Many people have asked how I decided to write a book. The truth is, I didn’t decide to write a book. I decided to publish writings I originally had no intention of putting into a book. I retrofitted my daily Facebook posts from the 366 days after my husband died unexpectedly into The Collision of Grief and Gratitude.
I often think about the power of taking what was not
intended for publication and then putting it out there as a writer. Many of you
may have written thousands of words around hundreds of topics that could make
powerful and compelling books. Don’t dismiss that thought.
In some ways, you would think that retrofitting content
created for another context is the easiest way to write a book. And in fact, in
some ways, it is. The material has obviously been written. You won’t be sitting
at your desk into the wee hours of the morning facing writing deadlines. No.
You will have other challenges.
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But writing through tears and angst and grief doesn’t
always produce very sophisticated writing. I intentionally did not correct my
dangling prepositions or misspelled words in my original posts (interesting that
Facebook does not auto correct) because I so much wanted the words to flow out
of my heart and communicate my utmost feelings of grief and gratitude. Just
know that if you take existing content and put it into a book, you will have a
lot of heavy lifting to make it readable to the more discerning reader’s
eye.
And yet, because I so intentionally wrote out of my ethos
rather than my intellect, the feelings jumped off the page in a way that seemed
to cut deep into the soul of many people. I changed very little of that in the
editing. Of course, it’s not easy to keep the soul of the message while
cleaning up the writing itself so it is acceptable for publishing but fight to
keep the honesty and the emotion. I am not sure the book could ever have had
the same depth of passion if I had not written it first before deciding to
publish it.
All of this to say to writers, don’t be afraid to look at
your past writings. Know that they will
need a lot of work if you ever decide they are book worthy. But also know they
may be more powerful than any book you intentionally set out to write.
As a coach and teacher for more than thirty years with the Gallup Organization, Rosanne has helped people discover and lean into their strengths. She now speaks to groups about how to build stronger relationships, and live life with more intention and gratitude.
Connect with the author: Facebook
Rosanne Liesveld is also the author of Teach with Strengths: How Great Teachers
Inspire Students, a book she did set out to write in a more conventional
way with JoAnn Miller and Jennifer Robinson. That book was published in 2005 by
Gallup Press.
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