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Another 30 day Book Challenge

I'm going to describe here a methodology for writing a book that you can do in the next 30 days.

    1. Step One: Pick a Topic

    one that you care about, or are expert in, or would like to learn more about.

    e.g. parenting, relationships, habits, investing, entrepreneurship, writing, happiness, success, negotiation, comedy, ping pong, podcasting, etc.

    2. PICK AN ANCIENT TEXT

    one that millions of people have loved and even worshipped.

    That means: HISTORY HAS FOCUS GROUPED THAT BOOK. It will definitely be popular.

    For instance, pick any of the ones mentioned below.

    ----

    "The Tao Te Ching"
    "The Art of War"
    "The Yoga Sutras"
    "The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism"
    "The Bhagavad Gita"
    "The Bible"
    "The Analects of Confucius"
    "The Koran"
    "The Diamond Sutra"
    "Proverbs" from The Bible.

    or find something more obscure.

    For instance: "Visuddhimagga" from the Pali Cannon of Buddhism.

    Or "Jiang Ziya's Six Secret Teachings" (a book contemporary with Sun Tzu's The Art of War")

    3. Find the ANALOGIES between your topic and your ancient text

    Do a 1-1 mapping between the points made in that text and stories from the topic you are interested in.

    For instance, let's look at chapter six of the "Art of War" : "Weak Points and Strong Points".

    Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic, in part, by analyzing the weak points of his competitor, British Airways.

    Boeing wanted British Airways to have a competitor so it could have more control of how they price planes. They wanted British Airways nervous.

    Richard Branson used that knowledge to convince Boeing to lend him a plane so he could start a competitor. They GAVE him a plane basically for free.

    The strong point of British Airways?

    It was intertwined with the government. Richard Branson had to make use of that knowledge to get public support against the idea of a monopoly.

    --

    4. MAKE IT EASY

    Write one small chapter a day. Maybe even a tiny chapter!

    For instance, my story above about Richard Branson could be the entire chapter for that day, combining chapter six of the Art of War, with Richard Branson's starting Virgin Air.

    Maybe I could even come up with one example from my own life and one more historical example. BOOM! Chapter written.

    5. Write 30 chapters. Or less!

    If I was using a 1-1 analogy with "The Art of War", I would have 18 chapters. But maybe I would have sub chapters to fill out the skeleton.

    The book doesn't have to be big. "Zen in the Art of Archery" is 60 pages.

    Upload it to Amazon for Kindle and Paperback. Upload the audiobook to Audible.

    Now you have a book. Charge $3.99.

    The best way to market your first book? Write your next book.

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    6. More examples:

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    7. And Physics

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    8. The Art of War applied to Writing

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    9. The Diamond Sutra applied to business

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    10. Summary

    - pick a topic

    - pick an ancient text that has been focus grouped by history

    - chapter by chapter make an analogy between the ancient text and your topic

    - tell stories that emphasize the analogy

    - summarize that chapter of the ancient text and how it was practically applied in your story

    - see if you have at least one historical story and one story from your life.

    11. By the way, this applies to fiction as well

    As Stephen Pressfield writes in his book, "The Authentic Swing", his book (which became an award winning movie), "The Legend of Bagger Vance" is "beat by beat" the exact same plot as The Bhavagad Gita, one of the most religious texts from Hinduism.

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