A book project starts out as a fascination. Then reality kicks in as you spend the next few years doing interviews/drafts (with many fits and starts - and periods of self-doubt followed by the occasional breakthrough - in-between), and then you eventually near the finish line…at which point the skills you need to succeed are entirely different (your publisher turns you from a writer into a somewhat-shameless marketer).
Indeed, I got to know “the messy middle” quite intimately as I wrote the
The Messy Middle. This experience is not unique to writers. Every bold project, new venture, or turnaround of a team, product, or culture goes through a period of volatility that offers a bounty of insights for how to endure the lows and optimize the hell out of everything that works. Finally, no bold project succeeds without a community behind it (thank you, friends). If you haven’t read it, here’s a
short post about the book.