"Eff it, we'll do it live"

How I spotted a gigantic inefficiency and my resulting new approach

I made a gigantic change to my process over the past two weeks.

I’ve removed several steps in the process of going from writing to editing to layout to publication. It’s my latest effort in my long series of efforts to do a better job completing books.

I never much thought about my book creation process before I started this 100 books project. I just fell into a process that seemed comfortable and natural.

That is:

1. Research

2. Planning and outlining

3. Writing first draft in Scrivener, often leaving parts incomplete and/or not even started

4. Reading the draft, identifying missing parts, finding areas that needed to be rewritten or improved

5. Writing a second draft, now with nothing incomplete

6. Editing the draft, or having an editor go through the draft in some cases (the latter of which required an export into other software)

7. Implementing the edits

8. Doing a final pass/draft

9. Getting the front cover, back cover, and art either commissioned or completed

10. Importing the draft into the layout software (depending on the project, that’s InDesign, Vellum, or Word)

11. Laying out the draft

12. Exporting the book as an eBook and print book

13. Uploading to the book publisher and formatting based on their specs

That is, of course, a lot of steps. I’ve talked quite a bit in prior updates on this site about my struggles with perfectionism; the list of steps above is an ode to that perfectionism.

But I have more than a dozen books in the works right now that don’t demand that level of perfectionism — not even close.

So I’ve started taking a new approach: Writing to the final.

Or the Bill O’Reilly “eff it, we’ll do it live” strategy, as I wish I remembered to call it more often.

Rather than writing an incomplete first draft and doing a total of three (or four) drafts before laying out the book, I’m consolidating the process.

I’m now writing my books in Word — and writing them directly into the book’s layout template. Word isn’t my favorite software option (it’s really my least favorite of all the ones I mentioned earlier) but it’s the software that Amazon uses for uploads and my editor uses for revisions — so I’ll adapt. I’m not leaving any incomplete parts nor “I’ll worry about this on the next draft” sections. Then, when I’m done, I’ll do one editing pass/final draft and go to print.

Essentially I’m writing directly into a book.

With this method I consolidate my old 13 steps into eight, which should drastically speed up the journey to publication.

There are trade-offs for that efficiency, of course. I won’t have as many drafts to refine and re-refine and re-re-refine my copy. The writing process can be a bit slower when I’m also worrying about layout and not leaving any gaps. But overall, those pale in comparison to the benefits.

And I think that’s largely true for most efficiencies I (or anyone else) come up with for slow, overplanned, unnecessarily Byzantine processes in their life. Processes that have taken on extra steps over time or (as in my case) weren’t that well thought out in the first place.

I’m going to keep looking for these inefficiencies, in my book project and beyond. Because I have a strong suspicion that once I cut out steps, I’m not going to miss them. Not at all.

To see what I’ve been working on this week in my journey toward 100 books, check out the Work Log.