What does it take to write a book in 12 weeks?
To accomplish any given goal, you must have certain tools or equipment, and you must do certain things. This is certainly true for anyone who wants to participate in Your Book Bakery: 12 Weeks to a Nonfiction Manuscript.
Before you commit to something, you should know what doing it looks like. Here is a sober look at writing a book with this recipe. This is going to take 40 to 100 hours of your time as you write a book in 12 weeks or less.
Schedule needed to write a book in 12 weeks
Week 1: You will spend several hours asking and answering a lot of questions to figure out which book to write. You’ll begin talking to select people about your book and the possibility of receiving their endorsement of it.
Week 2: You will spend two to ten hours doing basic research for your book, keeping track of your sources.
Week 3: You’ll start dumping words onto the page as fast as you can, without thinking. You will get 10,000 words into your manuscript. This means banging on the keyboard for at least one hour every day or 2,000 words a day for five days.
Week 4: This week, you’ll get to 20,000 words. This is long enough for many books.
Week 5: You will get to a maximum of 30,000 words, then look to see what’s missing and make note of it.
Week 6: You’ll revise your draft during this week. Spend five to ten hours adding anything missing, examples, stories, and details.
Week 7: You’ll continue to revise. Spend up to five hours checking sources, clarity, and crutch words. After that, spend up to five hours varying your sentence length and structure, then send your manuscript to endorsers and a line editor. If you use beta readers, you will probably not be able to write a book in 12 weeks. It’s up to you. If you have the time to spare, then let it take a little longer. Now is the time to send the manuscript to beta readers if you use them.
Week 8: You’ll do nothing and like it (hat tip to Caddy Shack).
Week 9: This week, you will wait to hear back from your endorsers and editor (and beta readers if you have them).
Week 10: You’ll begin receiving endorsements, feedback, and rejections—all with gratitude.
Week 11: You’ll continue to receive responses. It’s been a month, so you should have your edited manuscript back. Now is the time that you’ll go ove
r the edits and accept/reject changes.
Week 12: You’ll publish your book and celebrate.
Ready to write a book in 12 weeks or less?
If this sounds like something you are ready to commit to, read on.
Before we allow anyone to sign up for Your Book Bakery: 12 Weeks to a Nonfiction Manuscript, we require them to make a commitment. We say that by signing up for this program, you are giving your word that you have or have access to (or by the start date, will have/have access to) the following:
- A computer that works
- Internet access
- Slack (We’ll invite you via email, and it’s free.)
- Google Drive
- Thumb/Jump drives or other external storage device
- Three locations for storing your manuscript (examples include email, Google Drive, Dropbox, external hard drive, computer hard drive, thumb drives, burnable discs)
- At least one hour every day to write your book
You are also giving your word that you will do the following:
- Carve out time in your daily schedule to write. We’ve helped hundreds of authors, and we can tell you that if it is not on the calendar, it will not get done.
- Tell the people in your life that for the next 12 weeks, they must ask someone else to do the things they’ve been asking you to do. We promise, they will survive.
- Dedicate at least one hour per day for your book in all phases except for Week 8 and 9. Write for at least one hour or 2,000 words every day during the writing phase. We host writing/work sprints for hours every day to help you with this.
- Post weekly your WIP (work in progress, your manuscript as it stands) in the Google Drive folder that Your Book Bakery assigns to you. Accountability is key.
Setting themselves up to fail
You would probably be surprised how many people who have participated in this program in the past did the following:
- A couple of participants did not have a computer. They expected to write a book on their phone or iPad. I’m not kidding.
- Some neglected to schedule time to write. How can anyone expect to accomplish something they do not make time for? We don’t know, either.
- Some allowed their friends, family members, churches, and other organizations to monopolize their time and run roughshod over the boundaries they had set. How can someone expect to have the time needed to accomplish a goal if they don’t defend their boundaries regarding their time? They can’t.
- Some claimed to have written thousands of words each week, only for Jennifer to discover that they hadn’t written any words at all. Why lie? They wanted to please The Book Baker (Jennifer) and their peers, and they didn’t want to admit that they had not carved out the time, set boundaries with people in their life, or put in the effort needed to write a book in 12 weeks.
Guaranteed success in writing your book
If you follow the recipe, you are guaranteed to succeed in writing your book. In fact, if you follow the recipe and you do not have a completed first draft by the end of the program, I will give you your money back.
Every person who follows this recipe . . . Every person who schedules time, sets boundaries, dumps the words on the page, and revises their manuscript succeeds. They write a book in 12 weeks.
Will you be one of them?
Sign up now. This is for the live (on Zoom each week) program.
This is for the self-serve option. It’s a traditional course you do on your own, and the price is much lower.