Three years ago, five days after bringing a new baby home from the hospital, I signed my first book deal. I was deliriously excited at two dreams coming true at once. In hindsight, I had no idea what craziness lie ahead. Luckily, I learned a lot along the way:

1.  You find the time for what’s important.

Writing a book is a staggering amount of work, but I’m used to hard work. See, I went to medical school for a zillion years. But working full-time with a newborn and a deadline felt overwhelming. I’m a morning person, so I was up at 4 every morning to write furiously before work. Those months were fueled by caffeine and adrenaline, but amazingly worth it.

2.  The rewrites never end.

“Working on my final round of edits today. Almost done!” was my Facebook status about 900 times. I knew there would be edits. But by the sixth round, the thought of reading the manuscript one more time made me cringe.

3.  You can’t please everyone.

The publishing experience takes this platitude to the extreme. I co-wrote a Christian Pregnancy Book. Mainstream Christian publications felt it wasn’t Christian enough (we actually mentioned *GASP* birth control). Secular media felt it was too religious. Different editors gave us opposite feedback. Eventually, we wrote the book we believed would be most helpful to pregnant moms, and based on the response we get from them, we are pleasing the right people.

4.  Buy Books.

Previously, I was a fan of borrowing books or checking them out at the library. Now I buy books. All the time. I appreciate how extremely challenging it is to sell books. If I am ever at a bookstore and there is a signing going on, I stop what I’m doing and get in line. If the author has no line, I will stop and talk with him indefinitely, feigning interest in the subject no matter how lame. “Oh a book about a civilization of bunnies, you say? How interesting!” Having been on the lonely side of a signing table, I know the awkward angst of sitting sadly with a fake smile hoping someone will stop by.

5.  My Definition of Success.

I am an OB/GYN with a successful practice. My life has not been tainted with failure. When I got a book deal, I assumed this venture would be met with the success I’d grown accustomed to in life. Not because I was cocky (OK, I’m a surgeon, so by definition I am slightly cocky), but because I felt it was a really great idea and I was naive. Despite the fact that everyone related to me thought my book was awesome, it was not the best-seller I’d hoped it would be. It hasn’t even sold 10,000 copies. But it has helped people and genuinely made a difference in some women’s lives. That is why I wrote it,  and that’s truly what is important to me. I had hoped it would impact women and be a best seller, but that is not the case. When I get discouraged, the royalty updates from my publisher go in the shredder. But the “thank you” notes from the people we’ve touched…those stay in a folder to remind me of my new definition of success.

Writing a book did not change my life or make me a millionaire. It did teach me that time management is key, that you can always find time for what’s important, and that success is best measured one person at a time.

Let me write some of the words.

Why?

Because the best stories are the ones we tell ourselves.

I have 37 years of memories and moments in my head. I have a deep, rich, personal vocabulary based on my life.

If you’ll start the story, and leave me some room, I’ll finish it with words you’ll never have access to.

What does that look like?

It looks like the photo below.

That’s from the Dos Equis campaign about “The Most Interesting Man In The World.”

He’s laughing with monks, clearly having told an amazing story that even a stoic group of monks could not resist.

What was his story?

I don’t know. The commercial doesn’t tell you anything about it. They start the story by giving you the image and the setup, but they leave out the words. Now you have the chance to write the rest of the story yourself.

Great books do this when they make you feel like you’re in the story itself, and you can hear the words as if they’re coming from you.

Bad blogs don’t do this when they so overfill the post with the writer’s thoughts that there isn’t room for the reader.

Want to be a better writer instantly?

Let me write the story.

He was vehemently against the idea.

I self-published two books before my first traditionally published book, so I asked him why he didn’t want to self publish. His concern boiled down to a fear that readers wouldn’t take the book seriously if it was self published.

If that’s a fear you have about self publishing, let me give you a really simple task:

1. Ask your friends what their favorite books are.

2. Ask them who published those books.

3. Giggle at yourself for how silly it is to think people only buy books from certain publishers.

There are a lot of reasons traditional publishers are still awesome. (Despite what all the hype about self publishing might say.) There are lot of reasons self publishing is awesome.

Make your decision based on the reasons that make the most sense for you, not the fear that people won’t take your book seriously if it is self published.

Question:
What are your favorite books?

No frozen yogurt has watermelon seeds in it. All watermelon frozen yogurt is seedless, but actually saying it on the sign changes the flavor.

It’s a little more exotic, a little more playful, a little more “wow, I’ve got to try that.”

