“A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes

“It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes

A survey I saw showed that 80% of all Americans feel they have a book in them. I absolutely believe that this is true — both the statistic and the impulse behind it. Surely, many of us yearn to share what we’ve learned and what we wish we had learned, what we’ve experienced, and what we are passionate about.

When I tell someone I’ve just met that I’m a writer, I often hear that they have an idea for a book that they’ve been thinking about. For some of the people I speak with, getting a book published sounds like an impossible dream — and yet, they have such wonderful ideas and wisdom to share. I try my best to explain the process in a way that makes it sound demanding but doable.

As I was traveling down to Virginia recently to visit my sister Stephanie, I had the good fortune to sit next to a wonderfully kind and engaging gentleman. When I said I was a writer, he told me about a book idea he had that would draw on a challenging life experience he’d worked through successfully. His deep awareness of the process that he underwent in overcoming it and his heart-felt compassion for others facing the same difficult road really touched me. He had so much hard-won wisdom!

After talking with him for a while, I felt convinced that he had a lot of valuable ideas and insights to share. I really hope I encouraged him to gather some of his thoughts and consider putting them in book form as a guide for others. There are so many options now: e-books, self-publishing, and traditional avenues as well. I’m going to send my new friend some information on publishing and the link to this blog. Hopefully, he’ll find some ideas here that will inspire him to get his wonderful thoughts down on paper and share them. Write on!