Hey there.

Apparently I hit a nerve with a recent email when I talked about people using AI to write books.

(Don't worry! This email is not about AI.)

My argument was that it's not the product—"book"—that really matters in the end. It's what you learn about yourself and your subject matter as you go through the process and struggle of actually writing the book.

A few of you asked me to talk a bit more about what that means, so here we go.

I have written over 20 books since I started publishing in 2016, and hundreds of blog posts and essays since I started writing for public on the internet back in the early 2000s.

Back then, as a new college grad, I was literary and thoughtful. I had opinions—very strong, literary opinions—about how real writers don't use exclamation points, emoticons, or slang.

Lol! ;)

Past Jessie would be shocked at how quickly Today Jessie can produce a coherent email or blog post—but I still don't consider myself a fast writer.

I spend time pondering, staring at the window, going on long walks without dictating a word.

I spend a lot of time in Magpie Mode, and the ideas that pop into my head often spend months bouncing against each other:

• Sometimes polishing each other to gleaming
• Sometimes recombining to create something new
• Sometimes fracturing and crumbling when the flaws are revealed

My first drafts are messy brain dumps, normally dictated and full of digressions. I'm often just trying to articulate to myself what I really think.

In my second drafts, I make sense of those ideas and test them further. I rearrange things and reorder them for coherence and flow. I expand or cut, depending on what needs built out or shaved down.

And only once I'm confident in what I'm thinking do I polish the words up—which refines my thinking even more.

The frustrating thing is how unpredictable that process is.

Writing a book that's fully formed and well-developed takes proper marination time—time we don't always want to give ourselves.

Yesterday, I had a call with a new client who's nearly done with her book (subject: coaching executives around strategic thinking). She was talking about something she sees a lot in her work with executives, which is the danger of being myopic when executing a plan.

In a big company, that might look like an unwavering dedication to the annual plan, even as the environment changes.

For a writer, that might be "Publish my book by X date, come hell or high water."

She used herself as an example here.

She'd written her first outline for this book three years ago, and told me she'd iterated the contents many times since then.

She said, "If I had an operating plan that said I would publish a book by February of 2025, it wouldn't be this book. It wouldn't have been as good a book. It would have been all right, but it wouldn't have been what I actually intended."

Three years to write a book might sound like a long time. But this author's three-year writing process didn't just reshape the material—it helped her articulate what she teaches, how she coaches, and what makes her distinct.

That's what I mean by the writing process being more valuable than the end artifact itself. Yes, having a book with your name on it is still valuable. But the act of writing that book will shape you in ways you can't imagine.

Have you seen that in your own work?

Hit reply and let's talk.

Speaking of coaching!

When I was invited to contribute to The Coaching Growth Collective, it was the idea behind it that got my yes.

The bundle, which is organized by Curtis Satterfield, is built around one belief: a coach with a proven 1:1 method should be able to grow their business without adding more hours to do it.

Curtis has collected 25 free resources to help coaches with this—check it out!

Every contributor was invited because their work supports that same kind of growth, whether that’s through pricing, email, visibility, systems or positioning. Each of them put in one resource they’d want a coach to have, so you’re getting 25 different angles on the same idea.

And everything inside is free through October 31!

Until next time,

Jessie

P.S.My own freebie, The 60-Second Story Kit, is in there too, along with 24 others. Get the free bundle here: