You know the old joke: How do you get to ?

Practice, man, practice.

Here’s today’s version: How do you write a book?

Write, man, write.

At least once a week someone asks my advice about a book. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Potential author: “Hey Bruce… you’ve published a bunch of books. Tell me, how do I write a book?”

Me: “Um, you sit down and you write it.”

Potential author: “Yeah, okay, I guess I could do that. Because, you know, I have this book inside me and…”

Me: “You have a book inside you? You should get it out of there. It’s really dark and hard to read where it is.”

Potential author: “Yeah, but that’s hard work. How did you do it?

Me: “Simple. I sat down and wrote each book. Word by word, page by page.”

Potential author: “You have any good tips on how to do that?”

Me: “Sure. Sit down at your desk at the same time every day and write. A page a day is a book a year.”

Potential author: “But what should I write about?”

Me: “What do you want to write about? What do you care about? What do you have something to say about? What do the people you want to write for want to read?”

And so on.

As you’ve probably figured out by now, I don’t have a lot of good advice on the subject. That’s because no matter how many times I’ve done it, writing a book is like a marathon, studying the guitar, or to speak a new language.

You simply cannot run a marathon until you’ve trained and put in lots of sweaty miles. You can learn all you want about form and diet and pacing and equipment but at some point you still have to pull on your running shoes and hit the street.

Likewise, you can study as much as you want about how to swim, but unless you finally get into the water and start kicking your feet, you’ll never actually be a swimmer. Sure, you can read books about the subject, but after you’re done, you still won’t be able to swim. And those books won’t be a lot help either — unless they’re made of Styrofoam and double as  flotation devices.

When it comes to musical instruments, new languages, and book writing, the most important thing about doing it is doing it. Lots of people can give you lots of advice but at the end of the day if you want the results you have to do the work.

But sometimes there’s something else that can help you get to where you want to be.

A coach.

A swimming coach can help you get better faster. A running coach can help you get better and faster. A guitar or a language teacher can help you learn to do those things, too.

So it should stand to reason that the right coach could also help you learn .

Clearly I’m not that person. But Don Hutson is. He’s a Times and Wall Street Journal who’s written 16 books, including his most popular – The One Minute Entrepreneur. Because of that, Don gets asked for help writing books a lot more than I do. That’s why he’s putting on his Five-Day Fearless Writer’s Boot Camp. It costs only $27 and Don says it’ll answer all your questions about how to write and publish your book.

So the next time someone tells me they have a book inside of them, I’m going to tell them to click HERE for Don’s new program. Maybe he’ll be able to help them get it out! Maybe he can help you too.

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