Follow these proven steps in order and before you know it you will have written your own book. It's not hard if you make a commitment to write a few minutes each day. At first it can seem like a daunting task, but as the days go by you will see the book taking shape and the excitement will increase dramatically.

Decide on the topic/subject of your book

When you are trying to decide what topic to base your book on identify what you are passionate about. What do you love to do the most? What brings you great joy when you're doing it? What do you know a lot about? What skills do you have? Base your book on your passions and it will bring you great pleasure writing it.

Conduct market research

After you have decided on the topic for your book check libraries, bookstores, and on the Internet and see how many books are available about the topic you have chosen. Don't be discouraged if there are a lot of books already written on your topic. This means there is a good market. Brainstorm and attempt to put a different angle or spin on the subject or narrow the focus down to a specific niche within the topic.

If you don't find many books available on your subject you either have an underserved market that may be hungry for your book, or you may have discovered that there isn't enough interest in your chosen topic to sell many books. Do more market research and ask friends, businesses, and people interested in the same topic you are if they would be interested in reading your book. Search the Internet about your topic and see how many sites there are related to your topic. Usually you can find a good niche market of interested people for almost any topic.

After doing your market research you will have to make the decision about going ahead with the book or not.

Research the topic

Even if you consider yourself an ‘expert' in what you are going to write about research the subject and get caught up with any and all new information available on the subject. No one knows everything about something and the more research you do the better your book will be.

Create the rough ‘compilation' of the content you will have in the book

In this step simply list everything you want to write about in the book. Write down everything you know about and what you learned with the research you did. Attempt to put everything into ‘categories,' with similar information grouped together, but most importantly, list everything you can think of you want in the book.

Create the ‘rough draft' of the book

In this step you organize all the content you previously listed in your rough compilation. Create your rough outline of contents. List the chapters you want to develop and the information that goes in each one.

After you have a rough draft of contents and chapters in an order that makes sense put it away for a day or two. Go back and go over the order and make any changes needed. Align the chapters to ‘flow' from one to another in a logical order and progression.

Create the ‘working manuscript'

Using the order of the rough draft begin writing the body content for each chapter. Write as much as possible at each session and don't worry about punctuation, spelling, etc. at this point. Get the content down on paper.

Don't worry about making each sentence perfect at this point either. Just continue to write. Write quickly. If you try to make everything perfect at this point it will slow you down and possibly cause you stop writing the book. The main goal you are striving for is to simply get the working manuscript done. You will go back later and ‘fix' everything.

Edit and Polish the completed manuscript

After completing the manuscript again put it away for a day or two. Then begin to edit and polish and change and tweak it from start to finish. Show no mercy and read it as though someone else wrote it and you are getting paid to clean it up and make it great. You may have spent hundreds of hours writing but do not hesitate to cut out everything that isn't necessary to the reader. Cut out unnecessary words, sentences, and even complete chapters if needed. Re-write whenever you feel it is needed.

Give the completed manuscript to a family member, friend, or other trusted associate or partner and have them read the book and give you an honest ‘review.' Feedback from others is important.

In a nutshell, create your ‘rough' drafts, write the working manuscript quickly, and edit and polish with no mercy.

Remember, this book is yours but it's all about the reader and what they get out of it. Make it valuable or entertaining to the reader. When you have the completed manuscript in your hand it will provide you with a tremendous sense of accomplishment like no other.