What Shall I Add to the Wave of Words?

A post about book coaching at the end of a hard week

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

All week long, people have been sending me articles and posts, videos and memes, screenshots, and Google docs of their thoughts about the results of the election. It’s been a giant wave of words encompassing every possible human emotion — and I’ve been consuming as much as I can so that I can be in conversation with my family, friends, and close colleagues.

There is only so much you can take, only so much you can process.

And so the week has become one long exercise in fast-twitch reader discernment. Who am I going to listen to? Which voices am I going to trust? Which writers are saying something new and useful — connecting dots, sharing something deeper than a headline, helping me to think, to feel, to make sense of it all?

Which writers are clear-headed? Funny? Clever? Authentic? Brave? Well-researched? Logical? Profound?

Which writers am I going to let in?

I kept hearing people urging folks to reach out, to connect, to lead, to refuse to be silent, and I loved those directives. I’m the leader of a community of book coaches and I thought, Yes! Speak! Lead the people who are hurting!

But I didn’t write anything.

I didn’t have anything to say — which is a very different thing than having something to say and being nervous or afraid to say it. I was not nervous or afraid. I felt a kind of emptiness.

In my teaching about writing, everything starts with why.

A writer has to know why they are writing — what they want out of it, what they hope their reader will get out of it.

They have to know their point and their purpose.

Without these core elements, odds are good the writing will fall flat. It will be half-baked, derivative, thin, self-centered, and lacking in the crackling energy that makes someone else care.

And so my takeaway from this week has nothing to do with politics. It comes back to the act of writing itself and to the sacred work of coaching writers.

The point I have to make is about the responsibility our writers take on when they decide they are writing for other people and the responsibility we have when we agree to help.

Make sure they know their why, and make sure to help them define their point and purpose.

The world does not need more words; we need more writers with something to say.

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Are you interested in becoming a book coach? I have a free training available at bookcoaches.com/coaches. December 10, 2024 is the last day to lock in current pricing.

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