Don’t miss the little words you could add to the things you do. They could make a big difference.

Jon often recommends waking up at 5 AM to work on your dream. When I tried this approach, I often found myself snoozing on the keyboard or running on empty by mid-afternoon. My body completely rebelled, and it eventually led to exhaustion. Instead of getting frustrated and giving up, I found a more balanced approach to pursuing my dream.

Instead of waking up 2 hours earlier, I get up half an hour earlier. Because it’s not a shocking change to my body, I adjusted to this pretty easily. This half hour is warm-up time. I know I’m not really awake yet, so I might just read a rough draft or glance at some notes I’ve made. I know my energy level is not up yet, so I focus on tasks that don’t require much energy.    

I typically ride the bus to work, so I read or write during the commute, continuing what I started during my warm-up time. If I drive my car to work, I often use a voice recorder on my phone to record my thoughts. It is amazing how much you can get done just during the drive to work. This sets the tone for my day, and I already feel productive—all while losing only half an hour of sleep.

All morning long my subconscious keeps moving forward on the work I started. Momentum has been building, so when lunch time comes and I sit down to write, I’m often surprised at how much work can be accomplished in just one hour. Whatever I don’t finish, I work on later in the evening.

Now I must give you a warning: Writing in the evening can be very difficult, especially after a busy day. But the good news is I have a discovered a way to get some energy that does not require a fifth cup of coffee: take a break.

I’ve found that I get a second wind after taking some time to relax. So I set a timer for 45 minutes, then I’ll hang out with my wife, read, listen to music, or watch some TV. When the timer goes off, it’s time to write. Sure, I’m up a little later than I’d like some evenings. But, for me, this works much better than snoozing on the keyboard in the mornings.

Remember, life is very seasonal. Just because this specific approach works for me right now, that doesn’t mean it will a year from now. The key is to find what works best for you. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for how you should pursue your dream. You will have to hustle and make sacrifices. But it will most definitely be worth it.

Here are a few questions to help you find the right time to work on your dream:

1.  When do you have the most amount of energy?

2.  When can you create some uninterrupted silence?

3.  When are you less likely to make excuses?

Question: When is your 5 AM’?

And there are 10 things I’ve learned that have helped make the experience a lot more awesome:

1. Your best ideas come when you’ve walked away from the writing for a minute. The title, the structure, and the core of the book surprised me in the parking lot of the building I was writing in as I drove home. Not at my desk.

2. You have to write each book like it’s the last one you’ll ever write, because one day it will be. 

3. You have to publish each book like it’s the first one you’ll ever publish, because it won’t be perfect, and you are going to learn a lot that you can apply to the next one.

4. Play to your strengths. I am at my best when I am talking my ideas out. I forgot this for months and was confused why my ideas were having a hard time coming quietly in a room as I sat at a computer. When I stood up and verbally walked people through the book, suddenly the ideas were ready to play.

5. Fear will never tell you that you should write a book. Quit asking it if you’re ready. The only answer fear ever gives is “no.” (This is true of all endeavors, not just book writing.)

6. No one will understand your book exactly like you understand it. If they did, it would be their book, not your book. Don’t get discouraged if you can’t find someone who gets it 100%.

7. Great words always hide behind lousy words. Be brave enough to write your way through the jungle of junk in order to rescue the great words.

8. Discipline is not the enemy of creativity. Discipline is the amplifier of creativity. Be disciplined.

9. Your first sentence on a blank piece of paper doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be first. If you get stuck, write, “This sentence will not make it to the final draft. I know that. It knows that. We’re both fine with that, but in order to break the death clutch of perfection, I had to write it down.” Continue that way until you’ve got the first page filled. It’s easier to write the second page than it is the first.

10. Have fun. Don’t take yourself so seriously. You’re not discovering penicillin. You’re writing a book. If you ever find yourself becoming pretentious about the magnitude of what you are doing, go write at the library. There are tens of thousands of books there that some other author once thought, “If I don’t share this book with the world, the world will be incomplete.” Writing a book is hard work, but don’t put the pressure of “changing the world” on every page you write. You’ll cripple yourself and not enjoy the process even a little bit.

Those are 10 things I learned in the last few months while writing.

I’ll be explaining those ideas and many more during the writer’s workshop held after the Quitter Conference on September 21-22 in Nashville, TN. (Not everyone wants to write a book, so we make it a bonus session once the conference is over.)

