When Someone Says “You Should Write a Book”

Five words hold more power than most people realize: “You should write a book.”

Someone has said this to you. A neighbor, after hearing your story at the kitchen table. A coworker who watched you explain something complex and make it simple. A son or daughter who grew up listening and finally understood.

Most people smile when they hear it. They wave it off. They say something modest. “I wouldn’t know where to start” or “Who’d want to read about me?”—and the moment passes.

It shouldn’t pass.

Because those five words are not flattery. They are recognition. The person saying them has seen something you may not see in yourself: a story worth preserving, a voice worth hearing, a life carrying lessons someone else needs.

I’ve published more books than I can remember. Nearly every one began with a version of this scene. An author sitting across from me, half-convinced and half-terrified, explaining how a friend or family member urged them to write. They came not because they believed they were writers. They came because someone else believed it first.

The ones who listened changed lives — starting with their own. I have watched it happen hundreds of times. A retired teacher sits down and writes the classroom stories her students never forgot. A veteran puts forty years of silence onto paper and hands the manuscript to his daughter. A grandmother records the family history no one else remembers. None of them called themselves writers when they walked through my door. Every one of them was.

There’s a reason other people see it before you do. You’re too close to your own story. The experiences you carry feel ordinary because you lived them every day. The knowledge you gathered over decades feels unremarkable because it came one small lesson at a time. You forget how rare your perspective is. You forget how many people never learned the things you know.

Others see it clearly. They sit across from you and think: this matters. This should be written down. This should outlast a conversation.

They’re right.

The fear is understandable. Writing a book feels enormous from the outside. But no one writes a book all at once. You write a sentence. Then another. Then a page. Then a chapter. The manuscript builds the same way your story did—one day at a time, one truth at a time.

The harder question is not whether you can write it. The harder question is whether you’re willing to believe it matters. Every author I’ve worked with has faced this crossroads. The writing itself is learnable. The belief is the mountain.

I’ve met authors who waited twenty years between hearing “you should write a book” and sitting down to begin. Twenty years of carrying a story, turning it over, doubting its worth. When they finally wrote, every one of them said the same thing: I wish I’d started sooner.

Not because the writing was easy. Because the weight of the unwritten story was heavier than they realized. Once it was on the page, something shifted. The story belonged to the world now. It could do its work.

Your book does not need to be perfect. It does not need to win awards or land on bestseller lists. It needs to be honest. It needs to carry the purpose you’ve been living. A single book, written with conviction, placed in the right hands, can change the direction of a life.

Think about the books you remember most. Not the polished ones. The true ones. The ones where you could feel the author on the page—present, vulnerable, sure of why they were writing even when unsure of every word. Those books did not come from professional writers who had it all figured out. They came from people who had something to say and the courage to say it.

Someone looked at you and saw an author. They didn’t say it carelessly. They said it because your story moved them enough to speak up.

Honor the moment. Start.

The Power of Authors by Evan and Lois Swensen explores what it means to write with purpose—and why the world needs your voice now more than ever.

The book is available on Amazon: http://bit.ly/3K6o8AM. If you’d like an autographed copy, you can order it here: http://bit.ly/4pgmzjM.

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