HOW TO WRITE A BOOK IN 6 MONTHS
a personal note before we dive in.
I’ve written two novels now, along with countless short stories, scrappy poems, and idk-what-this-is’s. Each time I write, I find I’m communicating with something that feels so much greater than myself (holla, Divine Intelligence, it’s me, the Medial Woman). Over the years I’ve also found that returning to old work shows me things about myself I was completely blind to at the time: there they are, clear as day. As if a Greater Intelligence were sewing seeds and planting flags where I would later find them. This is how I discovered that I suffered from depression many years ago: by re-reading my first novel! (Since healed, thx somatics. ✨)
To me, and to my talented clients, book writing is a mystical, mysterious, and magical process, the rewards of which reach far beyond the gratification of having “written the thing.” It is a path to self-knowledge. A creative processing of wounds. A profound adventure, and an epic opportunity for healing.
THIS is what I want for you as you enter into the conversation that is the writing of your book: Not only a complete first draft of your manuscript; but also a stunningly beautiful and suprisingly easy time getting there. ♡
This is what I create with my clients inside of HEROINE: the somatic book coaching container for writers who are ready to write the first draft of their book in six to nine months. With 13 authors and counting, HEROINE has a 100% success rate: every single woman has completed the first draft of her novel / memoir in poems / nonfiction book that reps her business…you name it.
Of course, this is possible for you with or without my help. Often the thing we need most when doing something differently is to know it’s possible. So here’s my confirmation to you: It is entirely possible (and absolutely optimal for the quality of the work you create!) to write your book in six months with pleasure, ease, and peace. Even if it’s wedding season. And you got a new puppy. And you have AD(H)D.
Let me show you how.
It truly is possible to write the complete first draft of your novel, memoir, essay collection, nonfiction manifesto, or other—in six months.
I know because that’s what I do. I help writers and would-be authors like you—the ones lying awake at night aching with the pain of a creative idea (or three) not yet realized—to write the book that’s begging to be born from them.
Working with a coach like me is one way to achieve your dream of writing the damn book. Another, of course, is to do it yourself.
Whilst neither option is for the faint of heart, writing a first draft in six months is not only doable—writing a first draft intensively is considered by many professional authors to be the wisest way to get started on your book.
THE BENEFITS OF WRITING YOUR BOOK IN JUST 6 MONTHS
It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid. In just half an intense year, you’ve gone from zero to literal hero. And once you’ve got to the end, you have a ton of material to mould with.
The less time you give yourself to labour over a project, the less likely it is to languish, fall flat, or get pushed aside in the chaos of daily life. This is especially true for my AD(H)D and neurospicy girlies, for whom long-term, consistent goals can be a challenge.
Writing intensively is the best way to channel the Medial Woman within and access your creative flow: your optimal writing state. (We LOVE her.)
There’s way less time for your inner critic to weigh in and do her level best to f*ck it up.
When you prioritize one thing over all else, you want it done. You want to be free again. And you want to have overcome.
To help you succeed on this epic journey, here are my top tips to achieving a solid first draft of your manuscript—
in just. six. months.
1| Choose your 180-day stretch
Choose your six-month period and be realistic. If it includes December, do as I do with my HEROINES and nix that month for writing; it’s unrealistic to expect to hold yourself to the same rhythm over the holidays, and if you get any writing done at all it will be a magnificent bonus!
Ensure you have the space in your days to commit to it. That means streamlining all other projects and demands and, ideally, devoting at least 5 hours a week for the duration of that stretch.
Design your writing schedule based on your energy and natural rhythms:
Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Are you likely to be more productive between 5 and 7 am M–F or in the evenings after a full day of work and life and all the things?
How about your menstrual cycle, if you have one? I typically block off my 4-days of menstruation so that I have no calls or meetings, which actually makes my period a great time to hunker down and write. But maybe that sounds like hell and all you want to do those days is lie horizontal with a jumbo bag of your favourite chocolate. (Sounds great.)
This is different for everybody, so check in with yourself.
