Why Write a Book?

Writing Let’s Connect as Humans! has been a deeply healing journey for me.

In the process of making my dream of becoming a published author come true, I’ve found that while it is tempting do the work for others, we can become more authentic when we do the work for ourselves.

Let me explain what I mean.

When I set out to write Let’s Connect as Humans! I had a topic in mind: human-centered leadership. I made a list of possible chapters and themes to cover. I got to writing. 

After four chapters on the topics I really wanted to cover, I kept feeling resistance: I looked at those other topics on the list, and I did not feel inspired to write about them. Not that they were not interesting, or even inviting. They were simply not meant for me.

I was not meant to write those stories.

In one of my weekly calls with my editor Zach, he wisely said, “Don’t write the book you think others might want to read. Write the book you actually want to write.” Sometimes in the creative process we can get lost by what we think this imaginary audience we invent may want from us. When I was focused on creating work that would please a faceless crowd of my own making, I lost sight of what I actually wanted to say.

So I did the hard thing. I wrote the list of topics I actually wanted to write about. It was a lot messier, and way more vulnerable. It was me, peeling off my layers.

And so I’ve come to believe that yes, we do the creative work for ourselves. When I truly opened myself up to write the stories I wanted to tell, I felt inspired by doing the work each day. The process of writing and editing this book manuscript transformed my life. It was a deep act of surrender. I became aware of the fire that was inside of me, and decided to set it free.

Any act of our creation will demand that we dialogue with others. So we put the work out in the world with the hope that others will somehow catch glimpses of themselves in it. Perhaps in finding (or losing?) themselves in someone else’s work, they too can feel less alone. They too could be set free.

When Let’s Connect as Humans! is published, I wonder what kinds of journeys readers will go on with it. Books have always done that for me: set me on a journey somewhere unexpected. Some of those travels were transformational. Others, just average. But books always find me when I most need them.

One of my running jokes is I’ll never be able to read all the books in my ever growing list. That is by design. We will always want more than what we can achieve in this one lifetime we have. If we can’t have it all, what happens when we actually choose to do the thing that is beyond our wildest dreams?