The Easiest Way to Write a Book

Have you ever had to stand in front of a judge at court?

Generally you are either being accused of something or accusing someone of something, and you are there to make your argument clear.

For thirty years I was lost in story, desperate to get something completed, but having no idea of how to find the end to the seemingly forever-long snake of story I was following/creating. It’s like I was putting myself on stage to give a Ted Talk, only because I had no idea what my singular gift to my audience was, what nugget of truth I had found on my journeys, I just kept talking. I had mic fever and if I’d really been on the Ted stage, the audience members would have passed out, one after another, either from boredom or from the effort of trying to understand why I was talking to them.

My story needed a container. Some people call this structure or plot or outline, but my brain doesn’t work that way. I’m visual and creative, and so I need to feel both held and free in order to write. That’s not something you generally learn at school. That kind of work is called called ungradeable.

I love to think of a book or a piece of writing as a gift in outstretched hands. Part of figuring out the container is being aware of the gift. What does the reader get from reading your book? What is the jewel that you are pulling from inside you and offering to the world?

So many people underestimate the glory of their jewels. So many people don’t know they are even full of jewels. But we are! Every one of us! It’s called being human.

Sometimes the song and dance of story can be distracting, like don’t look at the real thing, look over here because I’m afraid you won’t like me if you see the truth, and so it’s important to check in to see if you are writing the thing. The thing that is connected to your heart and spine and brain and to spirit.

The last one, the spirit part, is what I think makes story magnificent. You are writing something that other people can relate to because you are plugged in to other people through the spirit that connects us all. I mentioned truth in my previous post, and another word for sprit, I think, is truth.

The truth of you is so amazing because truth is startling, relatable, real, beautiful in its eternal immediacy. The easiest way to write a book is to tell that truth. Think of Flannery O’Connor’s description of one of her characters in the story A Good Man is Hard to Find: “The children’s mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit’s ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar.”

Broad as innocent as a cabbage. Truth. We see that women. We know her.

What if when you die, you have to stand in front of a judge, and the judge asks what your point was, what your one argument was, what most of your attention went to in your life. What if the judge told you to start your response, I want to tell you…

How would you finish the sentence?

Then just keep talking.