I’ve been editing my 4th book over the last 4 months.
I started writing this manuscript on my phone about 2 years ago. I put it away for more than a year and finally got back to it this year.
When you’re writing amongst the other things in life, business, work, just life itself, you have to create a dedicated time to get to it.
I’ve been doing this every Saturday morning. Recently, I found myself postponing the publishing date. From August to September, telling myself, I just have to get the story right. There’s always something new to add. Another worth researching.
Until a week ago, I sat down to think through all I had to do to publish and market the book.
It jarred me out of perfection mode.
What’s the point of writing this whole thing that you want people to read if no one knows to read it?
Because I’d rather people read an imperfect book than “not read” a perfect one.
Stuck Editing!
We spend so much time on the idea that we forget that we have to communicate the idea.
This might be familiar. A lot of us have spent time working on something.
We tweak it, refine it, perfect it.
We want to make sure it’s in its most 100% state before exposing it to the world.
Lord forbid we put something in the world that gets criticized by that one person. Just one negative comment can ruin five positive ones. So we stay in editing mode for most of our lives.
Editing books.
Editing emails.
Editing resumes.
Editing business plans.
In a constant state of editing, you never ship. You never put anything out. This reminds me of the saying, “If the tree falls in the forest, did it make a sound?”
Applying this to let’s say a book: “If your book never gets read, was it ever a story?”
“If your song never gets danced to, did you ever make music?”
“If your business never helped someone, was it ever a solution?”
The reality is that you have to create value and then communicate it.
A bad product will be saved by great marketing.
But a great product will be damaged by bad marketing.
All your hard work will remain unseen if you don’t get good at communicating. I know, we are in an era of saturated marketing. Everyone and their brands, concentrated on your feed. Self-promotion, blah blah.
If you don’t like what’s on your feed, how about you change it with what you want to see.
And some of that starts with you communicating the value that you create.
Communicating your idea is as important as the idea itself.
From Creating to Communicating
I was at VeeCon (a marketing and entrepreneurship conference) and I heard something interesting from one of the speakers.
“Don’t be the first mover. Be mover number 1, 2, and 3”
You hear about the first mover’s advantage. This has trapped a lot of great ideas in the mind of modern philosophers that don’t like to take action. With something new, there is:
- The inventor.
- The copycat.
- The sweeper.
The inventor is the person that creates something new. The copy cat is the one that copies what’s created and builds demand. The sweeper is the one that comes after both of them to capitalize on the invention and the demand.
To succeed, you have to be all three.
For instance, even though a lot of marketing boils down to copywriting. A lot of great authors don’t sell their books. They invent new worlds with their words but don’t know how to benefit from it. Like a lot of us, they have great ideas but don’t know how to communicate them.
When you learn how to communicate your value and ideas, you get closer to your goals, you feel engaged with what you’re doing, and you live a more meaningful life doing work that helps you grow.
Here are a few things I think about the process of creating and communicating value through the lens of writing and publishing books.
1.Create the value (have a healthy idea affinity)
You have to invent first.
You don’t have to be Nikola Tesla to invent something new. Creativity is developing something novel that can be useful to yourself and others. The way you do that can be the unique way you combine elements that are already available.
One thing that has helped me is something I call idea affinity.
It’s easy to be attracted to one new idea or the other. But when you start with an idea, see it all the way through.
For instance, when I wrote my first novel. It all started as a short story for my beat Mixtape. When people asked, “why are you writing this?”
I’d respond: “because I have to finish the mixtape.”
When the book got released and became a hot new release on Amazon, 5 years after I wrote the manuscript.
I still had to finish the mixtape. The Mixtape was the initial spark and that was the anchor that kept me on track. Not all ideas are worth keeping. But the ones you feel strongly about, stick to them.
See it through.
2. Understand the messy middle
You will be in the wilderness at some point.
While you’re creating value, your journey will not be so clear. You will hear the naysayers from a distance. Even worse, you will be at the mercies of your worst enemy – your ego and inner critic.
Stay calm.
It’s just part of the process.
The reality is that when you create, you are partaking in a transformation process. You are not only transforming your outer reality (in the form of a product or solution), but you’re also changing your inner reality. This can be quite challenging especially since most of us have been programmed to value immediate gratification.
When I’m writing, there’s always a long stretch where none of it makes sense.
There are two ways I deal with this:
– I take a break.
– I go do something different.
– I sleep (most people need to sleep…go and sleep, my friend).
You can always come back to it with a fresh perspective.
But make sure you come back to it.
The messy middle is part of the process. Know it and then pace yourself through it.
3. Deadline accountability
Deadlines are your creative best friends.
As I went through the list of things I had to do before publishing my book. There was a little voice saying: “Next year will be fine. Come on man, just delay.”
I had to snap out of it: “Procrastination, be gone.”
This little exercise of listing all I had to do, pulled me out of the creation mode and pushed me into the communication mode. Because I know if nobody hears about this book, all my work – starting and pushing through the messy middle – will be wasted.
Whatever you’re creating at some point you might want to share it.
Reverse engineer the end state. Put a date on it.
Use that deadline to keep you accountable.
Final thoughts
If you don’t communicate the value, no one will know how valuable it is.
Get out of the “eternal editor” business, and get into the logistics business: start shipping.
Communicating an idea is as (or maybe even more) important than the idea itself. Don’t only be the value creator, understand the messy middle, and be the value communicator too.
If you can create and communicate value at the same time, that will be ideal.
Otherwise, find your own style.
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. My next book will be published on Oct 8, 2024. Put it on your calendar 😉
