So, you want to write a book?

Hey, it’s Paul. When people discover that Robin and I are authors, we have conversations like this:

“So, you write books? What kind?”

If it’s me, I’ll answer, “Clean romance. Mostly clean, anyway.” I could leave it at that, but there’s a part of me who wonders if people think it’s strange that a guy writes love stories. So, I’ll usually add, “I also write other stuff. Small-town stories. Historical fiction. I even wrote a football book.”

Then they’ll ask where they can find our books. I tell them it’s their lucky day because we have a hundred copies in the trunk of our car (we don’t), before pointing them to Amazon. It might take a few moments, or they might just blurt it out, but about half the time, the next thing they say is, “I’ve thought about writing a book.”

“You should. There are never enough great books.”

“Yeah, if I can just find the time.”

“Finding time is hard.”

“It’s probably easy for you. You get to do it full-time.”

This is where I change to subject. Know why? It doesn’t matter if you’re a full-time writer or are squeezing the words in between work, family, and personal time, writing a book is hard.

I’ll say it again. Writing a book is hard.

I also get asked how I come up with my story ideas. That part is easy! Ideas just come to me. Perhaps they just come to you, too. My football book, Missed Signals, came from hearing war stories coaches tell over sloppy joe lunches in high school cafeterias. I can’t remember the exact moment, but one day the idea popped into my head: What if a successful coach just didn’t have it anymore, but had no idea?

Boom! Missed Signals. 

I’m sure it works that way for other writers, too. J. K. Rowling imagined a young boy getting accepted into a special school for wizards. J. D. Salinger probably always wanted to write a story from the perspective of a rebellious teenager. The Catcher in the Rye is still one of my favorite books.
Robert James Waller’s idea of a 1940s Italian war bride in Iowa having an affair while her family is away at the state fair is not only a favorite book, but Bridges of Madison County is also a movie that Robin and I return to again and again.

I could go on. Stephen King has so many ideas that he wrote for years under a pen name. Kristin Hannah’s The Women, John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, Jodi Picoult’s Small Great Things. All began as ideas. Ideas are easy. Turning those ideas into 100,000 words that people enjoy reading? That’s hard.

So, when people ask me what they need to do to write a book, I keep my answer simple.

Write. Every. Day.

I get a sense that this isn’t the answer they hope for. One person actually asked if I would take his idea and write the book for him. Sorry, I only write my own books. You should write your own. There’s no way I could have written Catcher in the Rye as well as Salinger, or Small Great Things as well as Picoult. But then again, they couldn’t have written Missed Signals or Harvest of Thorns as well as me… well, maybe they could have. J. D. Salinger and Jodi Picoult are/were awesome writers. But that’s beside the point.

Sadly, there are no shortcuts. Robin and I write together. We bring our unique talents to the collaboration. She’s such a romantic. She’s also a voracious reader of romance. She envisions the journey our characters take to get to their happily ever after. I’m more cynical. Unsupervised, my love stories go off the tracks. Characters are found dead on the side of the road, or love interests run off with their best friend’s wife. What I can do reasonably well is string the words together in a way that helps the stories flow. Together, we’re a pretty good team.

So, in summary, if you want to write the bestseller that’s rattled around your brain for the past twenty years (that’s my book, Harvest of Thorns–Chan Manning lived in my brain for years before I let him out), the advice is simple:

Start writing.
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