As you write, clearly envision:

	the intended target audience, and
	the intended purpose of the book.

Write when your heart says write. Wait to begin writing the book until you feel your heart and spirit are fully pregnant with the message and ready to pour it out. If you try to deliver the message before it is ready to come forth from your heart and spirit, you will have a miscarriage.

You will know when it is time to write. You will feel a passion about delivering the message and getting it out of your heart and mind and into the world.

Let God give you more during the night. When you are drained from writing, stop, go to bed and sleep on it. You will be refreshed and anointed the following day, especially if, as you drift off to sleep, you ask God to grant your heart a fresh anointing while you sleep. He can and He will (Job 33:14-16).

Revise the draft several times, sometimes writing from the right hemisphere of your brain, sometimes writing from the left hemisphere, and a final time using both hemispheres.

Right brain functions include:

pictures, flow, emotions, music.

Left brain functions include:

reason, analysis, logic, spoken words.

The indwelling Holy Spirit is sensed as "flow:"

Out of your innermost being shall flow...this He spoke of the Spirit (Jn. 7:37-39).

One must know how to change hemispheres based on which hemisphere is needed for the job he is doing, and also how to tune to the "flow" of the Holy Spirit within him. (These skills are taught in the book Communion with God by Mark and Patti Virkler.)

1. Write using the RIGHT hemisphere - following the anointing. I always begin my writing projects by moving to the right hemisphere and writing out of "flow." The right hemisphere is where creativity, spirit, flow, pictures and emotions originate and are registered. I want my book to have all of these. My book must come from the river of God within my heart. Therefore, I pray, asking God to anoint my writing, I establish an attitude of faith in the Spirit’s flow which resides within me, and I tune to flow and begin writing in faith. I trust the Holy Spirit to "bubble up" to my attention those things which should be written, and in the order that they should be written, if I keep a picture in the back of my mind of Jesus speaking to the intended reader through me, as discussed in the section below.

Since music is a right-brain function, SOFT classical music or string music may help you tune to flow. However, don’t use songs with words. Speech, you may recall, is a left-brain function. If your background music has words being sung or if you know words to it, it will probably be counter-productive to your goal of tuning to heart flow. The words will keep pulling you back to the left hemisphere and disrupting the flow.

Principle: Use vision to move to the right hemisphere and to purify the flow within. Vision is a right-brain function, so one can easily move from the left hemisphere to the right by holding a picture in his mind as he writes.

Principle: "The flow" is directed by the vision being held before one’s eyes. Since my goal is to bring the revelation of God to the hearts and lives of my readers, I have a picture of God communicating to the people to whom I am writing. I hold this picture (i.e. of Jesus speaking to the intended audience) in the back of my mind as I write. This causes the book to have an anointing and a flow, because I am constantly in the state of vision and "Spirit flow" as I write.

Principle: The wrong picture in your mind distorts the flow. If you do not purposely maintain a picture of God speaking to the people you are writing to, then another picture will inadvertently, unconsciously appear there. Whatever that picture is, it will be guiding the flow of your writing, making your writing less pure, less anointed, and less powerful.

For example, I might unconsciously develop a vision of myself driving my point down my opponent’s throat as I write, or I may recall a picture of some unhealed hurt in my past, and I may vent and steam about that hurt as I write. This causes the flow of my writing to become impure. It is no longer the clear anointed revelation of God.

If, as I write, I am picturing Jesus speaking to the reader of the book, THEN FLOW ONLY GIVES TO ME those things my reader needs to read and hear in order to be touched and moved in the direction in which God wants to take him. In this situation, "I" have become transparent, and I am simply bringing together the river of God and the heart of my reader. I have lost my life in Christ as I write. This is so much better than being lost in my own unhealed hurts or my own pride.

Principle: Stories touch the heart, ideas touch the mind. If you write in story form, your audience will love you because stories touch the heart and ideas only touch the mind. A book full of ideas may instruct the mind. A book full of stories will move the heart. Long-term change only results from a changed heart. Being a left-brain individual myself, all my early books are left-brain, idea-type books. My more recent books are story books. I believe that is a great improvement in my writing style.

Principle: God reasons by painting pictures (Isa. 1:18). First God paints a picture of man’s need, and then a picture of His solution. Note God using this process below:

"Come now, and let us REASON together," saith the LORD: "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. 1:18).

I suspect painting back-to-back pictures (of man’s needs next to God’s provision) is the most powerful writing and speaking style there is. I recommend this for all writers and speakers, and seek to use it myself.

2. Revise using the RIGHT hemisphere - adding more anointing. As I go back and reread my first draft, more ideas "spring" to my heart and mind. I add them to the manuscript. This is the Spirit filling in, deepening and broadening sections of the book.

3. Revise using the RIGHT hemisphere - until you come to complete peace. I reread the book again, asking my heart if it is at peace about each section and each paragraph. If my heart feels uneasy about anything, I rewrite it until there is peace. The uneasiness is because I have not stated something accurately, properly, or in the right spirit. Keep rewriting until your heart jumps up and screams, "Yes!" Then the anointing upon your manuscript is complete.

4. Revise using the LEFT hemisphere, clarifying each sentence. Now it is time to begin analyzing the book from a logical point of view, making sure all the thoughts are properly connected and build logically upon one another, making sure each sentence and paragraph is clear and cannot be misunderstood. I do this by reading each sentence and asking, "How could my reader misunderstand this sentence?" Then I change anything that could be misunderstood. Generally, I am shortening sentences, switching pronouns to nouns, and doing anything else that will make the thought crystal clear. Principle: Anything that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood.

5. Revise using the LEFT hemisphere, adding headings throughout. One way of clarifying my thought processes and my readers’ thought processes, and keeping us both tracking together is for me to add headings into the text. These headings may ask questions which I am going to answer in the next several paragraphs, or may make bold statements which I am going to explain. They tend to highlight the movement and transitions of thought and keep the the text more stimulating than 100 pages of solid print.

6. Revise using the LEFT hemisphere, adding documentation and finalizing reference notes. You must always give clear recognition to the sources used in your research with a bibliography and reference notes. Unless a fact is common knowledge (something mentioned by nearly everyone who writes about the subject), you should tell where you learned it. There are three main reasons for this: 1) to preserve your honesty and integrity; 2) to lend authority to your work; and 3) to make it easy for the reader to find out more about the information you have given.

To avoid plagiarism, you must give reference notes for all facts, ideas and quotations taken from another person. In addition, if you have not completely paraphrased your source, put quotation marks around the phrase or sentence(s) taken from someone else, as well as giving the reference note.

If you are not sure of the proper form of a bibliography and reference notes, refer to an authoritative source in your local library for instruction.

7. Do a final reading, looking to see if you have a good balance between right and left hemispheres. If you become too left-brain, the book will be dry. Add stories whenever it loses spark. If you become too right-brain, there will be many stories but no clear thread which draws them together, and readers will become confused. In this case, add a heading which helps the readers understand why the story has been included, or make an initial or summarizing statement concerning the story.