How to Create a Book Outline

March 23, 2026March 16, 2026

If You Can Teach It, You Can Write It: A Simple Test for Your First Business Book

As a business professional, you may be thinking about writing a book, but you aren’t sure where to start. What main topic should your book focus on? What would keep readers engaged? How can you narrow your vast experience into a single book?

Here’s a simple test for selecting your first book topic: Could you teach this topic in a one-hour webinar or workshop? If you can teach it, you likely have a viable book topic.

January 19, 2026January 13, 2026

Instead of a Book Outline, Start with a Clothesline

You might have heard the first step of writing a book is creating an outline. It’s true that an outline can be a big help in organizing a book. But it’s not necessarily the first step.

Some book topics lend themselves well to outlines, especially how-to books where the steps of a process are clear. But other topics might be more difficult to put into an outline up front. Some books are a process of discovery in the writing.

How can you create an outline up front if you don’t know yet what you’re going to write?

How do you take that journey of discovery as a writer that leads eventually to an outline?

Introducing the clothesline: a flexible, creative, discoverable approach that will eventually emerge into an outline for your book.