The hard part of writing a book isn’t getting it published. With more opportunities than ever to become an author, the hard part is the actual writing.
As the bestselling author of seven published books, I can tell you without hesitation that the hardest part of this life is sitting down and doing the work. Books don’t just write themselves. You have to invest everything you are into creating an important piece of work, and this requires discipline.
For years, I dreamed of writing. I believed I had important things to say, things the world needed to hear. But as I look back on what it took to actually become an author, I realize how different the process was from my expectations.
To begin with, you don’t just sit down to write a book. That’s not how writing works. You write a sentence, then a paragraph, then maybe if you’re lucky, an entire chapter. Writing happens in fits and starts, in bits and pieces. It’s a process.
The way you get the work done is not complicated. You take one step at a time, then another and another. As I look back on the books I’ve written, I can see how the way these works were made was not as glamorous or as mysterious as I once thought.
