From Keynote or Workshop to Book


Today’s episode is going to be of particular use to you if you are a speaker or a trainer, if you do any kind of presentations on the subject area you’re going to be writing your book about. I have used this with my clients as well as with my own books, and so I know it works really well. 

The idea is that you start with what you say and simply type it instead of saying it. This is the opposite from talking your book. So you’re actually taking your speech, or your keynote, or your training program, and typing it out as your first draft.

The first time I had experience with this was when I first started to do my 90-Minute Author program, and one of my clients was a fellow speaker. This woman does keynote speeches as well as trainings — I think I’ve done three books with her now and am about to start the fourth. It was amazing. We did it on Skype and then recorded it and she simply sat there and delivered her keynote! I asked her the 10 questions she had set out, but the answers to the questions were the foundation of her keynote. This meant the transcript was easy for me to edit.  Of course, it had to be adapted to the written word, but it was very easy to do and it was easy for her. 

Since then, I realize what a great method this is for writing a first draft. Here’s how I used it myself for the first time. 

I have worked for a number of years with accountants and accounting firms, teaching them how to write. This is not just a keynote. This is a whole workshop that lasts a full day. There are many modules in that workshop, each one suitable to be a chapter in a book.

So, I wrote a book called, Make Your Words Count: A Short Painless Guide to Business Writing for Accountants. And that book is simply the book form of the workshop I’ve done. The chapters are the same as the modules, and a lot of the information is the same. 

Now, of course, it had to be adapted, it had to be fairly substantially edited to make it a book, but it still gave me a really good skeleton to work from. In fact, more than a skeleton, it actually had quite a lot of flesh on it. (What a gruesome metaphor!) 

Anyway, when you talk, when you actually just give your keynote speech or your training program and write it instead of speaking it, it helps you to get your voice across because it literally is your voice. It’s the way you would say things, so the material, the book comes out being very much your voice. People have said to me, “When I read your books, it’s as if I hear you speaking.” And that’s what you want to hear because that makes it very easy also for the reader.

So, if you’re a trainer, or if you’re a speaker, or even if you have already recorded some of your speeches or your training programs, start with those. Use those as your basis, and then you can fill in the blanks as you go. 

Now, one more thing, this is part of the adaption process, but you will have to flesh out your notes after you have done your first draft because you have opportunities to say more in your book than you do in a training program. You can expand on things. You can also put links to websites where people can download further resources.

So if you are a speaker or a trainer, think about how you can take something that you already have and make it into your book. 

And I’ll talk to you next week.