Some years ago, at a party, a neuro-surgeon and I were chatting. He eventually got around to saying with a self-confident smile, “You know, Win, I think I have a book in me.”
I was dumbstruck. Like most of us, I thought of the perfect rejoinder only the next day. “Yeah, Larry, and I think I have a neuro-surgery in me.”
Funny, isn’t it? People know that it takes years to master other professions, even accounting. But for some reason almost everyone thinks they were born with the talent, intricate skills, and supreme determination required to write a book.
According to The New York Times, “81 percent of people feel that they have a book in them… and should write it.”
Heaven help us.
About Meredith and Win Blevins
:) he may have had a book in him, Win, but I am wondering if he was willing to go to “Book School” for it, and invest a decade or two in writing, honing his skill, have the critic of others to it, following suggestions for improvement, ‘cleaning up’ his act, practicing in many different areas of writing, and so on, to become ready for the book in him… I’m thinking, if he did all that, maybe he’d have a book in him after all. Some neuro-surgeons are better than others (and some book authors are better than others) but they all have to go to Medical school and many years of interning (as do people who ‘take Book School’) before they can do so… ;)
BIG THANKS for this, Na’ama.
My observation is that very few people, even those with graduate degrees in writing, are willing to do the hard work actually to write a good book. Still fewer have the drive to write enough good books to create a career.
Lots of people have wanted to tell one of us a story in a few minutes and “allow” us to “just write it down” and make a book of it.
Writing is a profession. Like medicine and the law, it takes years to master (maybe not as many years). Only those who have walked this road know how hard and steep it is.
–Win
I read in some a writer’s book that stated if you are not writing on a regular basis, your’e not a writer. So that book may be in there somewhere but it won’t just spill out on it’s own.
Enlightening!
Charlie