Effective Writing Tips

So you want to create a book or ebook and market it. Good for you. Writing ebooks it isn’t a difficult thing to do, but getting to the place in your mind where you can actually do this is another matter entirely. What we are going to do here is to create what I call the Friday Afternoon Syndrome. That will be your home base, a place not so much of time and space, but one of mind–a secret place all your own.

I was an inner-city high school teacher for 14 years. I loved teaching, but the bureaucratic crud one has to endure can wear you down. By the end of the day, the one overwhelming thought was–oh my gosh, there’s going to be another day tomorrow just like this one. That was depressing.

But I recall the feeling of Friday afternoons. The drive home from school thinking to myself, thank God, I’ve got two days off from all of that insanity. That feeling, and it’s hard to explain, but that feeling of relief, of feeling of being set free for a few days was invigorating.

I did my best thinking on Friday afternoons and evenings. I would often sit down with a notepad and start writing down ideas–ideas for writing new books. It was like I was in some manner of a psychogenic fugue state where I was many people at once and they were all sending me great ideas unfettered by the distractions of the classroom.

I took those ideas for writing ebooks and ran with them. I remember the utter excitement of developing ideas for new books. And I worked fast. I wrote 100 page booklets in a weekend and they ended up selling better than I could ever imagine.

So how does one get into the “zone” for writing ebooks? How can we jettison the distractions of everyday life to achieve that Zen feeling of being one with the writing project we are working on?

You need a place, a special place all of your own. Try to keep it separated from the rest of your house as much as possible. Use your basement, your garage, your workshop, heck–use your washing machine as your desk if you have to, but create a special place. I wrote many of my best books working from an unfinished loft over my garage.

I filled the area with artwork, plants, my favorite books, a mini-refrigerator and a coffee maker. My area was filled with stuff that was important to me. There was no phone, no television, no radio, no music–I didn’t want anything to distract me from my mission.

Remember when I talked about “Friday afternoons” above?–how much I enjoyed Fridays when I was teaching? Well, when I was in my special room, it was like every day could be a Friday afternoon. When I got into my zone, into my groove, I could get more writing done in one hour than I could in a week of working around the clutter of everyday living.

So get a zone, make it your special place and fill it with things you love. Create your own little world where you can forget about everything else and I think you’ll find it will create an environment for more efficient writing.