How I Wrote My First Book

Because writing that awesome book starts with the first atrocious draft

My first book started as a secret letter about a boy. It was written in a ‘first-person’ narrative but under different names.

When I wrote it down, it was not with the intention of writing a book, I wanted to document my feelings because I was too shy to do anything about it and so I opened a document and typed out what I felt. I was twenty.

That document stayed on my computer for about two months, until I was browsing through my folders and was curious about the title I had saved the document with.

Quick fact about writers: Writers are secretive about their work especially when it is work-in-progress.

I opened the document and smiled, the words were beautiful and I was surprised they all came out from my head. Since I was not a talker, I surprised myself with my command of words. It was conversational and read like the most natural thing ever.

Because the main character was me, I decided to continue to see where it would take me.

However, I knew to stay committed to writing that book I needed accountability. Therefore, I went to the most popular forum in my country and created a thread in the Literature section. In the first post, I wrote the synopsis and promised my readers a daily update.

I kept my word on most good days, churning out 500-word updates of that story inspired by my life, sprinkled with humor and exaggeration.

The thought that people were counting on me to deliver, made finishing the book a priority, and so every day I tried to add to the story.

I stopped writing when my heart got broken some three months later because I couldn’t bribe myself to write funny and endearing things about a boy who made me cry.

On the thread, I told them I was going to convert the remaining story into an e-book, and they would be the first to know when it got published.

I kept my word, but it took me nearly a year to return to complete the book, and when I had done that, I published it under a different name and gave it out for free.

Because I would be damned if I started my writing career on a cheeky romantic novella.

Another quick fact about writers: We are our worst critic.

Why am I telling this epistle?

I realized I was able to finish my story because I knew first-hand what I was writing about.

When I meet people and I introduce myself as a writer, and they go,” Great! There is a story I want to write, it is about the fall of dragons and the birth of the creator of the universe who was locked up in a dinosaur’s eggs and fell into an ice castle,” I keep quiet.

And as these stories have more plots than a labyrinth would have turns if it was illustrated on a map, I can tell they might never attempt writing it.

I call them dreamers because for years they will push up the writing date, waiting for the perfect time when the words would piece themselves together in their head and the magnetic force that connects stories to word processors would bring them together, and in a space of thirty minutes they would have typed out a 200-page epic fantasy that would change entertainment for the world.

I was a dreamer until I realized someone had to document those dreams.

My Advice to all dreamers:

You have to wake up to the process of writing

Eventually, you would grow to write better books, but the action word there is ‘grow’. You can’t grow a plant if you never bury the seed. Writing first what is familiar to you would encourage you to write and learn to tell amazing stories.

A fact I consciously make myself remember is, all the books I read and get goosebumps for, are the last drafts. Meaning before them were the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, some even up to twenty drafts!

You would still write that epic book, but first, you need to learn how. You can only learn to write by writing.

Start with what you know, then grow into the wordsmiths that you dream about.