By James Patrick Robinson
This post is for anyone who wants to bury the hatchet, and write that book. It might be an idea you’ve had for years, or maybe a necessary career step. Which it is if you’re a keynote speaker. Whatever your reason, you have to break your book idea into tiny chunks. And those “chunks” become your daily word count.
As an example, let’s talk about a book I wrote this year with the economist Larry McDonald, published by Penguin Random House on March 26th 2024, “How To Listen When Markets Speak.”
This was a massively complicated book about high inflation, multipolar worlds, and which asset classes would excel in a world with rising interest rates, surging oil demand, and increasingly scary numbers on the balance sheet of the United States.
I had to place all of this into a compelling narrative that wouldn’t bore everyone sideways, and was easy to understand. How did I tackle this? Luckily, the brilliant agent Jim Levine made it real simple. He broke it down into three stages… What? So What? Now What?
Five words, total clarity.
The “What” boiled down to “How we got here.” It started with the end of the Cold War, when the USSR collapsed in 1991; sparked by Gorbackev meeting with Reagan in Iceland a few years earlier.
Then, the next phase of this was China joining the WTO which led to 30 years of low cost manufacturing and the ludicrous US borrowing spree at rock bottom rates.
Next was how things were changing. The nasty side effects, and the drug problem rampaging through the out-of-work Rust Belt, ending with COVID-19, the mother of all balance sheet increases.
That’s chapter 1-3 of 9.
Next was the So What? stage. Turns out, those are fighting words… so A LOT, as a matter of fact. Because the West made some critical mistakes during those halcyon days of free money sloshing around the markets (1990-2020). They started this 1) crippling habit of bailing out markets after LTCM nearly imploded, 2) they waged war on fossil fuels, and 3) markets wholly adopted the ETF as a passive investing vehicle.
Chapter 4, 5 and 6 right there.
Next phase, the cantankerous and almost impossible to answer question, Now What?
We had to make a case to get out of the big technology bubble which has been formed by the Mag-7. Bubbles crash, and usually in memorable style. So let’s do a Chapter 7 on the Psychology of Bubbles. The next big issue we all face is the decline of the US Dollar, known locally as the greenback. All the sanctioning and a prickly relationship with Saudi Arabia, and the petrodollar looks to be on shaky ground. That’s Chapter 8. And finally, where to invest. Cold Hard Assets – The Portfolio For The Next Decade. Chapter 9.
Books are simple, but don’t look at them as a mountain. Imagine them in stages, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. How many chapters in each Act? That’s up to you. I was hammering out 6,000 word chapters, three per act, and I tried my best to write 1,000 words a day. Tough to do with research, but sometimes you get easier parts and can type more.
Plan out each chapter, with a solid explanation of each. Reading the outline should feel like a book in very clipped form. This is an essential road map, and you’ll refer to it all the time. And of course, try to use all the outline’s words in the main manuscript. Great way to hit that daily limit.
This is how books are written. Just like how a house is built. With very careful plans, inspected by structural engineers, and only then the foundation is poured.
So break down that idea, and carefully build a one-liner outline. Maybe not as short as What, So What, Now What, but that will certainly get you off the starting blocks.