How I Write (My Book)
A Peek Behind the Curtain of My Book-Writing Journey
I’m currently knee-deep in writing my book, and with this being my main focus, my essays for the rest of the year will likely be shorter than usual. I might even skip a free post or two, if need be, as the book comes frist.
Since we are now already five weeks into Q4, I thought today I give you a raw look at how I’m approaching this project—not as a guide to book-writing, but as a perspective on how one can tackle novel efforts, especially the ones that have personal program character.
I’m doing it.
For real, this time!
Every morning, I get up at 5 a.m., brew myself a cup of coffee, and dive straight into writing the next section of my book. I write for about one to two hours before the rest of my family wakes up, then go about my day as usual.
That’s the TL;DR version, at least. Today, I’ll give you a look behind the curtain.
Where I’m Starting From
Writing a book feels pretty much like uncharted territory for me. You can’t undertake a more open-ended effort than writing a book—the possibilities and directions are practically endless.
So, right from the beginning, I was presented with numerous unknowns:
How does one publish a book?
What do I need to know, learn, and do?
How much effort will it take? How disruptive will it be to the rest of my life?
Could I use my essay writing style, or would adjustments be needed?
How much from my blog can I incorporate, and what needs to be new?
While I’ve never written a book, I do have some experience with blogging. I created my first blog in 2016 and started Fractal Productivity in 2022. But blog posts and essays are on a different scale compared to books—they’re a lot easier to get right.
The closest I could compare my book-writing effort to is my Master’s thesis, a 107-page scientific document I wrote in 2017. However, it’s not quite the same for several reasons.
What Goes Into This
It would be a lie to say that I started writing this book just a month ago. After all, it will contain and be based on all the ideas I’ve discussed here on Fractal Productivity. The results of at least two years of knowledge-building efforts were at my fingertips.
However, it wasn’t planned that way. Only in December 2023, while on parental leave, did I realize that my writings were the perfect topic for a book. That’s when I first added it to my moving target board and began outlining and drafting chapters whenever my son was asleep. Realizing I needed more knowledge on the topic, I postponed the effort to focus on building that foundation during the first half of 2024.
During my mid-year retreat in 2024, I took another look and identified ten topics I still wanted to contemplate and clarify. Writing essays on these topics in Q3 became my goal, along with refining the outline and planning my writing approach.
I poured all of this into a goal called Get FPS Book On The Start Line—here’s a snippet of my Ubermind Agenda for Q3:
I met my Q3 goals by finishing the essays, completing the outline, and establishing a writing routine: waking up at 5 a.m. six days a week and aiming for about 1,000 words or one section per session.
I chose that “miracle morning” strategy since it has worked for me many times. A golden morning before work and before the day even really begins is one of the most reliable ways for me to make steady progress on something. I even have a block for this in my daily note to structure my day—there, I call it my “progressive effort.” So, for Q4, I adapted my daily note template in Obsidian—now, every morning, I’m greeted with this:
My Goal And Approach For Q4
Understanding that writing the entire book in one quarter was unrealistic, I set a target of 90% completion. For me, this means the book needs to be releasable, but it’s acceptable if it still requires fine-tuning. I also included in my Q4 goals the task of dealing with all the technicalities—the writing software and publishing platforms. Additionally, I planned to design a marketing strategy so that in Q1 2025, when I would do the final editing, I could already start marketing the book.
Work Scoping & Forcing Function
Writing a book is a significant effort, so one necessarily has to tackle it piecemeal. Typically, this means writing it in chapters—roughly equally sized pieces of text that revolve around one core topic and can often stand alone. Chapters are clearly the size that works for books. They can even be divided into sections if more structure is needed.
Considering my outline and the time frame, I realized that targeting one section per work session would be an excellent match. I estimated that this way, I could finish about a chapter a week. With ten chapters in total, that meant it would take me about ten weeks to finish the manuscript.
