How Do You Write A Book? Just WRite...

​A friend asked me recently about my writing process, particularly as it pertained to writing a book.

My answer was short. It was such a short answer, in fact, that it shocks me that it took a couple of decades for me to come to understand the answer.

But my answer was: write.

Just write....

For years - many many years - I spent time researching how to write a book. I watched videos and read books about the art of writing. I spent time memorizing all the rules of grammar and punctuation. I even bought a big expensive book called "Writers Market" that listed thousands upon thousands of ways and places where you could sell your writing.

While all of that was going on, though, the one thing I rarely did was write. I was looking for places to sell writing when there really was no writing to sell.

In the end, I am not writing a book because I wanted to write a book; I'm writing a book because a book is the best place to hold and share and keep alive some of my writing forever. Writing I did because I wanted to write, because I wanted to heal and impact, not because I wanted to write a book.

Today, writing is not easy for me, but it comes with great ease. Seth Godin says "Ease is the feeling of doing something worthwhile, and doing it well."

I told a friend yesterday that I learned more about writing from tirelessly writing than I ever learned about writing from incessantly studying it. That's not to dismiss the value of skill development, but sometimes we can dismiss practicing the skill in favor of studying the skill.

Studying can be a great distraction from the real work.

For me, that distraction was rooted in the reality that writing itself felt harder than learning to write. So I kept turning to the easy route of becoming who I wanted to become instead of actually doing the thing that was begging to come out of me.

My life didn't feel a sense of incomplete - of deadness - because I didn't know how to write. It felt that because I wasn't writing!!

Today, my day does not experience the life it's intended to live if there isn't at least a dose of writing. More often than not big doses. And not because I learned to write, but because I learned how much I needed to write.

There's an underrated campaign, which is saying a lot because it's one of the most notable campaigns ever!!!

Nike: Just do it.

But so many of us are not experiencing some beautiful things in our lives because we are looking for the easy way in life. Easy will not get us there, but ease will.

Ease, doing the things that give us a feeling of doing something worthwhile.

Ease, DOING the things...

How do you write a book?

Just write.