Why You Should Write A Book, Now | #270
June 29th, 2024: Greetings from Austin! We are headed to Colorado for a couple of months for hikes and cooler weather. Expect somewhat sporadic posts this summer but I’ll likely start sharing more details about my upcoming book soon, in addition to a few guest posts I have scheduled.
Home Swapping: We’ll likely be using Kindred a bit this summer. It’s a pretty cool home-swapping alternative to Airbnb. If you want to join, use my signup code.
#1 When To Write A Book.
The internet has changed the game for people who want to share ideas. Almost anyone in the world can share their random collections of words with anyone in the world, at very little cost.
This has led to a predictable surge in writing, especially in the past five years. On substack now, I see many people writing newsletters and sharing ideas with the world. I strongly believe this is a great thing. When people find a way to channel their creativity, as long as they don’t get caught up in the many status games that can entail, it’s usually a positive, if not transformative thing, for people’s lives.
The longer I’ve written online, almost 10 years now, the more I’ve been surprised that most people never do anything beyond social posts, newsletters, and blog posts.
One of the biggest reflections from writing my book was that I should have written one earlier. It’s not that I should have published it any sooner but I wish I had gotten started on a book-length document that I could have tinkered with a little longer. Immersing myself in a book-length project has been the most satisfying anchor for my path over the last seven years, now something I’ve experienced twice.
I’ve been talking about this with
over the previous few months, who I’ve been co-writing with in Austin. He’s become equally as radicalized on the satisfaction of writing books. I asked him to share a bit about why he thinks more people should write books, too.But first, I want to give a shoutout to the book he’s launching next week: Crypto Confidential.
I’m pumped to endorse it because it’s really good.
What made it so good?
For me, it was how he went there. He took me on a personal journey, sharing the most vulnerable moments of his immersion into the crypto world in 2021 and 2022. Reading the passages, I could see how hard it must have been to bring alive the energy and emotion of certain experiences. It’s what I try to do in my books too, and it’s hard. But that’s also why I think books are worth writing. They push you. They break you. They challenge you. And if you already like writing, like Nat and I do, there is no better project than writing a book.
Here’s Nat’s full response to me:
I’ll occasionally talk to a friend with a blog or newsletter who wants to write a book someday, and they’ll say:
“I just don’t feel ready yet.”
It always makes me a little sad to hear that, because the truth is you’re never “ready” to write a book.
In fact, there is no magical day when you’re “ready” for anything. You’re never “ready” to get married, to quit your job, to have kids, to get your health in order.
You either put it off until the last minute and stumble into it out of a sudden fear of your mortality, or you wake up one day and say “screw it let’s do it.”
Illusions of needing to “Be Ready” are just fear and procrastination in disguise. Writing a book is a long, hard journey, with an uncertain payoff, and it’s totally reasonable to be scared to start work on it.
But once you realize the desire to “be ready” is just fear, you’re one short step from the truth: You get ready to write a book by writing a book.
When I started working on Crypto Confidential I had no idea how to write narrative nonfiction, a memoir, a thriller, all the things I wanted it to be. I could write marketing copy and how-to articles, sure, but that wasn’t what I needed to do.
It would have been easy to say “I’ll go study writing in this style for a year or two until I feel ready, then I’ll write the book.” But I knew that would be a waste. The deadline from working with a publisher was the forcing function I needed to develop my skillset as quickly as possible and get ready along the way.
Despite having no idea what I was doing, I dived into the first draft, and guess what? It was shit! But it showed me where I was weak and where I needed to improve, which guided all of my research and study to figure out how to get better.
Five drafts later, it’s a great book. One I’m extremely proud of. I definitely wasn’t ready to write a book in this style when I started. But by committing to it and getting to work, I was able to figure it out as I went.
So if you have any inkling of a desire to write a book, don’t put it off until some imaginary day when you “feel ready.” The only way you get ready is by starting.
What do you think? Are you game?
On top of being a great personal narrative, the whole story in the book is captivating. For me, I remember sitting in front of my laptop at 1am in 2021 trying to mint an NFT of a penguin or something. As I sat there, I thought to myself, what the hell am I doing? I was writing my book at the time and decided that I was done with that world. Nat went a bit deeper than I did (and made a bit more money) but ultimately, has come to some similar conclusions about work and life.
#2 Traveling Villages
I interviewed Nikolaj Astrup in a group I’ve been running, exploring alternative paths for parents. We chatted about his “traveling village” which involved 20 families traveling nomadically across Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan from January to May.
The experienced convinced him to double down on his efforts. He’s now planning “Village 2” and plotting to build a more permanent community somewhere in Europe in the coming years.
Hey! Thanks for reading…
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THANK YOU for the wonderful feature Paul!
I wrote a book, and am writing book #2. By "writing" I do mean that I'm in rebuilding phase after the existential crisis of writing that crummy first draft or two. You're right that writing a book will break you, teach you, introduce you to you...all the things.