New Book!

How I wrote a 47,000 word manuscript in 6 weeks!

So, the updates have been slow the past few weeks for several reasons:

1. My wife and I are in full temporary nesting mode as we wait on our second child’s birth any day now;

2. I am in the final stages of publishing my memoir, and';

3. I am finally focused on getting prepped for my September elk hunt.

But, as I am emerging from the fog of (book) war, I wanted to share a few things. First of which is the final cover design of my book! I am super excited after working with my publisher’s cover designer to come up with something that I believe is really cool:

It captures everything that I wanted it to, down to the details of the microchip extending out into natural branches for the border. Overall, super impressed and excited to share this book in stores.

And though I am finalizing the last bits of the internal layout, the targeted release date is set for Tuesday October, 11th. It will be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at most other large book retailers (yay!).

That said, one question I keep getting from people I talk to about the book is, “How did you write your book?” which is often followed by, “I have an idea for a one but I don’t know where to start.”

Those same questions plagued me for years until I finally sat down in 2017 and wrote my first book — which was a pure experience in discipline and over-editing for a product that I now look back on as “just OK.”

So, for this project I sought help. I ended up shopping my abstract around for sometime before landing with Lioncrest publishers and getting the chance to sit down with New York Time’s Best Selling Author, Tucker Max. Sitting with him I was able to talk through and learn about what it really takes to write a book that people actually want to read. (He actually has a book on these methodologies for those interested)

The biggest takeaway? You need to get your ideas on paper, fast. What that means in reality is that you need to get a rough outline and then start writing. And when you write you DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT go back and re-read or edit any single line until you are done getting every thought out of your head.

This type of exercise was new to me as when I used to write (even this blog), I would scribble out a sentence or two, and then immediately want to edit it to make it sound better… What Tucker was asking for was not only new, but it was also extremely hard. The discipline to not re-read what I had written the day before was nearly unbearable when I started, but after a few weeks it became second nature.

That approach, coupled with discipline to wake up every morning for six weeks and pound out 400-3000 words, was what got me over the finish line so quickly. Now, the steps that followed having a 47,000 word vomit draft completed were equal parts frustrating and difficult, but I will cover those forays into the world of editing in a later post.

Until then, I will be getting back into mountain-shape and waiting for the birth of our second child!