Writers, please help: What do you do if...

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You feel like you have a good book or two in you, you know the subject matter, but also know that you are NOT NOT NOT a writer ?

You write it down anyway.

Even if you'd feel that you have some good stories in you, the only way is to write them. Don't start pondering whether you're a writer, that's a completely wrong question and will lead to nowhere.

More relevant would be to outline a plot, create characters, select scenes, if you're talking about fiction. The same is true for other genres, though. Start up with arranging your material if it's about non--fiction, then create your framework, think it over and improve it.

Nobody is a writer or anything else, like a musician, athlete, or programmer, by nature. They might be gifted but what actually constitutes success is years of practice. Get started!

Djimbe, being in the book business myself, I can tell you that around twenty thousand new books are published worldwide every day. Consequently, it is very difficult to get published except by the vanity presses. So, I would write fiction with my own pleasure and satisfaction in mind. That way, if you meet a brick wall, you won't be disappointed.

I notice one of the writers assumed you were talking about fiction. Since you didn't specify, I won't make that assumption. If you are writing nonfiction and have what you think is a great idea, what most people in that position do is to write shorter articles, which are easier to get published, before they will write a monograph. Monographs are generally only written elaborating on ideas that have been well received, or at least not torn apart, in periodical articles.

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This, it's what I do too. To be honest, I never really considered myself a writer to begin with. I just wrote them down because I liked the idea. And, even if it's not a great story, I thought it was still great that I typed it.

It's like how I never considered myself an artist, but I just draw because I like it n_n

Get a ghost writer?

Okay, heres the problem. Im talking Non-Fiction, firstly . Secondly, I have problems putting things down on paper in a coherent manner. I Never took notes in school but got A's I dont really understand how writing a bunch of incoherent hard to follow articles would be better than one Incoherent book. Its the structuring itself that i have trouble with.

How?

Write it down. It will be s**t. Redraft it. It will now be less s**t. Repeat until you are happy with that you have written. Come back to it in a few months and redraft it again. Now send it to a publisher.

Everyone is a writer. You wrote a post on here so that means you are a writer. If you have an idea, then start writing it. Do not care what others are going to think because no one will read the first version of what you write anyway. Just start it at the beginning and do not stop until you reach the end, then go back to the start and re write it. That is how all books get written.

if you really know that you are NOT NOT NOT a writer I wouldn't adopt the otherones suggestions that say you should write in spite of that since you might be quite dissatisfied after having invested so many weeks in a book though you already knew that you are not good at it. But have you thought about using those stories in any different way? for example a movie? Or a play for a theater?
What are the aspects of your skills that make you consider yourself a bad author?

I have trouble writing things down, too. It's like a weird form of writer's block that kicks in whenever I sit down with the intention of writing something. But, I can talk it out as long as I'm doing something else. An author friend of mine suggested I wear a tape recorder, and when I'm working in the garden or washing dishes or whatever, I can say what I want to write, then transcribe and clean it up later.

Like most things writing takes practice, lots of it. And read a lot too, that will help.

What Fnord said.

Are you talking autobiography here? There's a book called The Autobiographer's Handbook that might be helpful for you, if so. It's full of tips from some experts on memoir.

Writing is about the connexions the synapses established betwen themselves in our brain. It is as subtile as looking carefully two people walking : no one walks the same, even in the army (the rythm is the only common criteria).
The way you write can be utterly original, although not liked by reviewers. Mots importantly, write if you think you will achieve something doing it !

Write, because no one is a writer, all of our heads are full of garbage, and the only outlet is the keyboard.

My method has no order, I write a scene, which something must come before and after. While I thought I knew, writing makes new connections, let the work teach you. My first book ran 25000 pages, I used some of it to reduce it to 250 pages.

Anything you write can say the same thing, better, in half the words.

Let it flow freely, then Edit, Edit, and keep the story.

After a while, you find your writers voice, which leaves less to edit out, but keep adding fluff, for some of it develops, some does not.

Write like no one is watching, they are not, read it like a reader for the first time. The goal is the reader, but to get there, takes excess writing, which leads to the work educating the writer, which leads to a rewrite, and it still has to pass reader comfort.

It is story telling, there is no set path, some start with an outline, some just write a scene, Most of what I write does not end up like I thought when I started. Writing, and worse, Characters, talk back to the writer.

Give your brain a chance to talk about you, it will. Brain cells do pay attention, and when a group get control of the mad ape at the keyboard, others join in.

We are many things, but mostly one at a time, writing lets other brain parts join in. As the reader has other brain parts it works.

You are you, the readers are young, old, male, female, the story has to be for all.

You are the one with doubts, your brain is calling for a book, just let it run. Writing random will start the process, till suddenly the brain sees it can skip you and go directly to the keyboard. You are just an ape for brain transport. It is Other, the reader is other, you are outvoted 2 to 1.

Ten pages a day, everyday. establish the flow with words about dust on the table and the track of an ant, and more content will come.

Sit, type, hold a long conversation with your brain. Crazy people talk to themselves, writers write it down.

Good Luck!