“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. ” ~Toni Morrison
Each day I am closer to holding my first published book in my hands. This has been a long time in coming. For several years as I was learning the craft and my message, I only wrote one page per day. It has been over a year in compiling and editing the work. Giving life to this book has been a labor of love, which has become a guide for my thinking and an organizing force for my work. Unlike other projects which stretched past my ability to see the end and which wore my patience thin, this book has long had a life of its own and has taught me respect for the idea that all worthwhile things come in their own time.
The process of writing a book that you always wanted to read reminds me of this quote by Edward Morgan: “A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.” Books that speak directly to your deepest questions and speak to you like a friend is what I what I look for when I read and what drives me when I write. I cherish the process that turns a free floating fragile idea in my mind into a fully formed articulate understanding.
Books that change the way you see the world, even for just moments at a time and that stay with you long after you read the last page take up residence in our souls and become a reference point for development in life. Helen Hains described the process this way: “From every book invisible threads reach out to other books; and as the mind comes to use and control those threads the whole panorama of the world’s life, past and present, becomes constantly more varied and interesting, while at the same time the mind’s own powers of reflection and judgment are exercised and strengthened.”
It is hard to imagine that readers will not be changed by Love that Works in the same way that writing it has done for me. Love that Works is coming, and I think it is one of those rare books that will change lives.
