Do you have a book inside you?

Are you one of the 200 million people who feel they have a book inside of them?

According to the writer Joseph Epstein, 81% of Americans feel they have a book in them, that’s approximately 200 million Americans who aspire to authorship, but only 15% start writing a book.  Even more surprising is that only 6% get halfway through and only 3 % finish their first draft and only 0.6% reach publication!

Why is it that so many want to write a book and yet only a small percentage reach publication?

Time

We all live such busy lives that finding the time to write is a challenge.  With so many distractions in our day-to-day lives, one reason that people love to travel is that it gives them that opportunity. Writer’s retreats or even starting a journal every day when you are on vacation, is a great way to get started.

Not good enough

Many people talk themselves out of writing before they even get started.  The common things I hear include ‘my story is not interesting enough’ or ‘my writing is not good enough’ and these are both myths that are not true.  I tell my writers that you only need to focus on telling your story and leave the technical side of writing to our professional editing team.

If you can speak, you can record your story on your phone and then transcribe your first draft from audio messages. You don’t need to be great at writing to be an author, you just need a good story!

It’s a lonely experience

Another myth, that the writer needs to take themselves to a writing cabin in the forest and be alone to focus on their writing.  Exactly the opposite is true, and we all work best in a collaboration of like-minded people.  Group writing retreats are inspiring and motivating and keep you accountable to get the writing done.

Getting peer reviews and encouragement helps you stay motivated and keeps you on track.  Talking out the various ideas that you might write about in a group helps you to get an outside look at how people respond to your story.

I’ve had many people come to retreat that didn’t think their story was interesting enough, until they heard the group echo back how amazing their story is.  We live in a vacuum thinking we are not extraordinary, but when we share our ‘ordinary’ story in a group, we find out that we are unusual and exceptional.

My story is too big

A common mistake people make is to try and tell their whole life story in one book.  A memoir is a ‘slice’ of life, and you should not decide alone what you should include and what you shouldn’t!  You need a team to help you figure out who your reader is, and what they want to know.

I ask my writers, ‘how do you think you can help other people by sharing your story?’  Once they have the motivation to help people, I guide them to tell the story of how they overcame trauma or a difficult situation, rather than focusing the story on the trauma.

This is called developmental editing, or book coaching, and it helps the writer to find the focus for the story.  Once the first draft is created, it then goes to a content editor who crafts your writing with the correct grammar and sentence structure and gives you feedback on the content.  It can take 4 or 5 rounds of editing before the manuscript is ready for proof reading.

This will be a weekly column where we will be featuring local authors that live in Puerto Vallarta.  We will be giving you an inside look at the purpose of their writing and how they crafted their story or poetry to have an impact on their readers.  We will also feature a writing tip to get you on the path to start writing.

Julie Ann is the founder of Influence Publishing Inc, corporation from Vancouver, Canada.  She has lived in Puerto Vallarta for 5 years and is the owner of the Mexican Corporation, Casa de Influencia S.A. de C.V. which is a retreat and event center based in Old Town, Puerto Vallarta.  She hosts writing retreats and writing classes at the center.  The next introduction to writing a book class is July 6^th 4pm to 6pm.  More information can be found at www.casadeinfluencia.com