Once you’ve chosen your stretch, put the dates in your calendar and take some time when you’ve done so to let the commitment you’re making sink in. It’s easy to blast on to the next thing, but I really invite you to BE WITH the commitment you’ve just made to yourself. There will be so many temptations and potential excuses along the way that could prevent you from honouring this sacred desire—so I invite you to treat it as such. Consider doing a ritual or speaking your promise to yourself out loud with your hand over your heart: “I commit to the task of showing up to write and complete this book. I honour my heart’s calling to become an author by doing the work each day to reach my goal.”
2| pantser, plotter, or plantser?
Ask yourself the following q’s:
Do you like to outline your entire project before you begin? You’re a plotter.
Do you prefer to start ‘blind’ and see what comes out? You’re a pantser.
Do you do a bit of both? Plantser.
3| then plan accordingly
Now that you’ve given yourself the best chance by identifying how you operate, prepare for success accordingly. 👉🏼
If you’re a plotter, plot that outline in advance of your start date. (An outline is especially recommended if you’re writing a nonfiction book, since you have a particular message and set of information to convey and you want to do so efficiently and effectively.)
If you’re a pantser, do some exploratory exercises ahead of time:
Where is the story set? If it’s in a fictional realm, start sketching out the geography, wardrobe, and/or creatures.
Get to know your main characters: What are they most afraid of? What do they prize above all else? What is your protagonist’s moral code? What is their dilemma? Who is the antagonist, and what is the conflict?
Understanding the rules of your world and the nature of your characters, or the central question or thesis of your work and the journey you want to take your readers on, will allow you to make swift and informed decisions about their choices once you get into the writing.
4| Identify your why
It’s all well and good to want to write a book, but in order to make it through you have to have an incredible reason to say no to patio drinks after work, no to that hike or brunch on the weekend, no to Netflix and Chill with your bae.
If your ability to prioritize has to come slant, as Emily Dickinson would say, so be it. For many of us, women+ especially, doing something for the sake of others’ benefit is a more motivating reason to sit down and write than just doing it for ourselves.
So if you’re writing a memoir about your rehabilitation from a life-changing injury, you will likely be doing so, at least in part, to share with others who find their worlds turned upside down that they can get better and live happy and fulfilling lives, too. Hold your reader in your mind and heart, and call on your purpose when you’re tempted to wobble.
If you’re writing an escapist novel set in the early 2000’s because it was something you wanted to read, and you weren’t finding the themes and fun in the books you were buying, then you are doing it for others like you. Or you’re doing it to show your kids that they can realize any big, creative dreams they have in life. Or you’re doing it because your grandmother told you you should write that book already. You get the idea.
When you’re your clear on why you’re doing something, the how becomes a lot more straightforward.
Some journal prompts:
Why are you writing this book?
Why do you write at all?
Why are you choosing to devote this time and energy to this project above all other things?
Why does this matter so much to you?
Let the answers to these questions be your fuel in the challenging, frustrating, and clunky times.
5| Address mindset
What does the voice in your head have to say about your ability to write a book? Does it tell you that you can’t do it? That you don’t have time? That you have no talent or that your voice and story are unoriginal?
It’s wrong. In fact, if it were a person you’d hopefully tell it it’s an asshole and to take a hike.
I call that voice, depending on its attitude, your inner critic (when it’s somewhat under control) or your troll (when it’s getting out of control).
No matter the voracity, the likelihood is that if you’ve found yourself on this blog you are a high-achiever with perfectionistic tendencies and a talent for making others comfortable. In other words, you hold yourself to extremely (impossibly?) high standards—and the voice within your mind is the first to point out your flaws and “fails.”
6| Do the math
You’ve got the 6-month stretch marked in your calendar. Now you can start breaking it down into word count goals.
Your performance WILL fluctuate; you’re human, and you will have prolific times and times when it feels like you’re trying to draw blood from a stone. All this is normal. Allow for it. Then ask:
What is your final word count goal?
Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is 50,000 words of impact: a pretty small book as published works go but the impact is there. And no doubt she wrote at least two or three times that in early drafts, revisions, and removals.
A typical novel is about 70,000 to 80,000 words.
A novella is around 20,000 to 40,000 words.
Fantasy books regularly exceed 100,000 words.
