Writing the first draft
Arvid referred to the process of writing the first draft as a book writing marathon. He provided daily updates about the book writing journey, focusing largely on the subjects he included in the book.
With most updates, he included a graphic which included the number of lines, words and characters.
Audience First first-draft marathon
- Day 12: Returned to writing the book and made a pact with himself to get the first draft done by Jan 31st.
- Day 14: Hit the 20k word mark
- Day 16: Felt that he was around 2/3rds into what he wanted in the book
- Day 17: Finished an important section
- Day 18: 2.5k words. Shared how the chapter differed to similar content he’d written for his previous book
- Day 19: Added “just” 700ish words today, but they’re good ones.
- Day 20: 2.5k words. Also recorded his weekly podcast and wrote out his blog post.
- Day 21: thousand words and expanded an outline
- Day 22: 1700ish words on “The Practice of Audience-Building
- Day 23: 1500ish words about Twitter engagement
- Day 25: Wrote 2.3k words after taking a small break the day before
- Day 27: Wrote 3700 words for the book over the last two days, plus other website content
- Day 28: 2000 words. Shared how interesting conversations caused him to add extra content
- Day 29: 2600-ish words about how to tweet
- Day 30: 4600 words.
He finished the first draft in February, 2021. He also decided to change the name from Audience First to The Embedded Entrepreneur. He shared more in a Twitter thread. He finished editing this draft within a week and got the book ready for alpha readers. He shared a milestone half-way through the edit.