For the first time ever, I’ve been writing a book while planning the conference. I can’t wait to share what I’ve learned and hopefully help you if you’re writing a book too. The last conference sold out. Don’t miss your chance to go, sign up today!

Question:
What’s a writing tip that has helped you?

The hardest part of writing a book is that every good book hides behind a bad book.

To write a good book, you have to write your way through a bad book first.

Scratch that. Let’s make that a horrible book.

And you know this is true. We’ve heard brilliant authors like Anne Lamott share this wisdom time and time again, but I promise when you sit down to start a new book you will think:

“Every sentence must be perfect.”

“I can’t waste time on this first draft.”

“I can’t throw away any of these words, they have to start great.”

But the truth is, for me and for you and for anyone who will ever write a good book, they are very easy to find.

They’re hiding behind the shadow of a bad book.

That’s where they are. Write your way through them. Go find them. Clear the bad book out of the way so you can get to the good one.

Question:
Have you ever struggled with perfectionism?

How?

Well, on Wednesday, I wrote a post titled, “Who likes you enough to help you get better?”

But that wasn’t what I originally wanted to title it. I initially thought about naming it,

“Who likes you enough to say that you suck?”

I thought that title might drive better blog traffic. It felt dramatic and exclamatory. I once wrote a post called “Please, shut up,” and that one did well. Maybe that “in your face” style would have the same impact here. There was only one problem though, it wasn’t true.

The post wasn’t about someone telling me that I suck. It was about someone helping me get better. And, although I could stretch and exaggerate my way to somehow make the post fit the title, that would mean I was allowing traffic to dictate what I wrote. I don’t want to change the truth of my content in order to drive more traffic.

I named that one post “Please, shut up,” because despite it being an exclamatory title, it fit the truth of the post. Shutting up was what that post was about. Other times, I will soften my title because the desire for traffic is wounding my larger desire for truth. There’s a fine line there, and I honestly can’t tell you exactly where it is. It’s not always an either/or decision. Sometimes truth drives far more traffic than all the crazy, exaggerated content would.

Regardless of what type of blog you have, whether you write posts, share photos, or video the type of meals you’re cooking, etc., we all face this tension. The tension between truth and traffic. And how we respond to it is the difference between a good blog and a great blog, a viral site and a vital site.

Question:
Have you ever worried about the traffic numbers of your blog?

Photo courtesy Flickr/chris.loxton

I’ve written three books. I published Stuff Christians Like with Zondervan. I published Quitter and Gazelles, Baby Steps and 37 Other Things Dave Ramsey Taught Me about Debt, through Lampo Press, Dave Ramsey’s publishing house.

After talking with a half dozen publishers, I learned that they tend to ask 3 fairly consistent questions when they look at a proposal from a new author:

1. Is this book a good idea?
Is this idea, the one explained in the proposal, a good idea? Is it compelling? Is it different enough to stand out? Is the story this author is proposing, whether fiction or non, a good story?

2. Can this person write?
Publishing is a really challenging business. So often, publishers want to know if you’ve got more than one book in you. Is this person a good writer? If we invest in them and publish this particular book, will we be able to publish a second and a third book? Is this person a good enough writer that they will be able to produce a lot of other books that are even better than this first book?

3. Does this person have a platform?
Thirty years ago, this question probably had a lot less sway in the equation. It was difficult to have a platform. You needed to have a radio show or be on television or be a politician or at least a local figure to have a built-in platform. Now? The sky is the limit, as far as building your platform goes, and publishers expect you to have one. It’s really expensive for a publisher to try to build you a platform with advertising or buying space within in a bookstore. They’d much rather you come to the table with a platform already. It’s not uncommon for a publisher to ask about your blog traffic or the number of Twitter followers you have or how many fans you have on Facebook. I put all of that information on my proposal when I was pitching Stuff Christians Like to publishers. (I got rejected from a lot of publishers until I had a platform too.) That said, you don’t need to have a massive platform to get a book published. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But you need to at least be able to show a publisher that you’re committed to growing one and you’re already hustling on building relationships with the people who might buy your book one day.

As an author, I’ve encountered these questions most often from publishers. But a great way to see the other side of the coin, to hear from a publisher’s perspective, is to read Michael Hyatt’s blog. He’s the chairman of Thomas Nelson publishing and incredibly generous with that type of information.

Question:
Have you ever wanted to write a book?

Photo courtesy Flickr/Caitlinator

But the answer to why people don’t read your blog is actually pretty simple. And it’s a question your readers would ask, if you gave them the opportunity. Here it is:

“Why should I loyally read your blog, if you won’t loyally write?”

