I’m speaking with my graphic designer this morning and he tells me he’s been on admission in the hospital for about a week now. In addition to the usual malaria and typhoid, he tells me, he has “BP”. He’s about a course in miracles. A few days ago a friend told me she lost her senior sister last December to “BP”. She was 35. She’d lost her bank job five years earlier and suffered mild stroke three years later due to high “BP”. She passed away five years from the day she lost her job. Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.”
The people we most admire are those with strings of books behind their names, whether fiction or non-fiction. Names such as William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Maya Angelou, Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, Susan Cain, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Adichie, J. K. Rowling, and Stephen King, readily come to mind. Indeed, there is no feeling more exhilarating than stumbling onto the world’s most iconic airports, libraries, shops and websites and finding your book displayed alongside those of the planet’s most revered authors and icons.
There are tons of reasons you should write a book. John Kremer has listed 30 solid reasons, amongst them: Writing a book, just like any other serious project, looks intimidating at first glance when you look at all the moving parts at the same time: writing, designing, proofreading, editing, publishing, pricing, distributing, marketing and selling. But when you break the project down to bite-sized pieces, you discover that it’s an endeavour you can tackle with ease if you have a little guidance. As complex as writing a book and getting it in the hands of readers might look, there are actually 8 simple steps you can follow:
The end of one book should be the beginning of your next book, as Stephen King, the author of over 60 books, has emphasized. The world’s most revered authors have dozens of books to their names, most of them best-sellers. For you to join their ranks, you have to write more than one book, seven being the magic number. The easiest way to write a book is to just begin. That’s the secret. Begin, and your brain and subconscious mind will take over from there leading you to the final destination. This piece would not be complete if I don’t mention that Amazon has made it very simple to get your book out to the world. Amazon will even give you a book cover design if you don’t have one.
