Go to any cocktail party and you’ll overhear someone yammering on about their desire to write a book.

From all appearances, writing a book is on more bucket lists than running a marathon, or wearing size 2 jeans, or visiting Paris in the spring.

In other words, it’s a really common dream.

Maybe you’ve considered writing one yourself.

No doubt, people have told you, “Wow, you’ve led such an interesting life.” Or “You know, you tell the most amazing stories, you should think about writing a book.”

With that kind of feedback, it’s awfully hard not to get excited.

You tell yourself you’re going to do it. Not now, but someday.

But then you never get around to it.

So what stops people like you from writing a book? What stops you from starting one (at the very least), or finishing it if you do?

Well, a number of things

The Task Looks Too Damn Big

You have no idea how to take the project on. And, even if you took the project on, even if you finished it, really, what are you supposed to do with the thing once you finish it? Use it as a doorstop?

Writing Isn’t As Easy As It Looks

Just because you can tell a story, doesn’t mean you can get it to lay right on paper.   It’s one thing to tell a great story at a dinner party, another thing entirely to capture it on the page. You had such high hopes, yet your conglomeration of random words truly look like shit.

You have no idea how to write a proper story. You’ve never been taught.

You end up writing an academic paper without ever intending to do so. Upon reviewing your work, your own eyes roll straight into the back of your head. Zzzzzzzzzzz. That’s because you learned to write academic essays in school. You were never taught the basic elements of good story.

You’re afraid to tell the truth, to reveal yourself on the page.

You’re reluctant to put things down in black and white.  Your mother and father will disown you.  Your children will move away leaving no forwarding address. No one will EVER LOVE YOU AGAIN. Paralysis sets in.

You have no idea how you’ll ever get your book into print.

Oh the fears. You’ll probably need an agent, and you have no idea how to go about finding one. Being a complete unknown, they wouldn’t give you the time of day anyway. And what big publishing house is ever going to take on a zero like you? Self publish, and you’ll have to learn all that technical stuff. Say buh-bye to sleep because you’ll be staying up all night studying HTML code, or auto-cad design, or some such shit. And that starts looking like way too much work.

And these reasons are exactly why I wrote this book.