What's up, everybody?
Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 1 of
SPI TV.
I could not be more excited and to start off
with something extremely valuable for you,
I'm going to share some stuff that other people
have taught me to help me with my book writing.
Book writing has always been a struggle for
me and I'm going to give you some secrets
that I've been using to write over 36,000
words in the first two weeks of 2015.
I'm also going to reveal my next big book
project with you and give you one tool that
is saving me so much time and helping me achieve
up to 180 words per minute?
Stay tuned.
A book.
A book is such a huge undertaking and it's
really funny because I can write a blog post,
3,000, 4,000 words in just a few hours, but
when it comes to writing a book, I struggle,
a lot, and that's why I have a couple unwritten
books just sitting on my ... I've started
them but they're just sitting in my computer
in Scrivener, which is the tool that I use
to help write books.
I remember sitting for hours, I would block
out four or five hours of time during the
day to sit in front of my computer and finish
my book or work on it, at least, and coming
out of that with an extra 300 words for four
hours of work?
It was just completely deflating and I know
a lot of you can relate to this.
I know a lot of you also, like me, feel like
you have a book in you, and many books in
you.
I'm going to show you a technique that I have
been using that has changed my life in terms
of productivity with book writing already
within the first couple of weeks of this year,
I've been able to crank out 36,000 words using
this new technique.
Now, it's a technique that I've adopted from
a lot of other people's strategies and tips
for writing books and it's involving Post-Its.
Something that a lot of other people have
used before, Post-It notes.
Post-It notes.
I love Post-It notes because you can write
on them, you can move them around, they're
small but not too small where you have to
squint to see them, and they're perfect, and
I'm going to show you how to mind map your
next book using Post-It books.
How you can, with that, achieve incredible
words per minute in terms of the rate at which
you write your book, and I'll show you some
tools and special things that I have been
using along with my Post-It notes and some
special things that you can do in terms of
where your Post-It notes are that will help
you crank out these books like none other.
The first thing I want to do is start with
... You want to go get Post-It notes.
Right?
You can get them at any store or the grocery
or wherever, and just get a whole bunch of
different colors.
I like the ones that are a little bit smaller
than ... They have large ones but if you get
the small ones, that's fine, because you're
just going to write one or two words on them.
The idea is you want to pick one color, I'll
start with neon green, and just start writing,
just start anything that comes to mind involving
your book that you're going to write, put
it down and just stick it on that surface
that you're working on.
To demonstrate this and just show you, I'm
just going to pick a topic and it's something
that I always talk about in the blog is fly
fishing.
I know a little bit about fly fishing and
I'll show you how I can craft this book and
put it together and you'll start to see that
once you start to put all your ideas on to
this board that you're working on with these
Post-It notes, you can move things around
and then the chapters start to form, the subchapters,
the different topics, and that will help create
what becomes your outline.
What we're going to do after that is take
bits and pieces of that outline and move them
out into a place where you will then just
focus on those little bits and pieces.
Again, that's why I love the Post-It notes
because you can move them around into different
places.
Let's do fly fishing.
Now, I might just pick a color in the middle
just to make it my central thing, so I'm going
to pick pink, I'm going to write fly fishing.
Again, anything that comes to mind, there
are no rules here.
You can always throw things out but you don't
want to stop yourself.
This is the creative process.
You don't want to edit in your head.
You just want to put things out there and
then you can edit and move things out.
Fly fishing.
What is involved with fly fishing?
There's obviously fish and this is going to
go really fast.
I'm just fish, and there's flies, and what
else?
Rods.
There's casting techniques.
There's reels.
Again, anything that comes to mind.
You want to put this stuff in your brain down
on paper because then that way, you won't
have to think about it anymore because it's
there and then you can focus on then organizing
it, but this isn't the organizational part,
remember.
Fish.
What else?
Lake fishing or lake fly fishing.
There's rivers and streams.
What else comes to mind?
Caleb, anything related to fly fishing that
you can think of?
Caleb: How to dry things off after you're
done.
