It will never be right
Charlotte Booth • 3 November 2021
Everything you need you already have
"It's not worth writing for just an hour or so a week. I'm waiting for when I have a week or so free so I can really focus on it."
I have heard this from many would-be authors, and perhaps you believe this sounds like sensible thinking, but I will tell you what I told him.
You will never have a week when you will do nothing but write every day. An hour a week is better than nothing, and is a million times better than waiting for that magical time when you have a week free where you have literally nothing else to do.
If you cannot commit to an hour writing a week, what makes you think you will work well for eight hours a day for a week?
It's an excuse.
Other excuses include:
- I need to create a writing space which is calming and inspiring with great views.
- I'll write when I have a new laptop/desktop as my old one is too clunky.
- I'm too old to write a book.
- I'm too young to write a book.
- I will never write as well as [insert favourite author] so what's the point?
- I don't have time.
- I'll start in the winter/summer.
If you have an idea for a book but haven't started working on it yet I bet you can add some excuses to the list. Every single one of these is an excuse.
If you have an idea for a book, and you are preventing yourself from starting because of excuses it's time to have a word with yourself.
Everyone can find one hour a week or even a day to do something they really want to do. Instead of binge watching a series on Netflix for three hours a night, why not spend at least one hour writing? But if you genuinely can't find an hour, what's wrong with 20 minutes here and there as you have time? Any time spent writing is better than none.
If you don't think you have the right writing environment and would rather have an inspiring office with great views and a vintage desk, think again. If you are writing properly you are not looking at the room, or gazing at the view out of the window. You will be looking at your computer screen, or a notebook if you write longhand. So you can write anywhere, on trains, in your car whilst waiting for your kids, in coffee shops, in the garden, in the library - literally anywhere.
You don't need fancy equipment to write a book. Of course it's nice to have the latest laptop with all the bells and whistles, but Shakespeare wrote with a stack of paper and a quill pen! He managed. And the majority of the work written in the 20th century was written on a manual typewriter so even a slow, crappy laptop is an improvement.
All you need to write a book, is an idea, a workable plan and a realistic outlook on how long you can dedicate to writing. If you want to write a book in six months you need to be able to write for about an hour, five days a week. But if you only have one hour a week it may take you a year to write the book. If you write longhand and need someone to type it up then you need to add another month, but it is all doable.
If you want to see your book published, and on sale in the High Street you need to know what you can realistically achieve and more importantly you need to kick those excuses to the curb!
For down to earth advice on writing your first non-fiction book you can book a power hour here, or email me
to find out about the 12-week mentoring programme.
It's time to get writing.
There is nothing more amusing than checking out mediaeval artistic renditions of lions and other heraldic creatures. These beasts, grimacing and gurning are a strange juxtaposition of human, animal and demon and as far from the cute image of Alex from the Madagascar franchise or in fact a real lion as you could possibly get. There are three main reasons mediaeval lions are so ‘bad’ and un-representational; The artists were following a very tight brief. Some of the artists may never have seen a lion, and were following the descriptions they were given. These lions were representing heraldic principals of bravery, nobility and authority; all very human characteristics. When viewed through this lens it becomes more understandable why they look the way they do, but they are still ‘not right’ and not a great tool for learning about lions. Generative AI is very similar to an uninformed but talented mediaeval artist. There is a element of intelligence but at the end of the day it is following a brief, with no actual ‘knowledge’ of the thing it is producing. As an example, if you prompt your generative AI (ChatGPT and the like) to produce a blog for your new product or service, aimed at your ideal customer avatar you will in all likelihood get a mediaeval lion out the other end. Sort of recognisable, and sort of not. This is because AI doesn’t know what a customer is (ideal or otherwise), has no idea what your product or service is and does, and has no true understanding of how this service or product will serve your ideal customer and their needs. Of course, AI is pulling all the information available from the internet to help with its answer but there is no understanding there. There is no determining fact from falsehoods or even which websites are trustworthy and which are not. So, it skims the internet and puts together content which suits the brief as it understands it. This is then when the actual work should start as this content shouldn’t be used in the raw. It should be edited and tweaked by a human who DOES understand the brief, has been a customer (ideal or otherwise) and can imagine what your ideal customer will feel when using your product or services. We are in a world now, where we have generative AI promoting products and services to humans, when it has no concept of what a human is and how it thinks, meaning the marketing department are in fact more important than ever for ensuring content and copy is aimed at humans and human emotions. You could argue that the world would be a more entertaining place if there were more mediaeval lions in it, but it wouldn’t be a great environment for learning, or for basing purchasing decisions on. If you want to maintain the human element in your content, then I would love to help . Explain the brief, your CTA and your ideal client and I will know what I need to ask to get a clear idea before writing. Then you can rest assured your content was written by a human for a human and we can leave the mediaeval lions to the museums.
Want to know the difference between a blog, article and newsletter? Everything you need to decide what content will meet your goals.
What is the difference between proofreading and editing, and when do you need each of these services?
Even doing something you are passionate about can end in overwhelm and burnout. Here I talk about my six month break from marketing.
What would you rather own - a real Van Gogh painting or a print? Why is that? The value of having a direct connection with a creative personality is huge, and yet many people are happy to have soulless AI content instead of well thought out and considered experience of a copywriter. Why is that?
As if we haven't got enough to do with our daily, weekly and monthly to-do lists, did you know there is also a silent to-do list as well?
How do you stand out from the crowd when promoting your business? How you get your business heard over the noise? With a little creativity of course.
ChatGPT is here to stay whether we like it or not. Here are some tips on getting the best results from the app.
At no point in history have we had to deal with so much information. Here are some simple tips for dealing with infobesity.
Writing memoirs seems easy, but getting the research right is important.
