In Her Own Ink

After publishing a few books, I’ve created a system to reduce writer’s block and to finish drafting the book. I’ve made many mistakes along my journey, but I want you to bypass common challenges and limit the typical mistakes authors make. We’ll discuss five tips to enhance your process and help you tackle the manuscript to completion. Refrain from creating your material in order from the introduction to conclusion. In the past, I’ve started writing my book from the beginning, but getting stuck early on, and wondering why I continued hitting roadblocks. Do yourself a favor and minimize the risk of writer’s block by tackling your book in parts. Whenever you find yourself getting stuck, redirect your focus to keep the momentum and get results. Set clear messages for your reader. Yes, you’re an expert in your area but you have specific objectives you want to convey. Therefore, you must be specific about those goals for your reader. To digest and gain insight and clear takeaways from your ...

After publishing a few books I’ve developed my own system for drafting manuscripts. Over the years I’ve gained insight on how to enhance my work and avoid the pitfalls of producing content. Now I aim to share my proven-strategies to overcoming common challenges for both new authors and experienced authors. Although there are many obstacles to writing books, we’ll focus on seven approaches to enriching our process for creating.  Stay Organized. I stress this step because it’ll help us tackle our work more efficiently. Staying organized looks like having our content divided into sections. Personally, I organize my work into a few categories such as introduction/conclusion and objectives. Reader engagement, and outline, etc. Organizing my binder is among the first steps to diving into my projects and I encourage you to practice this approach as well. Don’t Work in Chronological Order. Writing our books from A to Z will overwhelm us and increase the likelihood of getting writer’s bloc...

Meeting our writing goals are important. However, not being fully-present won’t get us anywhere when it comes to producing content. After getting some rest I encourage you to follow at least one of the six tips discussed.  Don’t fight your body’s clock. I f you know you work better in the morning than at night, follow your body energy’s peak hours and tackle that book in the morning time. If you’re a night-person, work on your book at night. It’s easier on the eyes. Take baby steps. Organize your outline. Tighten up by reviewing pertinent pieces of your book. You could gain more insight on the bigger picture. Plug in your quotes, scriptures and questions wherever they belong.  Like a puzzle. Don’t work on your book in chronological order! That will trigger writer’s block and become overwhelming. We know writing a book demands a lot. When stuck on that one chapter you can’t pass go nor collect anything.  Develop your manuscript in sections. To reduce getting caught up in o...

I’ve been publishing my books on Amazon since 2014. I’ve learned a lot over the years. Now I want to share some of my secrets with you to continue to further your book goals and ensure they become a reality.  We’ll discuss seven tasks to do prior to publishing. If you’ve already published a book, you’ve already got the tools to move onward. However, I’ll provide a bonus tip that you may not have  considered so read our article until the very end. Create a marketing plan. Before your book drops you should already have an agenda on how you will gain exposure around your title. Gather information on yourself and book for journalists, bloggers and podcasters. Put together a media kit. This includes your “short” biography, book summary, excerpt, and more. This information will help others learn more about you and make it easier for them to build an article, promote you and your story and so forth. Don’t overlook this step. Get an editor. I’ve heard from too many individuals the pla...

Having published eight books taught me a lot about the common reasons some of us haven't finished writing our manuscripts yet. Based on my personal experience I’ll share practical approaches to developing and finishing the draft. Here we’ll review five challenges authors will face, and methods for overcoming them. No focus. It’s easy to hold a book idea and draft an introduction and chapter. However, where do we go from there? Beginning a draft shouldn’t start with our introductions. Instead, create clear messages. Before diving into any project, I ALWAYS develop my book objectives. These goals will direct my pen, outline and book’s messages. I focus on making two to five messages I want readers to take away from my nonfiction work. No structure. After focusing on my key messages for the book, I get organized. I get a binder and separate sections: 1) introduction/conclusion/objectives, 2) outline, 3) chapter content, and so forth. Because I’m a visual learner, I write a book layout...

After I finished drafting my first book I aimed to get it edited. Working with an editor was a lot different than what I expected. I had a couple of preconceived thoughts about working with an editor.  The Total Page Count The word count is required. The number of pages was irrelevant. First, I learned that editors do not require the total number of pages of your manuscript. Instead, they will determine the cost of the job based on both your word count and turnaround deadline.  Constant Communication Contact based on clarification, only. Also, I thought I would stay in constant communication. However, that looked different. My experience was straightforward. I provided my project and deadline, and they gave it back to me with the marked up edits and the book-ready approved edits. My editor reached out to me for clarification only when needed. Conclusion Approaching an editor demands your manuscript’s word count. It’s best they contact you for any questions about your work, and...