This is one of Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Successful People.” It also corresponds to an ancient Jewish dictum that is part of the Shabat service, “Lekha Dodi”: “Sof ma’aseh b’makhshava tkhila,” says the Hebrew–”The end of a deed is in prior thought.”
Here’s the application to books: If you want to wind up with a book, you have to start with a book in mind.
“Well, duh!” I hear you snorting. And yet–most people who want to write a book don’t do that. They start with some general notion that they want to get to a book, then do random things–journaling, reading, lots of web surfing, thinking, feeling frustrated… and are disappointed and distressed that they seem to be no closer to a book weeks or months or years later than when they began.
It’s not their fault. It’s as if they had determined to travel to some distant destination–say, Joplin, Missouri–but had no idea where Joplin is.
So they start traveling. They drive, they walk, they fly, just to be moving. But they never get to Joplin, and feel worse and worse about it all the time.
One thing that would be helpful would be a map. Here’s one:
- Decide who you are writing for
- Decide what you are going to say to them, and why they will want to hear your message
- Name your book
- Create the table of contents–the list of chapters
- For each chapter, create a list of subchapters
- Only when you are satisfied that your table of contents and all the subchapters are in the right order do you begin to write
- If there’s anything you need to look up or find out, note it and leave it for the end. When everything else is done, go do whatever is required to fill that blank
That’s how you build a book. You begin with the end in mind.
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