For better or worse, Sorin

EPILOGUE

MIND - Writing as therapy

I've been meaning to finish this book in 3 months and get on with my next one. This was meant to be strictly an exercise, to retrain my writing muscles. It seems the book had other plans for me. It occupied my mind for the past year and I'm proud of the end result.

Letting go, finishing a project, doesn't come easy to me. There's still things left unsaid or unwritten. You're still in writing mode. I don't get closure the second I end the project. I think about promoting it, improving it, making small tweaks here and there.

I've seriously thought about the greats - the Stephen Kings, the Ernest Hemingways, the J.R.R. Tolkiens of the world: how do they do it? How do they isolate themselves so much from the outside world? How do they create such compelling works of literature, without going totally insane?

Writing is like taming a beast that you thought you knew. Especially when you're writing from the heart, about the most deepest of things. You can create a plan ahead of time. Pretend the book will actually turn out the way you imagined it. The way you thought about it. But you don't control it. It ends up controlling you. For better or worse, you become its slave.

Having a plan is great - haven't really started this book with a precise one. I knew that I wanted to do 3 sections and then had to scramble to figure out what the inner elements should be. That wasn't fun. I fought with this part for weeks. I was tweaking one section, while I had nothing written in others. I didn't like that situation. So I reverted to my default modus operandi: have a complete first draft first, then go into details and delete, rewrite or modify passages (if necessary).

As much as I enjoyed the experience - and it was quite eye-opening overall - I do realize that I cannot hold it in much longer. I have to release it out into the world and see what other people think of it. I've labeled it as an exercise and a personal project not because I don't want others to read it. Nor do I want to make excuses if readers don't enjoy it. But I did think it was important to mention it, not to create false expectations.

I've now become more aware of my gifts. I've become more courageous in my abilities. I trust my writing much more than I did before. And I understand the power and benefits it provides. I'll do my best not to let people down and use my writing to provide lasting positive change.

During this time I also went back to reading. It's been something that was always with me, but I've neglected in the past 3-5 years. I know people who read 24+ books a year. I envy them - How do they get the time? How do they focus their attention for so long? My brother told me how he's read a 1.200+ page book over the course of about 2 years. That left me speechless. That seems more like a marathon and I've always thought of myself as a sprint runner/reader.

That's exactly why I found writing to be therapy. I doesn't just let me find and understand things about my past, but it also sets the stage for future challenges. Without this book, I wouldn't have had the courage to look up publishers for my next book.

If you're looking for a sneak peek, here it is. Initially, I wanted to talk about the future. A sort of history book for innovations happening right now and things we should expect in a few years. A reference for people older than me or parents in general, who seem disconnected from the bigger picture forming outside their own home. It was supposed to be called "Futurism for the present: How to use tomorrow's innovations to improve today" and have an associated website and social media accounts. That book might still happen, but it's not the one I'm most interested in writing at the moment.

The actual book (I'm calling it "actual" because I do want to see it published, one way or another) is about influence. About regular individuals understanding their strength and their voice to enact positive change in the world. A combination of Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" and Rober Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of persuasion". I've read both of these and they seem fine, if not a little bit clinical or outdated.