Alright, you have a great idea for a book, and plenty of passion to see it through.  All you have to do is lock yourself in for a few weeks, crank it out, and then watch publishers fall all over themselves to put it in the hands of people who will soon be your ravenous fans, right?  Unfortunately, no.  Whether the fantastic successes of J.K. Rowling and Steven King make it obvious or not, writing the book of your dreams is the easiest part of the entire process.  Having it be published by anyone else and having enough copies actually sell to justify the costs of the first run are the hardest parts.  Becoming extremely successful as an author, both in terms of extreme commercial success and becoming a "household name" aren’t exactly easy tasks, either.

Believe it or not, self publishing your book is of roughly the same difficulty as finding a publisher who will agree to publish and promote it.  The difficulties are just different.  If you send your book to fifty publishers, you are very likely to get fifty rejections.  Rowling received almost that many before the first Harry Potter book was taken up – and that book was incredible!  Even if you have top notch skills, you might end up just having to self publish, and go through an entirely different set of hassles.

First, you need to print it.  Some people turn their garages into storage depots.  Most people find it easier to just find a printing and fulfillment house to handle the logistics.  However, this does cost money.  Then, in what is definitely the hardest part, you need to find a way to get it into the reach of people’s hands, and get those hands to want to pick up your book.  This is both a matter of placement (either online or on store shelves, or both), and of marketing your book so that people might want it.

If you have decided that you want to be a writer, you have made a great decision. First, you want to study up on the craft of writing. The more you know, the easier it will be to write.

Take a few writing classes either online or at your local community college. Some places even offer evening adult education classes where you could learn writing from an experienced person at a lower cost.

Write every day. The more you practice anything, the better you get and the same is true with writing. Set aside at least an hour every day and just start writing. You could write part of a novel you are working on, or even just write a letter to yourself or someone about how your day went.

Read, read, read. Read up on writing books and different writing techniques you could do. Take your time researching writing and only study one topic a day so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Do writing exercises. If you are having trouble generating ideas, you could do simple writing exercises that will let your mind wander. For example, the technique of ballooning involves taking one single word, and then branching off of it with different words that come to your mind. When you are finished, you end up having many topics to pick and choose to write about.

If you already have an idea and want to write, go for it. When you write something, don’t go back to it right away. Set it aside for about a week so that you can come back to it with fresh eyes later. You will be able to fix mistakes easier and see what does or doesn’t work in your writing.

In the end, the best way to get good at writing is to practice and study, just like in school.

Many people have big dreams about publishing the next best-selling novel. Most people though, have no idea on how to get started in a writing career. If you are interested in writing, you will need to read up on writing as much as you can in order to excel at your craft.

Figure out what type of writing you would like to do. This can sometimes be determined by what type of books you like to read. Do you like reading horror stories? What about children’s books? Or do you enjoy a good romance mystery? Whatever you decide, you want to be clear in what genre you will write your book in.

Once you have decided on what you would like to write, it’s now time to study. There are many books out there on how to write well. Go to the library and check out a few of those books. Read up on the profession you want to begin in. Once you have researched and learned different writing styles and techniques, you can then start to put your story to paper.

Make sure that you write every day. Even if you don’t feel like it, take time out of your day and write. If it’s 100 words, that’s okay too. As long as you sit your butt down and make it a habit of writing. They say it takes 21 days to develop a habit. Before you know it, you’ll be rushing home to write and soon after that, your book will be finished.

After you have a rough draft of your book, set it aside for awhile. You want to come back to it with fresh eyes, so you can have a critical view on what you have written. Once you have waited a sufficient amount of time, pull out your book and see how you did.