How I Finally Wrote a Book and What’s It’s Going to Be About
If you — like me — enjoy putting words on paper, I bet the thought of writing a book has crossed your mind more than once. It doesn’t matter if today your job is to craft home appliance instruction manuals or write seductive sales copy for Facebook ads, you have a book in you, and you’re going to write it.
Someday.
When you’ve crossed every item off your to-do list. When nobody distracts you. When you can afford sitting in the coffee shop all day, tapping away at your MacBook Pro, digging deep into that part of your mind where great ideas hide. When you can finally slow down.
And then you hear that crummy little inner voice that tells you: "It’s never gonna happen."
Life is busy. When there are so many things going on around you, how do you find some time to concentrate on what matters?
Writing a book requires solitude. Frank Kafka said:
“I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ — that wouldn’t be enough — but like a dead man.”
I didn’t have a dead man. This is exactly why I couldn’t get started on my book! I guess…
And then, spring arrived and the world slowed down.
In the early days of the pandemic, I was — like everybody else on the planet — trapped at home. Isolation, limited movement, disruption of work routine, canceled trips — it felt unbearable.
It felt quiet.
When nothing is going on around you (and you’re not scrolling through Instagram or watching TV), you have a rare chance to enjoy the silence.
Silence creates space in your mind. And then, weird things start to happen: endless thoughts start swimming around in your brain. Thoughts you’ve always had, but never explored to the fullest. This is when you start coming up with ideas, thinking “Hey! Maybe I can write a book about this?”
But then, that little inner voice whispers in your ear again: “Yeah, right. When, darling? If you haven’t noticed, even though you sit at home all the time, you are busier than ever. The work isn’t going to do itself!”
I needed a kick to shut that little voice up and get started on my book.
In May, after two months of isolation, the Italian government (I live in Italy) gave back some freedoms. We could now go outside. And I could even return to my coworking space for work.
On the fifth of May, my husband and I went to take a walk along the seaside. It was the first time after 60 days of isolation that we could breathe in sea air (without a mask) and watch the sun appear on the horizon.
I always get kicks out of the sea.
A few minutes later, at my desk in the coworking, before the workday began, I started writing my book. My first lines were about walls (apparently because I had been surrounded by walls over the past two months). Here is what I wrote:
“When I was a student, I lived in a small room in a dormitory. It was about seven meters long and three meters wide — very little space for four girls. When I say I lived in a dormitory, what I actually mean is I lived on my bed. I slept on it, ate on it, studied on it, did my makeup on it, watched movies on it — all the other space in the room was occupied.
When I see bad content, it reminds me of my room in the dormitory: cluttered. Nobody has the time let alone the desire to make their way through a blog post that looks like the Berlin Wall in 1961 and reads like the privacy policy on a SaaS website. Just like nobody in their right mind would want to live in a dormitory the size of a bathroom with three other people in it. Humans need space. That’s why photos of spacious interiors and large windows get so many likes on Instagram. Good copy is like modern home design. It doesn’t waste people’s brainpower with dressed up pretentious words that convey obscure meanings. It’s simple to walk through and easy to understand. It gets the message across.”
I started writing a book that teaches people how to write high-quality content.
Why I wrote a book about writing
I have a lot of experience in content marketing in the B2B technology sector. Over the past seven years, I’ve written hundreds of articles for technology blogs and plenty of copy for software company websites. I’ve coached dozens of content writers and managed several marketing teams. I’ve built successful content-driven B2B lead generation strategies and achieved outstanding results in the highly competitive software development industry. Currently, I am the content manager at Kaiiax, a marketing consulting agency I co-founded that helps software companies develop content operations and acquire leads using content marketing.
I know how hard it is for aspiring writers and businesses who hire them to produce content that doesn’t end up gathering dust on a server. Because most content that companies publish isn’t getting them very far.
Writing content that sells stuff is hard. And it’s only going to get harder, as the content ocean is rising faster than the Arctic can melt. The world of content marketing is getting competitive, and brands need to work hard to win the battle for customers.
Everybody knows this:
The only way to learn how to write is by writing.
Sadly, if you strike out on your own with a trusty laptop and a blank Google Doc, you’ll likely spend a significant amount of time producing ineffective content until you figure out how to write content that generates leads.
But let’s be honest:
You don’t have time for that.
I wrote my book to help copywriters learn and practice several writing rules that will help them focus on writing content that makes readers act instead of writing content that sits on a server and gathers dust.
My book explains how to write content that turns a reader into a lead.
From Reads To Leads
My book is called From Reads To Leads. It's divided into 11 parts, each focused on one thing your content needs in order to sell stuff. You can think of these things as the ingredients of a winning content recipe. As with any recipe, you need to add these ingredients in the right order.
Here’s a brief overview of each part:
Part 1, Content is for the reader, offers some effective approaches to understanding what your readers need and how to write content that appeals to them.
Part 2, Getting a response is the whole point of writing, teaches you how to get the desired response from your readers and move them down the marketing funnel.
Part 3, Have a message and make a point, explains how to figure out and communicate your key message and how to use it to take readers to the next stage of their journey.
Part 4, Structure lets people understand the world, offers you something better than a listicle or a step-by-step guide: It shows you how to creatively turn your content into a story with a three-act structure.
Part 5, Your outline must sell the draft, provides you with eight easy steps to write an outline that focuses your writing and kills your procrastination.
Part 6, Clarity helps your reader see the value in the content, explores what exactly makes writing clear and simple — a must-have ingredient for content that sells.
Part 7, Style is how you express your brand, talks about how to express your brand’s personality and make your writing recognizable.
Part 8, Formatting determines what your words look like, shows what makes content readable, and explains how to get your readers to stay with you till the end.
Part 9, Self-edit with the right attitude, reveals the most important rules of editing.
Part 10, Collaboration requires accountability, discusses the writer’s role in the content writing process, and outlines how you should approach content collaborations.
Part 11, Critique makes you a better writer, focuses on how you should react when your work is ripped to shreds.
From Reads to Leads takes you step by step from understanding your reader to writing your first draft to accepting criticism from your reviewers.
How long it took me to write it
I started writing From Reads to Leads on the fifth of May of 2020. Every morning from 5 till 8 AM I’d been cranking out from 500 to 2,000 words. I had finished the final draft in November 2020 and spent the next 2 months going back and forth through my draft with my editor.
Writing a book was the hardest and the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.
Now when From Reads to Leads is finished, there is still a lot of work I need to do to get it published on Amazon and other book stores. I’m planning on releasing the book in spring.
I’d love to have you check out From Reads to Leads before it gets published. Maybe you’d even want to help me launch it! Here’s my email address: hello@readstoleads.com. I’d love it if you shot me an email, so I can share an excerpt with you.
