If you troll the web these days, you will find that lots of people offer ghostwriting services—help for authors in structuring, writing, and editing their books. That’s one of my roles, and I enjoy talking with prospective authors about their book plans. Who doesn’t like to get in on the ground floor of a project [...]

Writers can learn a lot about the process of creativity from improvisational actors. If you feel you lack for creativity, try an exercise or two from “improv.” One of the most basic rules of improv is not to deny an “offer.” When one actor asserts something, the next actor builds on it—and never rejects it. [...]

I ran across Jim Stengel’s new book, Grow, last week, and it struck me how much his management ideas apply to the early phases of book writing. Stengel, a business consultant, argues that what underpins the success of the world’s highest-growth companies is one or two ideals. I would argue that one or two ideals underpin [...]

Every book requires an investment, in fact a very large one. So a good exercise before starting on a book project is to calculate your return on investment. What are you going to get back from everything you put in? I like marketing guru Michael Port’s way of looking at it: You have to figure [...]

Creativity is a skill, not a talent. So argues Jonah Lehrer in his recent Wall Street Journal article, adapted from his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. Lehrer maintains that most people recognize the need for different kinds of creativity—the inspirational spark needed for a creative insight, the perspirational slog needed to pursue a creative [...]

Passion for a book subject always makes a book better. At least it should. But one pitfall of writing with passion is the tendency to play loose with the facts. I don’t mean fabricating facts, but massaging them. Massaging them with hyperbole or embellishment. Or massaging them by dropping inconvenient caveats and using obsolete or [...]

Last fall, I attended a panel of authors offering tips for writing books. This was at a conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Miami. One of the authors, Michael Grunwald, from Time Magazine and formerly The Washington Post, said he had taped a sign over his computer: “So?” Grunwald wanted that sign to [...]

When you start a chapter, especially early chapters in your book, you’ll often face a very specific writing challenge: Fitting everything in the first paragraph. The problem, you’ll find, is that you have too many things to say, and you can’t cram them all in at once. Say you’re writing a book titled How to [...]

Back in 2009, as I was interviewing people for the book I published last week, Merchants of Virtue, I discovered that designing and developing a new book has a lot in common with designing and developing a new chair. In one of my interviews, I talked with Tom Niergarth, head of New Product Commercialization at [...]

In Stairway to Earth, I recommend that authors create a positioning journal. The journal is a place to pour out your thoughts, to muse, brainstorm, dream, and scheme.  And it is essential in the book-development process—well before you write the proposal—so you’re clear on where you’re going. What do you address in a journal? The [...]