Identify your genre, decide on a word count goal that feels ambitious but doable, and then work out how many words, on average, you’ll have to write per week.
HINT: For NaNoWriMo, writers aim to write 50,000 words in a month, which translates to almost 1,700 words per day, which is a pretty gruelling regimen. However, that same writing goal over just three months breaks down to 555 words per day, a much more attainable goal!
Consider the average amount of words you get down on a good day in a good writing stretch. For example, I tend to average 2,000 words on a good writing day in 1.5–3 hours (note: I journal every day but I don’t write, i.e. work on a writing project, every day).
Let’s say you want to write the first draft of a novel, and your goal is a highly respectable 70,000 words. That breaks down to an easy breezy 389 words per day—or 450 per day if you take weekends off. For me, that feels doable, because I know that on a good day I can write four times that amount, so there’s room for fluctuation and success!
7| Be kind to yourself
There’s no telling what unavoidable commitments will arise and eat into your writing time. Then there are going to be days when you wake up for your early morning writing session and want to pull the covers over your head and go back to sleep.
Both are okay.
Allow for a weekend writing marathon or two to ensure you stay on schedule, and if you’re really not feeling it, let it be. Take a walk, watch a movie, take a day off. Don’t punish yourself. It will only make the process unpleasant and mean you are less likely to keep going.
8| Write now, edit later
The first and foremost goal is to get it all down on the page.
Especially if you are someone who often gets caught up on the placement of a comma, keep notes in a journal about what you want to resolve or come back to and rework later (spoiler alert: you’ll be reworking the whole damn things over and over, so don’t sweat the small stuff) and go forward. Once you’ve shovelled in all the sand by completing that first draft, then you can start to make sandcastles.
9| Find accountability
Contrary to popular practice, announcing your goals from the hilltops may actually make you significantly less likely to achieve your goals!
And yet accountability from a trusted source is vital to getting to that finish line. So don’t go posting that you’re going to write a book from scratch on your socials just yet; instead, find a single writing buddy, family member, or friend who knows about your love of writing and who is organized and pro-active enough to ask how you’re doing, send regular check-ups, ask for your week’s pages, or whatever other arrangement you find works for you both.
Other options include:
Sign an accountability contract with yourself. In its most basic terms, it would state both your intended overall goal and your weekly word count commitment. You will sign and date it and stick it on the wall somewhere you will see it daily: above the kettle or the sink in the kitchen; at your bedside; above your writing desk.
Find a writers’ group. While it can be tricky to find the perfect fit, now that so many community events take place online, there are all inds of ways to engage with a writing group that don’t have to include sharing your work.
Hire a book coach. If you know you want the confidence and peace of mind that working with a seasoned book coach provides, do it, mama! When you choose to invest, you do that much more to assure your success in becoming the author you’re called to be.
10| Treat yourself generously
Incentives are a key tool to helping you achieve your goals. Truly, what better way to reward yourself for completing your weekly word count goal than with something you’ve been yearning to do but haven’t since you’ve been writing?!
Add special treats for exceeding your goals: dinner and a movie with your bestie or partner; a new book; a whole weekend away from screens.
And don’t forget to envision the prize you’re going to win by completing this first draft (aside from a complete manuscript!). Whether it’s a weekend away or a a day trip or a piece of jewellery or a soy candle you’ve wanted to buy for yourself: give it to yourself.
You inherently deserve it.
FEEL CALLED TO WRITE YOUR BOOK WITH ME?
CLICK THE BUTTON TO GET STARTED, BOO. ☝🏼💛
kate juniper
LEO 🌞 VIRGO 🌝 VIRGO ⇧
Kate is the Founder & CEO (Chief Embodiment Officer) of WHOLE HOUSE. She is a writer & book editor; trauma-trained & certified MindBody somatic coach; Reiki Master & energy healer; workshop & retreat facilitator, & serial creative entrepreneur.
As a neurospicy survivor of CSA, she’s seen some sh*t—and many, many thanks to somatics, she has lived to tell the tale—and to support fellow ambitious, creative, multi-passionate and “squiggly-brained” women and femmes to alchemize their pasts into powerful fuel for their stunning futures, just as she has. 💛