16 May 2005

New book for writers: "The fastest way to write your book"

ideas4writers, the ideas and inspiration website, has just launched its first book. Written by ideas4writers founder Dave Haslett, "The fastest way to write your book" reveals how writers such as Barbara Cartland, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury and Alexandre Dumas wrote their books in a matter of days rather than the months or even years that most writers take.

As well as revealing their secrets, this entertaining and inspiring book offers more than 150 tips and techniques to dramatically speed up the entire writing process. Topics include coming up with the initial idea, expanding it into a book-length project, carrying out research, preparing an outline, writing, editing, getting published and even selling your book - all in the fastest time possible. Other chapters cover using technology to speed things up, avoiding writer's block and staying motivated, how other people can help you, and how to cheat.

Dave said:
"I wrote this book for myself really. I had at least six books buzzing around in my head and needed to get them written before my head exploded. But like most people these days, I have very little spare time and I certainly couldn't afford to spend several months writing a book. If I wanted to write books and run ideas4writers.co.uk then I needed to find another way of doing it.

"There are things such as National Novel Writing Month which encourage people to go for quantity rather than quality, but that wasn't what I wanted at all. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm a bit of a perfectionist! I want to produce professional, highly publishable, full-length novels and non-fiction books that people want to buy. I want to write books that look as if they've taken years to write. I just need to do it a lot faster than that!

"I knew from reading about other writers that it was possible to write books very quickly, although at that time I didn't know how they'd done it. And I already had a handful of speed-writing ideas that had come up as part of the research for the ideas4writers.co.uk website.

"After thinking about this for a week or so it suddenly struck me that I should write a book about it. If I could write this book quickly it would be its own proof that the techniques worked. Of course, at this point I had absolutely no idea what the book would look like. Nevertheless, I set myself a deadline of a month to complete the entire book. It actually took me just 23 days. And if I'd known about some of the techniques before I started working on the book then I'd have finished it a lot sooner. They're all in the book though!"

Keen to make the book even more valuable to writers, Dave has added some very useful extras, including a voucher for three months membership of the ideas4writers.co.uk website (worth £7.50). There is also a comprehensive resources section and 200 "What Ifs" to help inspire ideas for books.

The fastest way to write your book is available from ideas4writers, PO Box 49, Cullompton, Devon, EX15 1WX. Price £12.99 + £2.00 postage. Cheques should be made payable to ideas4writers. You can also buy the book online at
www.ideas4writers.co.uk, or order by phone on 01884-839577, or fax 0871 242 6004.