The company I write for has lots of clients who are millionaires. When they talk about their goals in our workshops, a lot of them say “I’d like to write a book.” So I get to sit there feeling smug ’cause I’ve written three. Nyah-nyah… um… millionaires. Still, I do hear this a lot, “I’d like to write a book.“
They say that everyone has a book in them, right? Well, I’ve also heard it said that most people have fifteen pounds of undigested meat in them, too, and I don’t want to see that, either.
That’s my snarky answer to the question. And don’t get me started on all the people who’ve said to me “I have this idea for a book. Maybe you could write it and we could split the money.” Ri-ight. You jot something on a napkin, I spend a year doing the work, and then I give you 50%. Mm-hmm. (This plan, of course, presumes that the book will make money, which is statistically improbable.)
But the truth is that I believe everyone’s life experience (inner life or outer life), presented honestly, has the power to be riveting. My big beef with bestseller lists, literary prizes, and author-shrines like The Edinburgh Book Festival is that they create an artificial distance between the creator and the audience, and set art up like some sort of competition. Art belongs to everyone, and everyone has the right to create it.
But…
Everyone shouldn’t feel like they have to. There’s something about the idea of writing a book that people idealise. Until this evening, I haven’t really considered what that might be.
So if you feel obliged to write a book, I’m here to set you free (either way — to do it, or not to do it).
Part of my work in writing my next book is documenting my process so I can pass it on to others. The first step anyone should take is something I’ll call The Author Test. It’s nothing to do with the business side of writing, just the actual writing of writing a book — specifically the question “Should I write a book?”
The Author Test.
You should write a book if:
You like to write. It’s amazing how many people want to have a finished book, but don’t enjoy writing. If you find putting ideas and words down on paper boring or painful, really, take this goal off your life-list now, ’cause having a book involves a lot of writing.
You like to spend time on your own. If you’re an introvert, writing is a great excuse for indulging yourself. It’s an easily defensible reason to be on your own: “Oh, you’re working on your book. I’ll leave you alone.”
You can get yourself to work. The biggest hurdle in getting a book written is just getting yourself to sit, commit your attention, and get down to the work at hand. Once you’re in, it’s bliss (again, if you like writing), but you need to be able to create drive and urgency for your own reasons — ’cause the world is not asking for another book, really.
You can commit to a long-term project. Writing a book takes me a year and a half of my spare time. There are ways to create payoffs along the journey, but you have to keep coming back to the work.
You have extra energy at the end of your work day. If you prefer to just kick up your feet and watch TV, do that. (And there is room to do that and write a book, too, but you have to schedule writing sessions and take them.) Sure, most of the writers we mythologise were crazy people in ludicrous situations, but we’re postmoderns. We have jobs.
You have an active imagination and you love what comes out of it. This is one domain in life where it’s okay to make up stories — the more weird and involved the better.
You want to share for the sake of it. Stories are part of the “gift economy”, and you will experience joy and an abundance of ideas — as long as you accept them as gifts that come from that unknown place in you, and are willing to share them without attachment or secondary purpose.
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You should not write a book if:
You want to get famous. Very few of us writers do. Sorry. And the ones who do are often really bad, so it’s not like you can even work at it.
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You want to get attention. This is where the mythical “writer’s block” begins and ends: worrying about what other people will think. I believe you have to write what comes to you, not reverse-engineer what the world finds pleasing.
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You want to get rich. Yeah, again, sorry. Buy a lottery ticket; that only takes five minutes and I think your odds are better.
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You want to be immortalised. Fiction can’t do this for you. Memoir gets a ball over the fence, but you can never go into the yard. By the time it matters, you’re dead, and words won’t reconstitute your consciousness.
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p>That’s a lot of writing about writing, which is a no-no, too. But there you have it. So now you are now free to not write a book and feel perfectly okay about it. If it’s something you still want to do, if you’re hooked by the idea of creating delicious worlds and peopling them with idiosyncratic figures you’ll fall in love with… Go, go, go.
