You love your work, but finding time and mental energy to write a self-help book? It feels impossible. These practical strategies will help—without adding stress to your already full plate.
You’re a counselor, therapist, psychiatrist, or coach. You love your work. Helping people heal or grow feeds your soul. Yet you feel there’s more. Maybe you wish you could help even more people, or maybe you want to pivot, to focus more on a certain type of client. You can only take on so many clients, though, and lots of people out there desperately need what you have to offer.
I need to write a self-help book, you think.
But when? How?
Why Write a Self-Help Book?
Self-help Books help you reach a wider audience than just the people you meet with. They also can position you as an authority on a topic, making you the go-to person in your chosen field and/or niche.
This can help:
- attract more of the kinds of clients you feel called to serve,
- get you speaking invitations at conferences, and
- open the way for collaborations with others in your field.
Still, the thought of taking on a project as major as a book can seem daunting. But as you may ask your clients, “How do you eat an elephant?”
You know the answer already, so let’s break this down into bite-size chunks!
Write Your Book Without Burning Out—6 Smart Tips
Use Dictation
This is an easy starting point. You may already use a speech-to-text app or another device for your client notes. Even if you don’t, they’re easy to find.
Now, these notes will be “brain dumps,” not an actual manuscript, but once you have your thoughts in text, it’s much easier to read through them, make changes, edit, and start organizing.
Block out time
Getting up to get a snack or deciding to watch TV in the middle of a client session—well, of course, you’d never do that! So treat your writing time the same way. Block it out weekly, daily, or anywhere in between, and don’t let anything distract you from it.
It doesn’t have to be long. I block out twenty minutes before I start on work each morning to work on personal writing projects. Pick a time when you know you’ll feel fresh, and get started. Don’t know where to start? Check out my next point.
Free-writing
If you’re not familiar with this, it’s similar to journaling, with a couple of key differences:
- Set a timer and only write till the timer goes off.
- Once the timer starts, you cannot stop writing. If you get stuck or forget where you’re going, just write “blah, blah, blah,” or “can’t think, can’t think,” until something shakes loose.
What does shake loose from those sessions will surprise you! It will also help you gain clarity on what to write about.
Before you set your timer, pick a topic or theme. I suggest two back-to-back 10-15 minute sessions with a short break between. During the break, look over what you wrote in the first session to direct where you go with the second session.
Whether you do this every day or a couple of times a week, every third or fourth time, read over everything you’ve written. Underline/highlight recurring themes, important points, and so on. Take notes in the margin, and use them to build an outline or start chapter stubs.
Use Client Notes and Questions (Ethically)
Girl, you’ve already got content! Obviously, you can’t use names or exact details, but your session notes are a treasure trove to help you find those recurring themes you want to discuss in your self-help book, examples of points you want to make, and challenges to address.
Just make sure you keep clients anonymous, change personal identifying details in anecdotes you want to share, and/or use pseudonyms. Combining several similar clients as composite fictitious characters is a good workaround, too—see Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.
Start a Blog
Start small(er) to work up to something big. You can start a blog on your website, LinkedIn, or on WordPress, and use it to tinker with different topics, hone your voice and writing style, and build content you can later repurpose for your book.
Unsure about how that works? Check out a previous post I wrote on exactly how to turn blog posts into a book.
Hire a Professional
What kind of professionals? A few who can help include:
- Ghostwriters. A ghostwriter is like a human Dictaphone, only better. We help clarify your goals for your book and develop an outline. Then we use the outline to interview you or “download” the content from your brain during periodic meetings. You review the work in progress and suggest revisions. You’ll end up with a polished draft manuscript ready for light editing!
- Writing Coaches. They work similarly to ghostwriters, except that once you have an outline and plan, you write. Regular meetings with your coach provide accountability and help you with challenges that come up.
Some writing coaches, like me, also provide editorial feedback during the writing process. - Developmental Editor. This type of editor can help if you already have part or all of the manuscript written. They do exactly what a ghostwriter does as far as clarifying goals, but they make suggestions on tone, structure, and organization based on what you’ve written, as well as providing guidance on where to go next if the manuscript isn’t finished.
Writing a Therapy Book Helps You Broaden Your Reach
You wouldn’t have chosen the mental health profession if you didn’t want to make an impact. Writing a self-help book can amplify the impact you’re already making, but if you’re busy, a project of that scope can seem impossible!
I hope you see now that it’s not.
One final word—all of these suggestions will work—but only if you do them. So grab a notebook. Open a blank Word doc. Search your app store for a speech-to-text app.
Then, get ready to write!