I’m going to pass along the long-guarded secret to writing a book. The thing “they” don’t want you to know. The “hack” that will take you from cool idea to finished novel. The “one cool trick” that will enable you — whoever you are — to see your name as the author of a book.

It took me years of trial and error to discover this secret. And I am guessing there are many in the publishing world who don’t want me to share it broadly. To just put it out there.

But I don’t care.

I’m sick and tired of authors closely guarding this secret. Acting like discovering it is some rite of passage for scribblers to find, transforming doodlers and jotters-of-notes into published authors. No more gatekeeping. No more hazing of newbies, wondering if they will pass some imaginary, arbitrary test to find the secret.

So here it is. The secret that every author knows, which I will reveal here. Prepare yourself. Sit down. Take a deep breath. Clear your mind, so you can take in the fullness of what I am telling you. The secret is:

Write. The. Book.

That’s it. That’s whole secret. Whether longhand, on a typewriter, at a laptop, or on your phone, you have to draft the story word by word. Sentence by sentence. Paragraph by paragraph. Chapter by chapter.

And when you are done with that first draft, you are not done. Next, you have to edit. Revise, Rewrite. Edit some more. Revise some more.

You have to do the work. There is no shortcut. There is no trick or hack.

Most authors will tell you that it is a long, hard road. It can get very lonely. It is frustrating. It is tiring. There will be times you want to give it up. You will read back at a sentence, paragraph, or chapter and want to throw it into a bonfire.

In a nutshell, there are two kinds of people when it comes to writing a book:

First are people who want to have written a book. They want to see their name on a cover with beautiful art, and imagine a full-fledged story with a gripping introduction, incredible characters, and a climax that leaves readers crying and shouting for joy at the same time. They imagine how fun it would be to tell people over drinks that they wrote a book.

Second are people who want to write a book. These folks accept the path before them. They see the hurdles, obstacles, and hardships on the horizon, and they are willing to put in the work to get it done. They will agonize over a sentence or word choice for what seems like an eternity to get it just right. They will draft an opening that is far from gripping, but then spend hours, days, and weeks revising the intro until it flows so smoothly that it feels to the reader that it was effortless. They will scrap characters and ideas that don’t work, and rearrange chapters dozens of times until the pacing is just right to keep the reader interested. And they will do so largely in isolation, driven only by some internal desire to see a story come to life.

Scammers and fraudsters out there will try to convince you that there is a secret sauce that can bypass the hard stuff.

There’s not.

My dad ran a marathon when I was younger. There’s no shortcut to getting in shape to run 26.2 miles. Especially for middle-aged people. It takes regular dedication. It takes going for runs when you are tired. It means running when you are aching. It means running when you are hungry. It means running in the rain and the heat and the cold.

Many people want to have run a marathon. Few train like my dad and others to be able to run a marathon.

That’s not to say there aren’t tips to be more effective. Of course there are. Just like for running, there are things you can do to help your writing. There are books to read, YouTubes to watch, and groups to support your journey. There is advice that can be absorbed, tried, tweaked, abandoned, and/or adapted for your writing/running style.

But no one can do the work for you. No one else can wake up on a Saturday morning for a 10-mile run for you. And no one else can draft that annoying chapter that you need to have but can’t quite figure out.

This entire post was written as an admonition to myself to stop procrastinating on my writing projects. It is a missive from me to me to get focused.

And maybe — just maybe — it can help others.