by Louise Christensen

Created on: November 18, 2009

If the only goal is to write a book then anyone can do it; obviously many have. Keeping a diary or journal over a span of years could be considered writing a book. A book is merely pages filled with words that describe thoughts, emotions, people, places and events. Some books are adorned with pictures - some are not. Some books are many thousands words - some only dozens. Some books are very private and some books should have been kept private. All books that get published were written to be read - regardless of how well they were written.

What you need first, to write a book, is a strong grasp of your language of origin. Regardless of the language you speak, you need to know it well, spell it correctly, and have a strong ability to describe sufficiently to allow the reader an image. You need to be able to form proper sentences and know when to start a new paragraph. You need to understand when to stop one chapter and start the next. You need to be organized and, depending on the type of book, either succinct or highly descriptive. You need to know your perceived reader and have the ability to keep the reader engrossed to the end. These are just a few of the very raw basics that you need to know to write a book.

For some people the ability to write a book appears to be innate; for others - skills need to be learned. Anyone who has gone to college will either learn good writing skills or hire good writing skills or fail to graduate. Most professionals develop technical writing skills which are required to present information in a format acceptable to their profession. A good technical writer will find it easy to switch over into the other realm of the written word - 'other' non-fiction and fiction; some may even have the ability to write literature. Good technical writing skills are a great place to start for writing any type of book.

How people get started on writing a book can vary. Most published writers started out with a book banging around in their head until it was put on paper or keyed into a computer. Sometimes more than one book gets written by an author and these are generally folks that were gifted with the gene that produces published authors. Other folks only write one book and never another but at least the book stops harping at their subconscious. It could be theorized that all books written were meant to be and that the ideas are simply floating in the ether. Perhaps the idea is presented to masses of people but only one (in a rare event - two)

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