How to Write a Book in 5000 Easy Steps
Step One: Remove Cat From Keyboard
If you have removed the cat from the keyboard, you may proceed. Note: Step one is usually repeated.
STEP 2: Most people assume the next step is “having an idea.” Ha. Nonsense. The next step is arranging the workspace. You are going to need some equipment, you know, and I don’t mean the hand-me-down PC your brother gave you last Christmas (or even the sparkly new one you bought yourself because you have better taste than he does). I mean moleskin journals and really good pens.
Here is a nice assortment. The black is a Moleskine, the modern heir to the little black books of Earnest Hemingway and Picasso, originally manufactured in France (but long since out of business). The pale brown is a pocket notebook, and the rather ostentatious one? I picked that up in a small shop that may or may not have belonged to a wizard. Pens: A 03 hybrid technica for fine lines…and yes, that other is a fountain pen. But not just any fountain pen! It’s a TWSBI ECO Fountain Pen Black B Nib with an ink called Writer’s Blood. And the third is a… a pen knife? Actually a boot knife. Still necessary equipment — you will have to open letters and packaged research books.
Why? Because ideas will come at the weirdest times. Like 3 am. In fact, ideas are a lot like that cat you removed from the keyboard in Step 1. They swat you in the face in dead of night, begging to be let out — so you get yourself up, stub your toe, try to remember how walking works, wander into the kitchen and open the door. Cat now stands in doorway, as if confused why you bothered. It’s not like he wanted to go out or something. Anyway — keep a notebook and pen by the bed and write that little bastard down as soon as it turns up.
STEP 3: Provisions. You will need coffee, since ideas are nocturnal; you will need whiskey because… just because. And snacks. I tend to find a good balance between salty and sweet work out really well. Chocolate covered nuts are both, plus less likely to get goo and salt all over your keyboard. However, if you prefer messier fare, you can probably empty your keyboard contents into a dish after a few months and its like writer-sprinkles.
STEP 4: Building the eternal book well of the great writing cave. This is true for fiction and nonfiction, but especially for nonfiction. See, you have this idea — and it has friends — and you want them to all get together. Except the ideas live in lots of other places, impossible to recall at will. Some people will make a “spreadsheet.” Apparently this is some computer file with “searchable” functionality. Whatever. You need a BOOK WELL. Also paper. Lots of paper. And since we have computers, sure, a few of them at the bottom with PDFs on them. It’s the future after all.
By the way, I recommend arranging them by aesthetics. You aren’t going to remember the names or the order, anyway; you’ll just be shouting like a ghost out of your haunted well: “the one with the yellow cover, dammit.” So you might as well make it pleasing to look at.
STEP 5: Procrastinate. I suggest stacking your social media, such that you can use them interchangeably on a loop. That way, you can go on one platform and announce “I will be stepping away to write my book.” It looks brilliant, and you get the feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, while still being able to procrastinate on other Platforms. (Just be glad you live in the digital age and don’t have to subscribe to a bunch of periodicals or print that ‘stepping away’ message in the Spectator or something.)
Note: you can also procrastinate using earlier steps. I mean, that book nest thing will need doing up now and again, there are trips to the grocer for more snacks, you’ll need to shop for MORE fountain pen ink (like Zhivago or Widow Maker or Black Swan in English Roses). And then there is the cat. Never forget the cat.
STEP 6 through Step 4999: Write things. Edits things. Write things. Edit things. Cry. Cry some more. Write things.
STEP 5000: Start over, while questioning your life decisions.
Note: Brandy Schillace is a historian of medicine and the critically acclaimed author of neuroscience biography MR. HUMBLE AND DR. BUTCHER, described by the New York Times as a “macabre delight.” Her books have been reviewed in Science Magazine, the New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal…
AND SHE STILL STARTS EVERY NEW BOOK BY FORGETTING HOW SHE WROTE THE LAST ONE.
