Most of us who write for a living have thought about writing a book.  Hearing from four working journos who have done just that and how they broke down the process makes it seem more like an achievable goal.

Cheryl Lu -Lien Tan, a fashion writer in NYC, came to book idea when she went back to Singapore to learn her late grandmother’s recipe for pineapple tart. Mei-Ling Hopgood took ten years to let the idea of the her book, about meeting her birth family that gave her up for adoption in China, gestate. Monte Reel knew he had a book when everything he knew and wanted to say kept overflowing out of the mag story he was writing.Minal Hajratwala wrote about her family’s journey from India and beyond.

All say it’s a lot harder than they thought it would be; it takes a lot longer than they thought to actually think out what their respective stories would be.

All except Minal repeated the word, discipline, to describe their process. Minal said it was just to keep herself happy and find out what works best for her, like not fighting her tendency to be a night writer and try to write during the day. She keeps a schedule writing from 9pm - 3am.

Like with all partnerships, finding an agent and editor has to be based on trust and a common view of and belief in the book. Many publishers will leave much of the publicity and marketing to the author. 

— Susan Oh