Building a Book & Building a Life

Are Essentially the Same Thing

Last week, I hosted a live community call for all paid members of our community. I shared some thoughts on how life and writing parallel each other, as well as what I’m learning about starting to write my first book in five years—and what that has to teach me about rebuilding my life.

Someone recently asked me what I’m an expert at now, and all I could come up with was “starting over.” But come to think of it, that’s not a bad skill at all, as life itself is an endless exercise of new beginnings until the ultimate finale.

So what can we learn from beginning a book, and where does one start? In this call (the video below is embedded for paid subs), I shared three simple questions we need to be asking anytime we begin a new project in earnest (or re-start an old one). I also read a little bit from Mary Oliver’s Devotions, the closest thing to scripture I can find these days, and answer audience questions.

This is really just scratching the surface on the process of what I have come to call “Book Building,” and I’ll be sharing more about it in future calls and posts (stay tuned for the next live call later this month). But for now, just now that it’s not enough to simply begin. How you start a thing is how you will inevitably have to sustain it. And that applies to just about anything you can think of.

None of us gets a perfect starting line; but it helps to be as intentional and conscious as possible.

Good luck this weekend in all of the new beginnings and re-starts you choose to undertake—whether that’s cleaning the garage, doing a page-one rewrite of your novel, or dreaming up your next business. I’ll be doing the same.

See you at the finish line, wherever that may be.

Best,

Jeff

P.S. To get access to the recording, you have to be a paid subscriber. I do one of these every month or so and offer other exclusive bonuses for paid subscribers. The price is currently the lowest it’ll ever be, and you can cancel at any time.