Telling Stories

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Writing and releasing a book is always a crazy endeavor.

“Are You An Idiot?” was written with a singular goal - make people laugh.

I’m 17 published books in and I have to confess to something:

I never truly know if it will hit the mark.

That’s the thing about doing something creative. There’s a confidence in your ability to tell a story, but every single time there’s been a nagging sense of doom.

“Will they like it?”

This time, the question was:

“Will they laugh?”

And I don’t need to have my ego stroked. Once the book is released I can only hope.

When I get a message from someone who enjoyed the story, it makes me smile.

There’s relief and there’s the thought:

“They read it and didn’t want it to end.”

I can’t imagine not reading. When I find a book that I love reading there are days where I think:

“I can’t wait to go to bed so I can get back to that book!”

The fact that I, as a writer, can give a reader that feeling is honestly my favorite part about being an author.

I was really young when it dawned on me that writing something that someone loves would be a great life’s goal.

It is still my driving motivation.

I spent a couple of hours getting a story down for what will be my next book:

“Telling Stories” is the working title, and it is a collection of 20 stories.

I have 18 of them completely done, and I have to finish the work on two more.

As I typed out one of them on Saturday morning, I wondered how many hours I’ve spent on this one.

It’s a job that doesn’t pay all that well once all the hours are tabulated, but man, just one note, from one reader:

“Man, I finished your book yesterday. I laughed a lot, and it made me think about my own life, and growing up. Just thank you.”

Perfect.

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