25 for 25: Pen to paper
After you’ve settled on your book’s foundation, it’s time to write. There are lots of ways to put down words.
This essay is part of my 25 for 25 book writing series. The lessons in this series are meant to simplify the book writing and production journey. You can find a guide with links to the entire series here.
After you’ve settled on your book’s foundation, it’s time to write.
There are lots of ways to put down words—I’ll detail three ways here. As you evolve with your writing, you may use them interchangeably or incorporate other tactics.
Pen and paper
It can be helpful to sit and write, and you can easily take a pen and paper to jot down ideas. Holding the pen, feeling the paper, and the ink tracking on the page can all help to bring out your best brainpower.
As the authors of one 2024 study noted, “When writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard, as shown by widespread theta/alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions.” When I’m stuck on a certain section or want to explore the space of a story, I often will pull out a pen and paper, block out the outside world, and write.
Word processor
Typing on a keyboard should be pretty easy. Click-clack-click-clack … you know the drill. I typically work in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Both programs are similar and have a lot of upside. They’re easy to use and make it easy to share documents back and forth, whether online or as separate files.
Using voice-to-transcription tools
Voice transcription could save you tons of time while also ensuring that your writing sounds like you. With voice transcription tools, you could “write” a rough, raw version of your book while driving or taking a walk. It’s really that simple. These tools are especially helpful if you struggle finding the words when sitting in front of a computer or if you’re someone who talks in stories.
My voice-to-transcription recommendations
I recommend two different voice transcription tools, Otter and Rev. With both of them, if you upload audio, you receive an automatic transcription in a matter of minutes. And if the audio is clear, the accuracy of the transcription can pass 90%. Think of how much time and effort that could save you!
With Rev, you can even upload YouTube video links and have the video play along with the transcribed audio.
The services are reasonably priced (25 cents a minute with Rev, a monthly subscription of about $20 for Otter). Prior to AI transcription tools, transcriptions had to be completed manually and could cost $1 per minute or more.
With both of these tools, I don’t typically edit text within the online platform. Instead, I download the transcribed text into a Word document, make edits and revisions in Word, then listen back to any areas that weren’t quite clear in the text.
Watch this!
I cover different writing approaches in this video.