Writing a Book is an Integrity Move

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I’ll just say it again:

Writing a book is an integrity move.

In both memoir and nonfiction, and to a large extent fiction, it’s an exercise in putting what you believe on the page. It’s a process of expressing yourself as authentically as you can.

This authentic expression of self takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of thinking, a lot of backing-and-forthing, a lot of writing words down and then looking at them and asking yourself, Is that what I really believe?

It takes wrestling with what you believe, and deciding to raise your voice even if what you’re saying is different from what other people believe.

It takes reexamining your language and phrases when I ask you to write something more clearly. In that reexamination, you often find you weren’t saying the right thing after all. Or not right enough. Or the right thing, but maybe not in the right place.

Or right for someone else…but not really right for you.

You really come up against your truth when you’re continually being asked to clarify, to say more, to provide an example—sometimes even to defend your assertions in the face of evidence or widespread societal belief to the contrary.

And all the way along the journey, as you write, explain, defend, clarify and expand, you’re honing your point—the truth of what your book is about. This is the red-hot thread that runs through the whole thing, like a narrative clothesline to which you pin all the ideas that relate. 

This point is the truth of your book: its essence.

We talk about essence in the Hendricks body of work, too. Essence is that thing that is YOU. Some call it spirit, some call it soul.

I often call it divinity. It’s the part of you that you came in with—your little bundle of universal stardust, your little beakerful of god. (actually, you’re completely god, but we’ll leave that one for another day)

Your essence is the “truth of you”. The part that still remains intact, despite socialization and trauma and memory and your gradual onboarding of other people’s opinions and ways of doing things.

It’s in there somewhere, your essential you.

Finding the truth of your argument as you write your book—your book’s essence—also helps you re-find your own. It reconnects you with your innermost light. It helps you get back in touch with what you came here to do. Why else would you be writing a book about it? It’s the thing you most want to share with the world.

I’m laughing right now looking at that last paragraph, because one of my writers uses the word re-find in his work, and every time he does it I’ve stamped my foot at him, saying “Who’s gonna understand what you mean when you say re-find? It isn’t even a word!” 

Well, hoss, I owe you an apology, because it’s a very necessary word today.

And actually, while we’re on it, let’s talk about that same client, because his book always comes to mind first when I say that writing a book is an integrity move.

He’s just finishing his first draft of a book about mentorship—specifically, about the qualities inherent in a true mentor. Things like a default toward listening rather than speaking, asking questions to help the mentee dig deeper for their own meaning, and a commitment to focusing on the other person’s experience rather than just giving advice and telling people how to handle their problems. A true mentor gives you all their attention, and never makes you feel rushed. They don’t give you the answers (they don’t even have them). Instead, they help you feel around for your own.

One of his favourite sayings is, “The way you choose to conduct yourself creates an atmosphere inside others.”

He says that above all, a mentor must master presence. Being right here, turning toward what is arising. Being open. Meeting things as they are.

These are the things he says make a mentor.

So guess what I’m always looking for in his own conduct? He can’t authentically write about these characteristics if he’s not living them. Not on the journey we’re taking together.

I mean, people can, for sure. The world is full of bullshit books written by people who don’t live by the words they write. But that doesn’t happen when you work with a book coach, or at least not this one. You can’t be full of shit when you’ve got a thought partner on the other end of the line who you know is going to read your words and ask all the questions that a reader would ask.

Writing a book is THE master alignment move. The move that brings you into integrity with what you say you’re about, what you say you know, what you say works.

People don’t really have a clue about what a serious move writing a book actually is. It’s a commitment to recording the inside of your brain—historically quite a private thing—on paper and then putting it out into the world for other people to access.

You’re taking your beliefs public, making them widely accessible, putting them on the record. Books last a lifetime. You can’t unprint a book, or delete it, or take it down. Your book, and all your thinking, is out there for reals, forever.

What makes a person more naked than that?  

Writing a book is an integrity move. It is THE master alignment move. Because whatever you’re saying, you’ll soon discover that in order for it to reach your audience in a way that’s powerful enough to create change, you need to stand behind it, fully. It’s a power that comes through in your writing. It’s conviction.

And in order to stand behind what you’re saying, you need to be living it yourself.

In my experience working with writers of nonfiction and memoir, the process of coming into greater clarity and integrity with your essence is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

It’s a journey we take together: you can bet if you’re writing about behaviour patterns and habits and values and vulnerability and fear, I’m examining myself right alongside you.

When I say that writing a book will change you, I mean it.

It changes you, it changes us, it changes everything.