Maybe You Should Write A Book

Posted at Nov 4, 2016 3:29 pm

I can’t tell you how many times I hear this from readers I meet in person. Some, I can tell, are just saying the words. Others have a real spark in their eye.

So what stops them from actually sitting down and writing a book?

Fear.

Fear of criticism. Fear of the time involvement. Fear of facing weaknesses within themselves they’re not ready to or don’t want to deal with.

In every person there is a story. Whether yours is meant for publication for the world to see or just your own personal family to enjoy, you each have something to tell. As the old saying goes “Rome wasn’t built in a  day” neither does a book need to be written in a day. Even if it takes ten years to finish, along the way you’ve made progress and you’ve completed a story that someone will want to hear.

My mother had an incredibly interesting and often sad life story. But it was also encouraging because of all the obstacles she overcame and the inspiration she was to many. I lost count of how many times she said “I should write a book.” I’d encourage her to do just that. I bought her numerous blank journals for jotting down her thoughts. I told her she didn’t even need to write them all down in order. Just get them put down on paper and we could sort it out later. I offered to help her accomplish this goal. I’m sad to say she never did. It’s now three years after her death and I’m still so sad that there are many things I didn’t know about my mom because she never wrote them down. And believe me, she had a lot of interesting things happen in her day. She was born before the great depression and she passed away in the era of the internet. She went from barely having a radio to having all the knowledge she needed right at her fingertips. She went from helping her grandfather plow his agricultural fields in West Virginia to buying frozen instant potatoes in Idaho. But I’ll never know what she did on a rainy night in that old cabin she lived in with her grandparents. I’ll never know how she got that job waitressing in a Las Vegas casino in the Howard Hughes days.

I would have known if she’d written that damn book!

So I encourage you, even if you don’t inspire to write a fictional book, put your fingers to the keyboard and write something. Because I guarantee it will mean a lot to at least one person. And that is quite an accomplishment.

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