On writing a book

As this blog goes live I am also publishing the first of what I hope will be many books.

Writing a book is an incredible task. It is not like writing a blog, because blogs are somehow ephemeral. Writing a book is very permanent. Trees are felled. Money exchanges hands. People invest their time to read. They invest their opinions, good and bad. And at somepoint the book takes on a life of its own.

I play music, and love to play live but hate to record, because you second guess yourself and do it again every time you hear the recording afterwards. You wonder why you played certain things and every mistake hits you like a sledgehammer. It is hard for me to just "surrender" when recording music.

One of my musical heroes, Joni Mitchell, who is both a brilliant painter and musician, talked about the issue on her great old album Miles of Aisles talking about the difference between performing arts and painting, which in this case is akin to writing a book. In a break between songs you could hear the audience calling for her hits -"Play Carrie" "Both Sides Now" "Blue". She laughed and said "That's always been a major difference between the performing arts and being a painter. A painter does a painting and he does a painting that's it. He's had the joy of creating it and he hangs it on some wall and somebody buys it and then somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But nobody ever says to him - nobody ever said to Van Gogh "Paint A Starry Night again man"."

At some point, whether you are writing, painting, playing music or leading people to do something they have never done before, you have to let go and just trust whatever it is you trust - your gut, a higher power, experience, wisdom. Or maybe just that you're not as stupid as the voice inside your head might want you to believe.

We all have something to say. We all have something to contribute. To me, great leaders understand that, and know how to get their people to contribute, no matter how modest they themselves may believe the contribution is.

Photo: Ralph Nardell

Comments

[Sean Howard]

Looking forward to getting a copy of your book, Doug!

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And also you make plan for your retirement and other objectives.