In one week's time, I'll be leading a session for Linger Conference's Creative Training day on writing and authoring a book. If you'll be in the Dallas area, you can acquire your ticket here.
Perhaps I'll walk them through my manic ebb and flow of discipline and myriad of ideas webbing in disconcerting fashion leading to dead ends and rabbit trails. And, of course, there's the deal with insecurity that echoed in each keystroke while writing my book, which leads me to think now why in the world am I leading this session again? Oh right, I wrote a book. After all, I am just beginning to break the habit of response when people who know something of my blog or book ask me just what is it that I do. My typical response was that I was in sales or business development, which was true of my day-to-day, but not totally accurate of my dream.
While I am by no means an expert, I don't need to be. You see, a dream must be worth more than the humdrum of day-to-day and story more than silencing fear, or insecurity or expertise or experience or excuses . . . or anything else. Every person who's ever white knuckled the pursuit of writing a book or accomplishing a dream bigger than present, for that matter, started from a common place called the beginning. And it is from there the book is written, the canvas painted, the song crafted and the creation is determined - at the beginning where every disqualifying reason succumbs to completion decided.
What I know about writing is that the craft matters less than the continual pursuit of story. Tell the story - all of the story, more than should be told - and the writing will happen. I am less convinced of the magic of authoring a book and more confident in the discipline of story and its telling. And so, it is on this knowing that I'll give a talk and lead a creative breakout session on writing, story and authoring a book.
As a bit of a surprise, my publisher (Influence Resources) has worked tirelessly to print special pre-release copies of my book, Earth and Sky, just for Linger Conference. This is a very limited printing of my book months before its official release date. In fact, the only other copies going out will be to those who supported my Kickstarter campaign last year, which will be a special edition pressing including original cover design.
I'm very excited to share a bit of my story and experience both in the form of a talk and my book. I hope you can make it out!