Of course, this is a naïve calculation. Some chapters are harder to write than others; some are longer. One also has to account for overhead or rearranging things. So, I thought this approach would only work if I could ensure progress on all chapters within the first ten weeks. I wanted to cover all bases and get all chapters to somewhere between 70–90% completion in that first round. That meant I needed some kind of forcing function to avoid getting lost or stuck in tricky chapters. Many would set deadlines for each chapter, but that doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t like to have “death” looming over me with every step I take. So instead, I use what I call “dolines.” Practically, this means every Monday, even if the previous chapter isn’t complete or polished, I start with the next chapter. This is how I would complete the first iteration of the manuscript in ten weeks, with all chapters close to done.
Writing Software
I’ve heard Scrivener mentioned as a great tool for book authors before, and during a recent discount, I bought it on a hunch. It was a no-brainer, really. I mean, look at the landing page with the slogan “see the forest or the trees” — that’s just too perfect for writing a book on fractal productivity….
So, while in the borderlands between Q3 and Q4, I experimented with it, and it quickly became clear that I would use it to write the book. Scrivener, indeed, is a superb piece of software. And it allows one to start writing without learning much about the tool upfront. At the same time, they provide a comprehensive set of video tutorials on their site, so I set up a recurring task in my Todoist for the first few weeks of Q4 to daily watch one or two of these short clips and to learn about its feature set.
Publishing Platform
Regarding publishing, I already knew that traditional book publishing was out of the question. It involves many dependencies and can take up to two years or more, even if the manuscript is written in a few months. So I knew I wanted to self-publish. Amazon was, of course, a possibility, but I had also heard of Leanpub, a platform geared toward fast and lean self-publishing, which seemed like the perfect fit.
Even better, one of Leanpub’s features allows me to start selling the book before it’s even finished, adjusting the price to reflect its current completion. In other words, readers can purchase the book at a lower price and receive updates as they’re added.
This is what my book preview page currently looks like:
Release Process
The only issue with the combination of Leanpub and Scrivener was that there was no out-of-the-box way to transfer and transform a Scrivener manuscript into Leanpub’s desired format. With a quick online search, I found a few anecdotes online and even two outdated books on setting up something like this. So, I was somewhat confident that it was feasible to do alongside writing the book, but it remained something of an unknown.
Current Progress — How It Is Going
Technicalities
The first thing I wanted to do in Q4 was to set up my bridge between Scrivener and Leanpub, as I identified it as the critical path of the effort, meaning if I didn’t manage to do this early on, it could potentially cause a lot of issues and delay the whole project. It took quite a bit of tinkering and, according to my fancy new time-tracking tool, 11 hours and 22 minutes. That was worth it, as I can now, smoothly and within seconds, export my current manuscript and create a new version of the book on Leanpub.1
Writing Progress
As of October 31st, after 23 writing days, I’ve written 41,000 words across 4.5 chapters, averaging 1,800 words per day. I managed to do this by writing only one to two hours each morning without disrupting the rest of my life, which feels like a significant achievement.
Marketing
So far, I haven’t done much here. I posted a few Substack Notes that unfortunately didn’t get any reactions:
I put a bit of info, a working title, and a cover image on the book's preview site on Leanpub. I intend to offer the first beta version of the book sometime in November for a much cheaper introductory price, but that will include all the updates for free.
I also signed up for the Obsidian Forums and Medium in the hope of doing some link-building there.
Never start a project that isn’t already 80% done.
A mentor of mine used to say, “Never start a project that isn’t already 80% done.”
I feel that I’ve nailed this with my book-writing efforts so far. Writing the manuscript is just the tip of the iceberg—the final step in a long journey. It started as an aspiration I had as early as 16 years old.
Taken out of context, I hope this book will become another showcase for Fractal Productivity and serve as a self-referential case study of my whole system of working.
Experience tells me that November might bring more disruptions, so I must stay vigilant to stay on track. I’ll update you again in four weeks on how it’s going.
All the best,
Dennis
Here’s how it works: I have a special Leanpub meta-markdown format with a book I purchased, which I can select when compiling my book in Scrivener. This outputs my entire manuscript in MultiMarkdown format—a single .md file—that I then add and push to a GitHub repository. The repository has a git hook set up so that every time I push changes, Leanpub will be triggered to create a new book version. Leanpub takes about a minute to process, then outputs the new book version in PDF and EPUB formats, adding them to a shared Dropbox folder where I get notified when new versions are added.