I Have Become My Book

Writing a book changes you in so many ways. You struggle to find and make time to write. As Maum Courtney says in Before and After the Book Deal, "It is a common misperception that writers write. What a quaint idea! Writers don't write, they fight for time to write." Then one morning you wake up and you discover that you have become your book and your book has become you. You put your heart and soul into the book. You use all of your intellegence and research skills. You soon discover that you are living within your book.

Even those times that you do not have time to sit down and write or edit your book, your thoughts are on your book. Ideas come to you as you shower or lie down to sleep. As you drive, your thoughts are on your book. Every book you read becomes a search for a thought or idea that just might make your book a little better. As you are talking to your spouse, the thoughts in the back of your head are struggling on how to word a sentence better. As you are taking your daily walk, you worry about if your book is successful in making your point. Is it simple enough? Is it too complicated?  Did you succeed in reaching your targeted audience? What could you do better to make the book clearer? How could it be worded better? how do you come across as knowing what you are talking about without appearing to be arrogant?

Someone asks if you have been working on your book. Sometime the answer is that we have not had time to actually sit down and write, but the truth is that we are still actively working on it. That is because we are living in our book and it is living within us. The book has become us and we have become the book.