Pat: How to dry things off after you're done.
Equipment.
Good.
I like that.
Maybe clothing.
Probably shouldn't be doing this on fly fishing.
I'm not going to be publishing a book on fly
fishing anytime soon but you'll get what I'm
doing here in a sec.
What did I say?
Fish finders.
Again.
Anything that comes to mind and I'll stop
here in a second.
Now at this point, you have a whole board
or desk full of these Post-It notes.
Maybe you're doing this on a whiteboard somewhere.
I don't know, but now at this point you want
to start looking at all these and start to
tie them together, somehow.
Just pull them out and start moving them in
different places, organizing them in bunches,
and whatever comes to mind.
You'll see that your brain will just start
to organize this stuff.
Again, it's nice that it's all here for you
because then you can move things around.
For example, I can put jackets and wading
boots here together, boots is the same as
boots, so I'll just put that on top of that
one.
Let's see.
Equipment and clothing, that's the top level
one here.
Then I have reels and rods and flies over
here, and then I have some more behavioral
type stuff like etiquette and time flies and
maybe casting techniques over here.
I have oceans, lakes, and streams over here.
Snacks, which is something to bring, maybe
that's over here in the equipment area.
License, that's another thing that you'll
need before you go out.
Safety, I can put that in the behavior area,
tournaments.
I don't know what goes with that right now.
Here's some more equipment, boats, and floats,
destinations, go here, oceans, lakes, streams,
where in the water, what to do with kids and
fish finders, that's another equipment, casting
techniques.
That's its own thing.
There's probably a whole array of different
kinds of those.
Kids, I don't know what I'm going to do with
kids right now.
That might go ...
Caleb: Put them in the ocean.
Pat: Yeah.
Put them in the ocean.
What?
What are you talking about?
You can take them with you on these destinations.
Maybe what's kid-friendly.
Now I have four different sections here I
can see.
Maybe five because casting techniques.
Then what I can do is I can start to, again,
create a hierarchy here.
I can see here this is equipment and clothing.
This is here, and then stuff to bring with
you when you go, and then different kinds
of more fishing-related equipment here that
you'll need before you go out.
Already I can see a chapter here and then
subchapters happening in this section.
In here, I see ... Here's a catch and release
thing, that should go for that, and net.
Again, that's another piece of equipment.
Again, again, starting to organize, I'm starting
to form my book here.
Fish.
That's a top-level thing, obviously.
Fish, what kind of fish?
Trout, bass, and there's a whole bunch of
other fish.
How about fishing equipment like rods and
reels and flies?
That can be separated out from here.
That becomes a nice little chapter.
Then what you can do is you can start to pull
out another color and you can begin to create
second or third levels within these.
If I knew a little bit more about fly fishing,
I would probably know that they were different
kinds of flies that I could tie and I know
there's a few out there.
I'm just going to pull out flies and I'm going
to put, okay, there's I don't know what are
the names of the fly.
I think there's a nymph fly, and I can put
that there, and then I can put out.
What are some other flies?
People who actually fly fish are probably
mad at me for this but there's a housefly.
There's gnats.
These are all ... I have been fly fishing
once in Colorado and I know that there's names
for all of these little ones and things like
that.
Again, you begin to create your chapter on
flies.
Then maybe under nymph, there's two different
kinds of nymph ones.
Maybe there is ... Actually, here.
I know that there are two different kinds
of flies.
Again, I'm going to toss these and I'm going
to put dry, those are flies that float, and
then wet.
Wet flies, those are the ones that sink.
Then within there, I'm going to go in a different
color and then I'm going to put another level
and put when to use, and you just get deeper
and deeper.
Types of dry flies.
You can see how I begin to start to structure
everything and I started very top level, I
bunched things up, and then I started to break
things out a little bit, and that, again,
will help you decide what your chapters are,
what order everything should be in, what your
subchapters are, your subsections, and then
what we can do and what I typically do is
when I start to create this order of events
here and start to organize these in a sequential
pattern, then I start from the top, I pull
those Post-It notes out and I move them over
there onto my other desk, and that's when
I start writing about that particular thing.
