’re two years and two editions behind now!”

Which brings me to my point. Years ago, I said the same thing.  “Hey, I think I could write a book.” I said it a few people and one of the guys told me, “Dude, just write the darn book.” And so I did.  Three times already. Started a fourth. Plans for a fifth.  All from one person telling me to stop talking about it and write the book.  I took the suggestion to heart because he had already published several books himself. Thanks HC.

Fair warning: It’s not easy.

If you can get a contract, you’ll have deadlines to meet, standards to keep up, and demands placed on you by the publisher. Worse yet, if you don’t have a contract and want to self-publish, you have to place those same demands on yourself.

So now you know the secret. Just write the darn thing.