What Do I Write About?

FAQ:  I want to write a book – but I’m not sure what book I want to write and where to start.

Great!  The “What Do I Write About?” question is the first stage of the Writing Journey.  In fact, the Writing Journey is actually a personal development and growth journey.  To be successful with book writing, start with identifying why you want to write your book?  Why do you want to tell your story?

Simply, the story you want to write or tell is never about “telling” (unless you want to be that dry, academic, self-obsessed bore at the party, in the lunchroom, or up on the stage presenting the facts of their life story).

Writing 101:  Show – Don’t Tell

Rather, story sharing is about engaging your audience through the process of “showing” not “telling.”  Because when words are your medium, you need to craft them with love and care into a story worthy of the reader or listener’s time.

Learn to use words – adjectives, verbs, nouns, adverbs – and proven writing tools and techniques to “put on a show” and entertain your audience, rather than lecture them.  Showing is always more interesting than telling.  When someone tells you their story, you quickly lose interest, don’t you?  They present you with vague facts and figures and stats and pie in the sky theories.  It feels like a lecture, doesn’t it?  Especially when they don’t back what they’re saying with real world evidence and experience. 

Please don’t be that person!

Rather, be the person who engages their audience, draws them into their story, and takes them on the journey with them, step by step by step.  How do you do this?

Live – or Relive – Your Story

Inject life into your story by living, or reliving it.  This is all it takes to answer your question, “What Do I Write About?”

When you go on the journey yourself (or go within to reflect on the one you want to tell) you experience all life’s heroic challenges, obstacles, losses and wins.  You empower yourself to do things your way, and invite your audience to join you.  They’ll eagerly travel with you, and actively feel your pain and emotions, as well as your courage and determination to overcome impossible odds and achieve  success. 

However, in order for you to be able to bring the reader or listener along with you, you need to first connect with them.  But before you can connect with them, you first need to connect with yourself. 

And this is where the first stage of writing, or indeed any heroic quest, begins. 

You owe it to your audience to be willing to internally reflect on your past, your present and your possible futures.  All Heroic Journeys (fact or fiction) are about self-exploration, personal development, personal transformation, growth and evolution. 

Begin now.  Step out of the external world and step into your own, magical space, where you are the powerful individual in charge of your own thoughts, feelings, actions and communications.  You and no one else.  And in this magical space you can be your authentic self, and get to know who you really are and get a sense of who you might become.