I’ve mentioned previously that a writer needs to know a subject in order to be able to share it believably, but developing our own story can be one of the hardest things to do because we know it so well. This knowledge can bring a blindness.
The objectivity that brings us credibility is hard to balance with the passion that engages a reader.
Writing my own personal story in book form, ’50 Years a Truthseeker’ was no exception. To encapsulate half a century of learning into a mere “few hundred pages” was a real mission – a project actually still under way after five years. I would start, then stop; write and rewrite; think hard & scribble down notes in the middle of the night.
Just as there are different techniques we use to investigate a subject matter, so too are there different techniques to record our findings. I often use a series of blog posts to write about larger topics. With a post of 1,000 – 3,000 words I can deal with a topic in sufficient detail that I can then string a dozen of these into a coherent series. That then can become the core text of a book. It also helps me to get my thinking sorted and sharing it in one audience can often prepare for another similar but different one.
Let me share with you how I achieved this with the first part of this biography. Asking a key question of a friend one day (“From where do you get your values?”), I developed the following blog posts. A series of a dozen posts then developed as I wished to enhance and develop a progression of thought. Writing to this one person (even if she never read them all) helped me to get my thoughts together. All the subjects I had blogged or written about previously but stringing them together helped me produce the first section of the book.
1. From Whence Your Values?
2. Which Kind of Money?
3. The Big Question
4. From Whence the Power?
5. Walk It, Speaking Personally
6. Faith Based on Reality
7. The Democracy Deception
8. Usury, Tool of Enslavement
9. Evolution, Intellectually Bankrupt
10. Escape the Church
These blog posts described my chosen subjects in an order of priority in importance & linked them all together coherently. In the second section I will provide a balance and a counterpoint by sharing my learning experiences in chronological order. The intellectual then the experiential.
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