Why You’ll Never Be “Ready” to Write a Book

There’s this picture of me I found.

I was about 14 years old, I guess, wearing my uniform of denim jacket, tassled skirt, purple Doc Martens, baggy top, and “am I doing this right” smile.

I was also sporting the remnants of an unfortunate curly perm.

GOD, WHAT WAS I THINKING!

Then, as now, I was wishing for hair I did not have and would never be able to achieve. Some things never change.

Other stuff does, though, like my opinions on writing, and business, and marketing, and entrepreneurship and the world in general.

Which is why it’d be easy to see my first book Business For Superheroes as my unfortunate curly perm.

I flip through it every now and then and cringe a bit when I hit something I now vehemently disagree with myself over.

Every now and then I think I should just pull it and consign it to the archive and pretend it never happened.

BUT

it’s a snapshot; a moment in time.

Of course I wouldn’t write that same book today. I am a radically different person today, with new skills, different experiences, evolved opinions.

When I wrote it, it was true of me at the time. And it still has value, I know, because people write to me and tell me it helped them.

Books feel very permanent (unlike my curly perm) so writing them feels scary.

“What if I don’t agree with myself in five years? Or next year?”

My answer:

GOOD!

How cool is that? We have a written record of how we’ve grown and changed and evolved and learned.

If we wait until we’re “ready” to write that book, it’ll never happen.

The only time we’re not changing is when we’re dead. And even when we’re dead we’re changing back into compost.

Write the book.

Record Now You, so Deathbed You doesn’t regret it.