Writing a Book

Right, so you want to write a book. Fair enough. Sit down for a minute and I’ll tell you how to get started, the way I see it. 

No big speeches, no fancy theories from some bloke with a beard and a pipe. Just the truth, straight up, like a pint pulled proper in a quiet pub on a wet Tuesday.

First off, don’t be arsing around with notebooks full of clever ideas or waiting for the perfect moment when the muse floats in like a fairy on a cloud. 

Fuck that. 

The only way to start is to start. Open the laptop, or grab a pen and a A4 pad – whatever doesn’t make you feel like a twat – and put words on the page. Any words. Doesn’t matter if they’re shite at the start. Most of them will be. That’s fine. That’s the job.

Be kind to yourself, like. Fill the pages quick. Double space if it makes you feel better, or write on every second line so it looks like you’re getting somewhere.

Every new page is a small win. Pat yourself on the back. Have a cup of tea. Until you hit page fifty. Then you can calm down a bit and start worrying if any of it’s any good. Before that, worry is just your brain trying to talk you out of it. Tell it to fuck off.

And I’m not the only one who says that. I got that idea from Irish author Roddy Doyle. He’s brilliant. And he’s bang on about the fifty pages thing. 

What do you write about? Whatever’s in your head, mate. The stuff you know. The bus you were on this morning, the row you had with your mum last Christmas, the way the rain sounds on the window when you’re trying to get the kids to bed. Don’t go chasing big ideas about the meaning of life or some historical epic with horses and swords unless that’s what keeps you awake at night. 

Start small. A fella walking down the road. A woman standing at the sink looking out at the garden. Let them talk. Let them say stupid things or clever things or nothing at all. Listen to them. That’s where the book hides – in the voices.

Give it a name early on. Call it something. The Quiet Tuesday or Barry’s Lament or whatever. Own it. See it on a shelf in your head. Makes it real.

And here’s the thing: sit down every day if you can. Not because some guru said so, but because if you don’t, the book won’t get written. It won’t magically appear while you’re watching Netflix or scrolling on the phone. The book is the words you put down when you’d rather be doing anything else. 

Measure the day in quantity first – how many words, how many pages. The quality comes later, when you’re editing and you realise some of the bollocks you wrote wasn’t actually bollocks at all.

If it feels like shite, keep going anyway. Anxiety is part of it. Fear is part of it. The voice in your head saying “who do you think you are?” – that’s normal. Every writer hears it. The ones who finish the book are the ones who tell it to shut up and keep typing.

Read, too. Not to copy, but to remember why you wanted to do this in the first place. Go back to the books that made you laugh or cry or stay up too late. Feel that again. Then put your own down.

Look, nobody’s waiting for your book except you. So don’t make it precious. Just get it started. One sentence. Then another. Before you know it, there’s a page. Then ten. Then you’re in it, and the characters are doing things you never planned, and that’s when it gets good.

Now go on. Close this and open a new document. Call it whatever you like.

And if it doesn’t work today, try again tomorrow. That’s all there is to it, really.