What is your book about? - See Jane Write

What is your book about?

This seems like a simple, easy-to-answer question. But those five words can often cause us writers to crash out!

Summing up your work in progress into just a couple of sentences can be daunting and leave you wondering whether you should just trash the whole project!

In fact, that question is why the book I started writing in 2017 wasn’t complete until five years later.

Early in the process of writing the book, I was on a walk with my husband when he asked, “What is your book about?” He went on to say, “When I mention to people that you’re working on a book and they ask what it’s about, I don’t have an answer. I don’t have an elevator pitch.” And it was in that moment that I realized I didn’t either. In that moment, I realized that the reason I was having such a tough time with my manuscript was that it lacked focus. Sure, I was writing a collection of essays, but there was no throughline, no common thread, no cohesion.

Frustrated, I abandoned the project – for years!

Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. After going through an entire year of active treatment – during a global pandemic – I knew I wanted to write a book that would show we have the power to write our way through anything. And once I truly knew what my book was about, completing my essay collection became a lot easier, and Find Your Way Back was born and shared with the world in February 2022.

Good for Marketing and More

Knowing what your book is about – and being able to express that clearly and concisely — is good for marketing. It helps you write your back cover overview and your book description for websites and social media. Most of all, it helps you talk about your book with confidence in casual conversations and gives others the tools to talk about it too. This matters because word of mouth is still an excellent way to promote your work.

But what I hope my story proves to you is that getting clear on what your book is about is essential long before your project is ready for the world.

To be clear, I’m not saying don’t be open to letting your story take you in unexpected places. Many of the essays in my book didn’t end how I thought they would when I started. And for my fiction writers, I know that letting your characters speak to you is vital.

But what’s the point? You must know this early on, because it will keep you writing even on those days when inspiration feels hard to come by.