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First, decide what you will write. Easy. Second, organize your thoughts. Not so easy. If you know how to outline the way they taught us in school, you don't need to read the rest of this. For those creative types who have never been able to cope with outlines, let's talk "Mind Mapping To Mind Map, you draw a circle in the center of a big sheet of paper (or several small sheets taped to a closet door so they act like a big sheet), and label that circle. For our system, it will be either the subject or title of your book. Now, grab some felt tipped pens or crayons and draw lines or "spokes" radiating out from that center with a circle at the end of each line. For example, the center circle might be" Manage Time to Reduce Stress". Then a green spoke with a green circle at the end might be "What is Stress?" Next a purple line and a purple circle says "Omit Perfection". Then maybe a red spoke with at circle saying "Set Boundaries" Once you have a circle for each topic you want to cover in your book, you can go back to each of the circles and start adding ideas, examples, stories, research, etc. So you take your red crayon, go to the red circle that says "Set Boundaries" and draw a circle from that saying "time". Maybe you also want your book to cover putting limits on people, schedules, and commitments. So each of those words would go into a red circle coming from the main red one that says Boundaries. You might draw more circles coming from each of those detailing how that concept would be explained. Allow four to six weeks to work on this mind map because the more detailed this gets, the quicker and easier it will be to write your book. You came here looking for steps to write a book. When you use mind mapping as one of the first steps to writing a book, your book will practically write itself. After a while, your mind map will be overflowing with tips, ideas, and examples. Mark a date on your mind map when to stop (4 to 6 weeks) This way, you have a target deadline and know when it must be completed. Otherwise, you could end up leaving it hanging there for years, because there's ALWAYS something you can add to it. All artists, writers included, have to force themselves to say, "Enough!". And move on to the next step. At the end of four to six weeks get yourself some paper or a laptop. Snuggle up into a comfortable position where you can see your mind map, and now we start the next of the steps to writing a book. Start copying over everything into something that resembles a linear outline. Now this is just for you, not your high school English teacher, so write it any way you want. Take one circle at a time, write it and beneath it list all the "spokes" that apply to it. Most people end up with several single-spaced typed pages. Next step is you take one topic at a time and write a chapter about it. Following these steps to writing a book, you will find that your book practically writes itself. dissertation
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