Dispelling the Myth of Writing When Working on a Non-Fiction Book

"I’m Bobbi Linkemer on behalf of expertvillage.com, and I’d like to invite you to visit my website at writeanonfictionbook.com. There’s a little more to writing than sitting down and typing. It’s also good if you can type decently; otherwise, it takes you twice as long. It’s like graphic software does not make you a designer. Microsoft Word does not make you a writer. It’s a hard thing for a lot of people to face when they sit down to write a book, and find out they can’t write. That they really are not doing a very good job of stringing sentences together, it’s hard to make the point, and they have all these idiosyncrasies like passive writing. I think a big thing that many people realize that they really don’t know grammar. They may not even know they don’t know grammar until they bring it to an editor, and an editor faints or blanches, just skips the red pen goes for the bottle of ketchup. It is just totally amazing how many people can’t write. But let’s say you can and you start. The myth of writing is that you sit down and your muse shows up across the room, sits down on a bench, and your miraculously guides you through the entire process. This is not true, it isn’t magic. It’s organization; it’s on one hand thinking through what you want to say and on the other hand, letting it flow. If you are fortunate enough to lose track of time, which you can call it getting in meditative state, being in the zone, flow; where you look up and realize you haven’t eaten, it’s 5 hours later, you’ve been completely absorbed in the activity; you are one lucky human being. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be good, but it means that you are involved in the process."