A book as a collection of essays

Many writers find a book project daunting. It’s one thing to outline an essay but quite another to outline an entire book. What will the structure be like? How will the ideas be connected from one chapter to the next?

One trick I’ve found incredibly useful in removing the sense of intimidation that comes with writing a book is to see a book as a collection of essays. An anthology.

This removes the worry about structure. You can have a general, logical sequence in the book, but there’s no need to worry about connecting ideas between the essays. Every essay can stand on its own and is connected to the other essays by a common theme. The theme can even be as loose as “written by the same author”!

You can spend a bit of time on this site, pick out a few posts you want to share in a collection, maybe flesh them out a bit or keep them as is, and you’ve got yourself a book!

Do you have aspirations to write a book? What kind of a book do you want to write? What’s holding you back from writing it?