Stalled

Many of you know I resigned volunteering for SCORE. There are some reasons for this, but the main one is to gain 30 hours per week to write a book. That effort, however, takes time, discipline and a clear understanding of what you want to write about.

I have made a good start. Have a title – Becoming You – and wrote a good introduction. I followed that with a table of contents that actually serves as an outline for the book. I named ten chapters and have written six. I am working on Chapter 7. I know more chapters will happen as the writing progresses.

Holidays have distracted me from writing lately, but then, writing a few pages a day should not be a problem. Originally, I hoped to write 5 pages daily for a few months to produce the first working draft of the manuscript. With editing and polishing, I should be ready for publishing work inside of five months. That simply is not happening.

The title still works for me. The outline is working just fine. The introduction mainly works to continue my focus and produce drafts of chapters to work on towards maturity of the finished product. However, as I write more, I feel the need growing for a better outline and a more refined approach to write a better book.

That is where I am at the moment. Distracted by the project, not other things. I think the best approach is to continue work on the current outline. This will produce material I can rearrange, tighten the focus, and help expand topics for more copy. Phase one should give me 70 or 80 pages as a base. Expanding to 500 will take work but should be easily managed.

Having written and published for many years, I know this approach should work. It is logical. It is replicable. But it comes only with discipline and continued effort. Maintaining a focused message is key to finishing the project. And that may be the issue to solve.

My introduction begins with the statement, “I have a story to tell.” And I do. Much of what I have accomplished in my career was not planned. I wasn’t even the organizer of it all. It just happened. People suggested what I should do, and bosses told me what to do. It was up to me to figure out how. And I did.

Telling my life story in this instance is not an autobiography. Rather, it is a tool to demonstrate how others can notice opportunities to develop their own talents and skillsets to produce a career that has punch, purpose. That’s how it worked for me. An unfolding of purpose which ended up helping other people. And that produced more people asking for more help from me which produced yet more opportunities to develop skills and talents.

My story is not the model; it is the tool to fill a model that may work to help others become the best they can be. Time will tell if I become enough of me to help others become them. The best them.

December 6, 2024

 

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