Blog readers don’t set reminders to come back and check if you’ve posted anything new today or this week. If you get sporadic with posting and then go through a long period of silence, they won’t always notice one missing space from their RSS feed, especially when you’re first starting off.

You have to be loyal to the reader before the reader will be loyal to you.

You have to be committed to the reader before the reader will be committed to you.

You have to go first.

If you won’t consistently create content, readers won’t ever consistently engage with your blog.

When I first started Stuff Christians Like, I was posting up to 5 times a day. I turned on a fire hose of content. I committed to writing on the days when I had an idea that was easy and fun to write, like chasing a unicorn through a field of cotton candy. And on the days when writing my blog felt like going in a salt mine and chipping away words with that useless little screwdriver that comes in Swiss Army knives. (These days far outnumber the unicorn days, but that’s part of the hustle.)

Want readers to read your blog?

Give them something to read or look at or engage with.

Over and over again.

Question:
How often do you post on your blog?

Let’s get that out of the way first.

Satire is just humor with a purpose.

That’s all. There’s no mystery involved. It’s not that complicated. Satire is a vehicle you use to take people somewhere.

How do you write it? Here are the 5 steps I use with my satire blog and book Stuff Christians Like:

1. Find an issue or an idea that you think is interesting and needs to be discussed and wrestled with by you and lots of other people.

2. Blow the topic up. In a humorous way, make it larger than life and so big that everyone can see it. Stretch it and exaggerate it until it’s no longer just a small idea that only a few people can see but is now a massive point of discussion.

3. Turn the idea into a mirror that reflects back on the audience you are writing to. It can’t be so silly and ridiculous that it’s no longer true. The undercurrent of truth has to be present in the satire.

4. Stand next to the mirror and, in an eloquent way, encourage the audience to look at their reflection. Ask them, “Is that who we are? Are we OK with that? Is that who we want to be? Is that what we want to do?”

5. Create a space where the audience can easily answer and discuss their responses.

The trick is that, as the writer or speaker, you have to stand beside the mirror in such a way that it reflects on you too. You have to be in that reflection too. The temptation for us writers is to step behind the mirror we create. To hide behind it and, instead of creating a conversation, launch an attack. To shine a bright mirror into the faces of the readers without ever looking in the mirror ourselves.

That’s how I write satire.

Question:
Have you ever read something satirical that unexpectedly challenged the way you think about something?

If you haven’t seen the episode of the Office where Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) leaves the show, you’re about to learn the ending. But, there was a tremendous blogging tip hidden in that episode that I don’t want any of us to miss.

As you know, the premise of the office is that they are filming a show within a show and all the cast members are constantly talking to the camera.

In the last scene with Michael Scott, he removes his microphone at the airport and hands it back to a cameraman. The world goes silent. He mouths a single sentence and then walks away. From off camera, Pam, his secretary runs into the airport and they have a silent conversation. They hug. Michael walks away.

That was brilliant.

What they did in that moment was allow you to write the scene. Can imagine the impossibility of writing the perfect last conversation for Michael Scott to have on the Office? Should it be goofy? Should it be heartwarming? Should it be drawn out or quick? No matter the direction the writers went, someone in the viewing audience was going to have unmet expectations. Unless, they allowed the audience to write the scene.

By creating silence, they allowed each person to write their own dialog. To imagine what was being said, to fill in the space with their own words and hopes and dreams. And the reason this is so brilliant is that the writers of the Office don’t have access to your words. Remember that beach you used to go to in Ipswich, Massachusetts? Crane’s beach, with the castle on the shore and the way your bike tires felt in the sand the closer you got there? You could see a thin sliver of the ocean from the roof of your house when you’d sit up there with your dad. He was painting houses and going to seminary and life was full, but it didn’t matter because you had the beach. A real life, north shore, clams and seashells, New England beach.

You don’t remember that because those are the words I have in my head for beach. And if you write a blog post that has “silent moments” and isn’t so full of your story that you don’t leave any room for mine, those are the words I’ll use.

At the end of the episode, Pam summarized her conversation with Michael, but there was a sense that she didn’t say everything. And neither should you when it comes to blogging. Leave room for the reader. Leave space for the reader. Leave silence for the reader.

And I promise you, they’ll find an amazing story of their own inside yours.