Everything else that's here is still here
but I'm just not focusing on it because I'm
just writing that little portion, and that
is something that I struggled with when I
was writing books was I was envisioning this
whole thing and I was thinking about every
other part of the book and how it was going
to relate and tie in together.
You got to focus on that next little section,
and when you do that, it becomes so much easier
because as you complete those, you move things
aside and pull from this list of Post-It notes
and you move on to the next section, the next
section, little by little, you're chipping
away at it, and you're adding more words every
single day.
By the end of it, you will have gotten rid
of all these because you have had worked on
them and it's just you start to make progress
and it's completely motivating.
There's one little secret I want to share
with you that goes along with this technique,
and I'll show you that in the next section.
All right.
You've done your Post-It notes, you've started
to see what's happening in your book in terms
of the outline and the chapters, the sub-chapters,
the little sections within each of those.
Now it's time to start writing.
Again, like I said earlier, you're going to
pull out little sections.
I might, for example, pull out the sections
on how to get involved with fishing tournaments
and there's probably some more hierarchy involved
within this one, as well.
I think there's different types of tournaments
and that would go in here, as well.
Now that you know this is what you're focusing
on, you can start writing about it and your
mind is just focused on this.
Everything else is still there on the table
but you're focused on this.
Now, for me, writing and actually typing all
of this out is still a struggle at this point.
I'm a little bit more focused than I was.
However, my mind gets into editing mode whenever
I get in front of a computer.
It works for blog posts but when I am writing
a book, it just becomes much harder for me
mentally to go through all of this, even though
I can try and treat each of these as a single
blog post, I still want to edit along the
way as if I'm crafting it like a blog post
that's going to be published tomorrow.
No.
The very, very best strategy I heard is you
want to puke on the screen.
Basically you just want to put everything
there is in your brain about this particular
topic on the page.
I know some people who actually take the delete
button off their key because they don't want
to force themselves or even accidentally edit.
They are just in creative mode and the thing
is you're going to come in here the next time
around and edit and move things around and
you're probably not going to be using a lot
of what you write down but what comes out
when your brain is in creative mode is going
to be extremely good for what you have going
on in your book.
For me, when I was in edit mode, what would
happen is I just wouldn't let myself think
creatively.
I would just stop myself because I had to
edit this thing and move things around.
It's not what you want to do.
Now for me, the big trick I use and the app
that I use to help me achieve extremely high
words per minute is called Rev. I'm actually
not writing, I'm not typing, I'm dictating
my book, and it helps a little bit that I
have a little bit of podcasting experience,
but if you have any knowledge of this particular
topic, you just have to imagine you're talking
about it with someone.
Talking about this next Post-It note into
Rev, which is an iPhone app and I believe
it's also on Android, too.
It's basically an audio recorder but the cool
thing about it is you can take that audio
recording and send it to the people over at
Rev and they will transcribe it for you at
a dollar per minute.
Now, you can even just transcribe it yourself
or have somebody else on your team transcribe
it for you but they do a really great job,
the quality is really good, as well.
When that comes back to you a few hours later,
it's all of the words that you talked or related
to that specific item and that's the trick
that I use to get up to 180 words per minute
and how I've been able to complete the first
brain dump, this first draft of my book.
You can't even really call it a draft because
it's just everything in my brain about these
particular topics on these Post-It notes all
dictated or actually 95% dictated because
I started writing it on the computer but then
I went to Rev, R-E-V, and this has been game-changing.
Now I'm going to go through the book a second
time with a little bit of editing mode in
mind and I'll be able to shape and move things
around and craft these stories in a way that
makes sense for a book because it's not going
to make sense for a book when it comes from
your voice but you can get so many amazing
stories and pieces of your book out through
your voice.
Record it on Rev, transcribe it, and you'll
see you have a lot of stuff to work with and
your book's going to be finished sooner than
you know.
