(This post originally appeared over Imperfect Genius)
I remember the moment I decided to become a published writer.
I was inspired to publish during a unique moment of inflection in my life: My wife and kids had gone out for the evening, leaving me alone to consider the imminent collapse of my job, along with the housing market. Eating dinner alone in a disconcerting quiet kitchen, I read Chris Guillebeau’s manifesto “279 Days to Overnight Success“. I gobbled his ideas down almost as quickly as the hastily-microwaved meal.
It was 2008. I worked for a medium-sized midwestern bank in Cleveland, Ohio. This, for those who don’t remember, was the epicenter of the housing market crisis that triggered the Great Recession. Work had just announced layoffs, of which I was a part. But there was a silver lining: I’d been given a generous severance along with a 3 month lead time on my last day – meaning I didn’t have to panic, just prepare. And part of my preparation was taking the time to ask myself “What do I want to do NOW?”
After reading Chris’s manifesto, I know that at least part of my answer was that I wanted to publish.
To be clear, I’d been writing for almost my whole life – keeping notes, journals, ideas, and such since at least high school – everything from Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, to personal diary entries, to divrei Torah (essentially, small sermons), to rambling essays on the latest technical issue I’d overcome.
The act of putting my thoughts to paper (digital or otherwise) helped my ADHD brain organize itself, to separate the wheat of usable ideas from the chaff of random distractions. And in those rare times when the house was calm and the coffee hot, things would click. What I achieved in those moments wasn’t brilliance or eloquence, but rather synchronicity – my writing would match the ideas in my head. And for me, the thrill of that experience was enough to energize me past the rough patches every writer inevitably encounters.
But in that moment, in 2008, Chris Guillbeau’s words spurred me to attempt something I hadn’t really considered: To share my ideas on a larger scale, in a larger way, than before. To publish them, in a real book, that other people might read.
In a lot of ways, I was lucky: The recent advent of self-published eBooks provided an avenue unavailable to writers just a few years prior; nor was it so popular that the platform – mostly Amazon Kindle – had gotten to the point where both creator and customer were “monetized” for value. The door to cheap self-publishing was open at just the moment I needed to walk through it.
For me, writing the ebook was the easy part. The process of formatting was less easy, but still not impossible. Nevertheless, a career in tech served me well and I was able to work past the hiccoughs of both the platform and my lack of expertise. I can’t say that my first few attempts were unequivocal works of art, but they accomplished what I wanted: to get my thoughts out into the world and into the hands of readers.
And that brings me to a point I made recently during the Imperfect Genius podcast episode on eBook Publishing (around the 8-minute mark):
For some people the writing – whether or not anybody ever reads it – is the part that brings a lot of joy and fulfillment. And for other people, it’s knowing that people are consuming the ideas or or the words or whatever. That’s the part that brings the most about joy. You know you’ve written the thing, and getting it out into the world is the part that’s really exciting and energizing.
I’ll admit that, for the most part, the act of writing is, in and of itself, what brings me the most joy. I don’t really worry about who will read it, or when. I just enjoy seeing the ideas floating around my head become concretized on the screen.
But in that moment, back in 2009 when my first eBook appeared in the Kindle store, it was definitely the second part, the idea that my ideas were getting out into the world, that made my heart leap.
The road from 2009 to 2024 has been a long and fulfilling one for me, filled with a variety of creative efforts that span blogs, public speaking, videos, and around 17 publications that qualify (by my estimation, at least) as “eBooks”. A lot has changed since those first tentative attempts. But the part that hasn’t changed, both for myself and for writers across the world and across time, is our desire to share our ideas with the world.
If you find yourself asking how you could do the same, I encourage you to listen to the most recent episode of Imperfect Genius. And if you have thoughts to share, I’d love to hear them in the comments below.