There are two ways to get people to retweet you:

1. Write something that is so compelling people retweet it.

2. Say in your tweet, “Please RT.”

Neither way is right or wrong, but there are some differences between the two.

The first way is hard. A compelling tweet is more difficult to write than a non-compelling tweet. And compelling is self defined so something you think is awesome might not be viewed as awesome to a whole lot of people.

The second way is easier. It takes about .2 seconds to type the phrase, “Please RT.” And I’ve done it. Maybe half a dozen times. Once or twice during a fundraiser we did on Stuff Christians Like and maybe I’ll do it again in a few weeks when my book Quitter releases.

But the challenge is that every time you use the phrase “Please RT,” you dilute it’s power. It’s a great phrase sometimes, but if you go to that phrase over and over again, everyone who follows you will grow immune to it. They’ll see you as “the boy who cried retweet.” When you really need it, when you really could benefit from dropping that in, you won’t get nearly the impact because you’ve overused it into invisibility.

The benefit of the first way, of writing compelling tweets instead of hitting the “Please RT” button constantly, is that it forces you to become a better tweeter, a better writer, and ultimately a better communicator.

And when you become that? Well, more people are bound to retweet you.

It was safe.

When I first sat down to write it, I was afraid no one would take my dream seriously. I was worried that people would say, “Isn’t he just the funny guy who writes that satire blog?” So I started to dress up the first chapter in safe paragraphs and safe sentences. I got serious and wrote a serious book that a serious leader would seriously write. And a friend who likes me enough to tell me when I’m lost read the first chapter and said, “Where are you in this chapter?”

He was right. By playing it safe, I had lost my voice. By playing it serious I had lost my edge. By writing the book I thought a “good author would write,” I lost the book this author felt called to write.

In the midst of that season, I saw a musical performance that challenged my approach to dreaming. In the midst of an often boring awards show, I saw a band play with abandon. They seemed to let go of expectations. They appeared to shed the worry about what people thought about the performance and instead just performed the song, the dream, the adventure they were on.

They played with gusto.

That became one of my driving thoughts as I rewrote the first chapter and launched myself into the rest of Quitter. I decided to write with gusto. I decided to dream with gusto and so should you.

Life is already jam packed with ordinary. We’re full up on boring. We’re over our heads in normal.

We don’t need a dream you “kind of sort of” pursue. We need a dream you pursue with gusto!

Whatever that looks like for you, don’t give into safe. Don’t give into expected. Don’t give into conventional.

We’ve got enough of that already.

We need your gusto.

(Below is the video I watched that changed things for me. The gusto is present the whole time but really kicks in at 1:45)

And sometimes it is. Sometimes, something is broken and needs to be fixed. But more often than not, they’re just looking at the wrong number.

The problem is that we hear big web numbers like “Facebook has 300 million users,” and then we get depressed or overwhelmed at how small the traffic to our thing is. “I’m only having a 1,000 people visit my HVAC company website every month.” Or “I’ve only had 50 people on my personal blog this month. There are hundreds of millions of people online and I’ve got 50 visiting me each month.”

That’s depressing because in that scenario we measure our success against the rest of the Internet. That’s a huge data sample and I think it might be the wrong one. What if instead we concerned ourselves with finding the right people for our site, instead of just the right amount of people? What if we said, “There are 1,000 manufacturers that I sell my HVAC equipment to. And if I have 100 of them visiting my site each month, I’ve got 10% of the audience!”

Also, when we focus on gross traffic numbers, we sometimes get immune to the individual lives that can change from the things we share online. A single person who has his or her life rocked by what you post might be 100% of the people who needed that message.

Create your own definition of success when it comes to your blog or website. Custom design your definition based on who your audience actually is. “Everyone online” isn’t your audience. You’ve got a handful of people who need your content. Focus on that handful and the masses will come later. Focus on the right people not the right amount of people.

The islands and the bridges.

The islands are the core ideas. They are the central insights, the heart of what you’re writing. They are the main points in your story or your blog post or your email.

The bridges are the transitions between the islands. They are “exit sentences” that usher you off of one idea and onto another. They link your islands like the highway to Key West. And they are the part most of us ignore while writing.

Islands are sexy and fun. It’s enjoyable to spend our time finely crafting amazing core ideas. We spend hours or even days working on our islands. Then we hastily string them together with rickety bridge transitions and wonder why no one reads beyond the first paragraph of anything we write.

Focus more on your bridges. Learn to see them as every bit as important as your core ideas, because they are.

Great bridges are the only way to get someone to read everything you write.