Again, to recap, try that out.
Brain dump all of your ideas about your book
on to Post-It notes, move them around, organize
them, shape them, sequence them to a point
where they become to look like a book in terms
of chapters, subchapters, parts within those
subchapters, all those things.
Pull out individual pieces and talk about
those things, record them, and if you don't
want to do that, that's fine, you can write
them, too.
Just having that Post-It note there that you're
focusing on is going to help quite a bit.
I want to talk to you really quick before
we end this video about my next book idea.
I know a lot of you have been following me,
talking about this journey for quite awhile
now.
I've even talked about it in episode 138,
where I said by the end of 2014 I was going
to make a decision on what this book would
be.
I wanted to go traditional but I'm actually
not going to go traditional this next round
and actually this book I'm writing, it's going
to be the first of a series of books that
are coming out.
The quick story is I was always inspired to
do a quote, "encyclopedia" of online business
strategies, tips, and things you should do
to become a successful online business and
build a successful blog, podcast, everything,
the whole thing, an encyclopedia, and there
was a book like that called Moonlighting on
the Internet when I first started back in
2008, although that book has not been updated
since 2008, and it's probably obvious that
it's quite outdated at this point.
I know being at the level I'm at now, I have
the ability to give you all the information
you need to start a successful business now.
However, the reason it's not going to go traditional
is because something like this I learned through
some quick conversations with publishers,
at traditional publishing companies, they
said that this wasn't a book that was really
going to look very attractive to them, and
that they were looking for something bigger,
something with more of a story arc, more wider-reaching,
and something like an encyclopedia just wasn't
very, very attractive to them, and I got that.
I totally understand, I know I have a number
of those books in me but I really want to
start this encyclopedia.
Now through even more conversation with a
lot of other people, I learned that maybe
an encyclopedia isn't the best idea in terms
of one big, fat, giant book that has all of
the information because there's obviously
a lot of things that can be done, a lot of
different pieces of building an online business.
That's why I'm going to be writing this series
for you.
It's going to be a series of books, I don't
know how long it's going to be, but every
series is going to be one particular piece
of the puzzle of building a successful online
business, and parts of it you may find useful
for you and some of it may be not.
It's going to be a choose-your-own adventure
type of deal.
I've already started on book one, and like
I said, completed the first draft of that,
and I can't wait to share it with you.
I'm so excited about this.
I think this is perfect, especially for what
a lot of people have been requesting of me
through email and messages and Facebook and
Twitter and things like that.
This is going to be perfect, especially for
the beginners, and even if you've just got
going already and you have a lot of your business
up and running already, it's still going to
be helpful as well for all levels.
Again, it's going to be a series of books
coming out this year and I cannot wait to
share it with you, it's going to be so much
fun.
Thank you for joining me on this journey and
yes, a traditionally-published books is in
line for the future and I think this is a
great stepping stone towards that for me,
as well, especially getting into this daily
writing habit, which has been really good
for me, and including it in my morning routine,
too.
I'd love to know what you think about this.
Obviously, you've followed me for quite a
bit now and understand the ups and downs of
gone through with book writing.
Let Go is a major success but I'm looking
for even bigger and better things now and
so head on over to WatchSPI.TV.
There you'll see the archive of shows if you're
watching this on the day that this particular
episode goes live, you'll just see our preview
episode from last week and this one there
but a new episode will come out every single
Friday.
Again, WatchSPI.TV, head on over to this episode.
This is Episode 1 and you can leave a comment
there and let me know what you think.
Love to share this with you and I'll keep
you posted along the way and I'd love to hear
feedback from you along the way, as well.
Thank you and if you're working on a book,
too, I hope this has been helpful for you.
Let me know what you think and if you are
writing a book, I'd love to know what it's
about and where you're at with it and let's
just do this together.
We're a team, I'm here for you, and hopefully
you'll be here for me, too.
Thanks so much and I'll see you in the next
episode of SPI TV.
I wonder if that looked real or not because
it was totally not real.
