26 You Have a Book in You Providing action steps for your readers to follow are the fourth and 昀椀nal absolute essential for your book. Put that step into action! 吀栀e One Question Every Writer Must Answer You’ve got a story to tell. You’ve got valuable information to share. I hope what you’ve read so far has assured you of that. I hope you also understand that many people— including you—will bene昀椀t when you tell your story and share your wisdom. So what’s the 昀椀rst step? 吀栀at’s a really important question, because the 昀椀rst step in writing a book is really the most challenging. Again and again I’ve seen new writers sitting at a keyboard with a blank screen in front of them. Or if the screen isn’t totally blank, it’s a battleground of revisions and corrections that add up to nothing much. 吀栀e cause of all, this, of course, is the writer’s belief that the 昀椀rst sentence has to be “perfect”—and not just the 昀椀rst sentence, but the book as a whole. After all, this isn’t just a letter to Grandma we’re writing here. 吀栀is is a book that’s going to be sold in stores, just like the com- plete works of Shakespeare, not to mention the Bible. We’re going to ask people to pay good money for this, so it has to be great. It has to be clean and shiny and fussed over, just like the seventh- grade term papers you ner-