I have never been formally trained in writing, but learned to write as required for my job as a consultant.  It was painful to learn how to write effectively as an adult and with no previous training or experience.  I had some great mentors and learned how to write, edit and publish in business.  It was beneficial in that it taught me writing is hard work, but worth it.  Otherwise, you can never provide influence or make a difference.

My wife asked if I would write a guest blog post for her cooking blog DAZ in the Kitchen.  45 minutes later I could not believe how much fun I had doing it.  I decided to create my own blog SAZ in the Cellar blog and have almost two hundred posts over a two year period.  During that time, I wrote as a cathartic experience a 75,000 word book entitled Still Stupid at Sixty under the  pseudonym, Blake Stevens.  And now I am close to publishing another book, Wine Sense of about 120,000 words.  I found out I loved writing!  Between my previous and current books and my wine and writing blog posts, I have written 500,000 words in the last two years.  That could only be achieved because I am passionate about it.  The problem is when I am not passionate about it, it turns into hard work!

It is not just having the passion and time to write, but the research, validation of sources, editing, proofing, imaging, formatting, layout and everything else required to get a book technically ready for publication.  There is also the effort to market and promote the book and the social media infrastructure to support those efforts.  Video trailers, blog posts, daily tweets, etc. are required.  The physical drains are demanding and the effort required to write and publish day-in, day-out is enormous.

Unfortunately with the advances in technology and the ease of self-publishing, there are thousands of wannabe writers who think they can take an idea and turn in into a book in a week or even a weekend.  And there are bullshit artists (sorry, I mean the authors of such books) who are touting and selling the dream for a small price.  I know writers who claim they can write a book in a week and so can you.  But that’s bullshit.  I hope to crank out 25 – 30 books of varying length before I die, but cranking out that many in a year is a pipe dream.

I have found I need to treat writing as my job and work it with the same expectations of return on investment, setting priorities, planning the work and working the plan as with any other job or career.  But damn, I love writing and dumping what is in my head to paper, getting it structured and making it good, hopefully to the point it is appreciated by others.  Writing defines me and helps me understand who I am.  Writing helps me articulate my thoughts and achieve clarity.  Writing emboldens me and provides confidence for the opinions I wish to present.  And if a reader or two along the way enjoys and benefits from reading what I write, it is well worth continuing to do it until the day I die.

© 2013. Steve Shipley, author of Wine Sense, due out early 2014
Twitter: @inkitpub
Twitter: @shipleyaust
Still Stupid at Sixty (published under my writing pseudonym Blake Stevens)