Writing a book can be daunting. These ideas are things I picked up whilst writing my book ‘Brasitogorsk’ for university. I hope they will help you.

1. Dimensions, dimensions and yes more dimensions

What size do you want your book to be? There is so much choice online for book printing services so I would recommend picking out all of your book options before actually starting your book. Why? Well because if you’re going to add scaled drawings you need to know what will fit on a page. the size of the book might require altering the font size which in turn will change how many pages you use. Deciding the dimensions first will help organise the content going into the book and prevent you running into problems later on.

2. Adobe InDesign is your best friend

If you haven’t learnt Adobe InDesign yet, now is most definitely the time! To describe InDesign to the non-users out there it’s the intuitive layout of Microsoft Powerpoint with the design prowess of Photoshop. There are plenty of courses online with either YouTube or on LinkedinLearning (formally Lynda) to choose from but my advice is to just open a document and if you want to do something and can’t figure it out just search that particular task. There are of course other programmes out there but Adobe InDesign is much more universal, the skills will come in handy at work and at university. Once I started using InDesign there was simply no going back to Powerpoint.

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3. Structure

So you’ve got the dimensions of the book and you have a corresponding InDesign document, now its time to work on the structure. Dependant on the length of your book it can easy to ramble or go off on tangents, sitting down with a brew and trying to write the contents page of your book will help your writing flow between chapters. It also means that if you find you have a free Saturday you can sit down and pick the chapter you want to work on that day.

4. Writer’s block

With the best will, motivation and determination you are going to have off days. Days where the very idea of looking at your laptop fills you with dread, and that’s perfectly fine. If you are not feeling inspired or creative you’re probably not going to do your best work. Sometimes I find that doing anything productive like household jobs can progress into motivation but when even that fails its best to call it a rest day and come back to it tomorrow.

I hope this has helped you to start writing your own architecture book! If you have any tips for others leave a comment down below.