How to Write your First Book

After two decades of writing as a hobby, dreaming of one day having a book published, and being an official 'author', Frankie planned, wrote, edited, and published The Plant Witch in only eight months. Here she examines what she did differently to bring this vision to life and cross that finish line.

In Febuaury of 2026, I made a decision. I was going to be a published author. Now this wasn't a dream, this was a reality. I officially hired myself as a writer. It didn't matter that I had never written a book before. I was a writer and I was expected to produce work product.

My reasoning was that I had several jobs throughout my life that I disliked and/or didn't feel particularly good at. But I was expected to generate 'work product' every day and I did so and the wheels of industry turned ever onward. I had written subpar papers for college, some of which recieving grades far exceeding the effort that went into them. If I could do that for things that I didn't love, then I certainly could do the same thing for a hobby that I was deeply passionate about. It was just the passion that was a problem.

In the past, I would be struck, as all writers are from time to time, with a fantastic idea for a story. I would eagerly jot it down and start planning all of the little pieces of it. I would tell my friends and family who would often delight in my imagination and tell me how I needed to write this story. But then it would happen. I would spend days searching for just the right name for a character or a location. I would commit myself to weeks of research on a topic that was merely tangential to the story. Or I would despair that while I had a great idea for the beginning and I basically knew how it would end, I didn't have any idea what happened in the middle to connect the two. And, after much dispairing, the idea would slip out of my grasp. It was no longer shiny and I didn't know what to do with it. Luckily, another idea would come along, freshly shiny, and I would go and repeat the process over and over again.

Because I loved these ideas and was so passionate about how good they were going to be, I became 'precious' about them. They were special so they surely deserved all of the love and care and attention possibly, right? And so I would love them to death. Well, hopefully not death. I do have aspirations that once I finish the Cloverdale Witches series, that I will go back and find one of these precious little ideas and try to use the skills that I have learned to save them and bring them to life.

So, what did I need, if not passion? Work ethic. I needed to just do the work. To buckle down and write. "Oh, I need to research that." No, no you don't. Make a note and write through without it. You can research when you are editing. "Oh, I don't know what to name him." Name him Bob and rename him in editing, you have writing to do.

I set myself a goal of writing 2,000 words a day, five days a week. I was starting in early Febuaury and I wanted to publish by July. That didn't happen. But that was okay. I asked myself, what would happen if I was at a corporate job and I got really behind? You would get written up and then they would tell you to get back to work. Deadlines might get pushed back, but that didn't mean that they work still wasn't due. So that is what I did. I finished the first draft by the end of May and then began editting. I hadn't appreciated how long editting would take me. But I'm also so excited by how much better the book got every time I went over it.

Finishing the book by July was always the ideal goal. I also gave myself practical goals. "Yes, I would love to publish by July. But as long as I publish by the end of the year, I will still feel like I accomplished my goal and be happy." "Yes, I would love to write 10,000 words a week, but as long as I am sitting down at the computer, writing at least one sentence, five days a week, that is forward momentum." And that got me through a lot.

I could talk more about my conception and outlining process, because both were very helpful to the process. But the most important thing was the simple decision that this is what we were doing and sticking by that. Even when I didn't feel like I could. Even when I felt empty and lost. Even when I thought it was all bad and worthless. I kept going. My boss wouldn't let me stop.