My pastor friend Cory Dahl likes to tell us he preaches to himself and we are welcome to listen in — and he encourages us to preach to ourselves. Scott Alexander, author of Rhinoceros Success, has encouraged his readers to write the self-help book that we want or need to read.
I take their advice to heart. So much of what I write here is what I need to hear. When I encourage you, I’m often also giving myself a pep talk.
Seven years ago, a couple of weeks after being laid off from my dream job as editor of the Door County Advocate in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, I sat down on a bench near a wooden bridge at a park called Crossroads at Big Creek, and I wrote myself a little pep talk that became the title passage in my book A Bridge at Crossroads: 101 Encouragements. I was preaching to myself and inviting you to read along. It was the book of encouragement I needed to read.
I am close to completing two more short books that I need to read. One is tentatively called Write Anything Until You Write Something, a book of reflections about the creative process and how the secret to writing something important seems to be just to keep writing anything until something important comes out. You can’t write something important if you’re not writing at all, after all.
The other is called War IS the Crime, and I wish it was already published in light of recent world events. I’ve been writing a lot lately about how people are essentially peaceful creatures but we keep being pushed to join madmen in committing mass murder with them. I’ve been writing these things because I feel like someone needs to say it and so I will.
Would I like you to buy a bunch of these books so I can quit the day job because the books are another way to pay the bills? Of course I would. But mainly I’m making these books because I need to read what I’ve written, and I invite you to read along.
I think that’s how most books get written, actually — someone thinks, “Somebody needs to say this, so it may as well be me.”
