Risky Business

Musings from #oldguywritesbooks (a series)

Most people consider writing or contemplating their first book a huge risk. As I wrote my first one, A Better Man, Husband, Father, I inwardly felt like I was jumping off the cliff of sanity into the pit of gloom. The fear that I held when I first thought about writing it escalated as I began to write it as I faced the enormity of the risk I was undertaking. Facing risks can and sometimes does funny things to people.

Leo Buscaglia wrote a piece about risk that includes the following quote:

“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom. Only the person who risks is truly free.”  This piece is included in his book “Living, Loving & Learning”, published in 1982.

If you can own the fact that we each have a story, and, therefore, a book within us that’s waiting to be written, you may look at what Buscaglio has shared through this lens:

• To try is to risk failure
• To reach out to another is to risk involvement
• To expose feelings is to risk showing your true self
• To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss

Authoring a book can, to a degree, be a risky business for the first-time author. However, the bulk of that risk is in that author’s imagination. It certainly was mine.

Next up, I’ll share why I think that is so.

Stay tuned.