Nonfiction books are bought for the information in them. Information that we hope will make our lives better. These books are bought to allow us to be educated and move on from a situation or problem. Self-help books are bought to give to friends and family we think it will benefit. In short we buy books to find a way around some kind of pain. This is often why the pain and the solution will be in the title of a self-help book such as: Feel the fear and do it anyway or Stuff work let’s play.
Books are bought to solve problems. So when thinking about the book you want to write you have to think about what isn’t working in the world. What is it that annoys or upsets you the most?
People often believe that you have to be an expert to write a book, but I believe you need to write the book you need to read. This is for two reasons, if you need to read it and can’t find it, there is a gap in the market. If the ones you found didn’t change anything you have a unique prospective and need to find answers. When we write from the voice of ‘expert’ there often is a lack of passion for the subject, or writing is voiced as if the reader is stupid.
If you’re writing, researching ideas and writing more, then there is a ‘sharing voice’ that pulls the reader in. They feel they are sharing the journey and as they do so evolving with you. The author becomes a guiding companion and not just an instructor.
Many authors for their first two books are joining dots together from other books they have read and making the subject matter their own and personal. By the third book not only have they learnt to write, but they have often found a unique point to give their growing readership.
The first two books might be a process in your own healing. By writing them you learn what you know, you grow and then you have a bigger realisation, through the very process of being an author. When we write we learn what it is that we know, therefore writing is a process of healing. Putting words on a page makes you clear about who you are, after all your ideas are in black and white. That might seem daunting, but we have to see that a process is at work through us for the betterment of mankind. Again we might think this is arrogant, but it’s often the most arrogant part of ourselves – our ego – that is calling our higher awareness arrogant.
Book that work the best are truthful, personal and sharing information. We know we don’t have all the answers but that the answers we have are worth sharing. We know this when we have told our friends our insights and they thank us for our wisdom when we think it’s common sense.
It’s easy to get caught up in the idea of the ‘little me’. ‘Who would listen to me?’ As an author what’s amazing is that the reader doesn’t know you and for them it’s not about you. So to be an author it can’t be about you. When you see yourself as the device for great healing, you start to feel that you must allow the book to emerge through you, as if you have been pregnant with it your whole life.
You are a channel for this book. You might like to see yourself as a lamp for enlightenment. The electricity is the deeper meaning for the book: God, Universal energy, Atman, or Muse whatever you wish. You are the lamp. The lamp needs a connection to source to be able to turn the light on. You must see yourself as being one with the source; you are the lamp and the electricity. Seeing something as bigger than you can carry you through your own difficulty. We all hit a point of ‘why am I doing this?’ because writing a book is a sacrifice.
You stand the best chance of completion or even starting when you have a mission for your book.
If you would like to work one to one with me, please send an email to: workwithme@beckywalsh.com
