What most people imagine when they commit to writing a book is the traditionally published book. You know, the 200-250 page thing with the glossy, artistically rendered cover that’s mass-produced. It’s distributed by a publisher—ideally one of the big five publishers. It’s secured by an agent, who gave a generous financial advance to the writer when the contract was signed. And of course, it’s bought and sold in bookstores by millions of people, making it to the New York Times Bestseller List.
Every writer has a dream to write that kind of book when they commit to writing one. But the truth is, it’s extremely rare. And it takes a lot of time, effort, persistence, connections, and luck to produce that kind of result. Not everyone who commits to writing a book is willing or able to follow through on that. The average writer takes four years to a decade (sometimes more) to write a book.
What is a “book”?
The dictionary defines a book as:
- A set of written sheets of skin or paper (yes, it really says skin)
- Something that yields knowledge or understanding
- A record-–
- re (bring something back) and cor (heart) –to bring back to heart
- To set down in writing
- The total available knowledge and experience that can be brought to bear on a
problem or task - Authority relevant to a situation
- As a verb: to reserve in advance (meaning to set the intention for a new arrival or experience)
My definition of a book is a:
“Container of Completion” or “Vehicle of Visibility”
When you chose to write a book and commit to it, it becomes a container for bringing together, commemorating, and “completing” a season of your life’s knowledge and journey. It allows you to go deeper into the stories and lessons of your life and to gather them, make meaning of them, and also let them go in order to make room for what might be next.
A book is a gathering place for your own understanding of who you are, what you’ve learned and are here to share, and it becomes a vehicle for making that more visible to yourself, and then others when you share it in the world.
How to Stay Committed to Writing a Book
As the definitions above reveal, a book is a whole lot more than just the thing you buy at the bookstore. I use the term “Living Book” to speak about the commitment to writing a book. I invite writers to commit to a Living Book, rather than solely a traditionally published NY Times Bestselling book. This opens you up to all the possible “containers of completion” and “vehicles of visibility” that your writing might need and want to take to reveal and share the knowledge, authority, understanding, or record of your heart.
The Living Book is often focused on the creation of a published book (traditional or self-published). But the Living Book expands the scope of what’s possible and doesn’t stay singularly focused on one outcome. This is especially helpful and important for people who know they have a book (or something more substantial than an essay or two) in them but don’t yet know what that is.
When I lost my home to bankruptcy and foreclosure in 2008 and went through a major life transition, I sat down to write about value in society. I thought I was writing a book of poetry. The more I wrote, the more it became clear that it was not a book of poetry, that it was something more, that it was my story of home and value. It was my memoir.
Along the way, it also expanded into a concept for a business (helping others come home to themselves through writing their own story), and eventually became content for that business in the form of ideas, stories, structures, and frameworks for workshops, programs, retreats, etc.
I realized I don’t necessarily need or want to publish my memoir as a book, I’ve come to understand that writing it wasn’t about publishing it as a book alone. It’s what I needed to do in order to move into the next phase of my life. Writing it helped me see, contend with, and make meaning out of the scope of my life to that point so I could see and step into what was next.
My poetry book became my Living Book, which not only produced poems, but also became a book-length memoir, a business doing what I love, and a deeper understanding of my value, voice, deep purpose and what I’m here to express and convey at this time.
I’ve had many writers I support start out with the intention of writing and publishing a book and in the process realize that what they were writing was really just for them. They didn’t need to share it with the whole world, and in the process of writing it, they’d healed and revealed something more about themselves and their lives that was needed. Many discover that what they’ve really been writing is the content of a new understanding and articulation of who they are or a next chapter in their lives, and therefore they don’t want to or need to spend the time and effort (at least at that point) to publish it as a traditional book. Instead they start creating and sharing it with others right away via other forms of delivery. This is also true of the writers I support who have gone on to finish and publish a book. But in all cases, it was choosing to write the book that got them where they needed and wanted to go.
Committing to writing a book, or your Living Book, means committing to using writing to gather, access, and inhabit the value of what you know. You then live it more fully by sharing it with others. It may in fact be a published book. Or it might be a series of articles or writings for a blog, a new business idea, or content for your business. Or maybe it’s simply a deeper understanding of your purpose and the arc of meaning your life is here to convey at this time, and it acts as a guide for moving you into what’s next for you.
What’s important is to commit to the container, the form of a “Living Book.” Because when you do, it becomes the gathering place to see, acknowledge, archive, and honor the story, lessons, and wisdom of your life. The BONUS is the published book you commit to writing along the way.
As a wonderful writer I supported beautifully said:
“Perhaps my book can be a resting place—a place where the pain and wisdom of my life is acknowledged, archived, honored and then closed into something small enough to be held in the human hand.”—Jane Flint