Hey First name / you! Amelia here, soon-to-be-published author of that book you asked to hear about — Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media.

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Today I want to tell you a bit about what it took to bring the book to life. Not the logistics of typing, designing, or printing — I'll tell you about that soon enough.

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Instead, I want to get into the deep, dark, gritty part of creating a book. Those messy, tender moments that are harder to put into words. The reason that (I think) so many books never make it out of a bedside journal or a private Google doc.

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If you don't want to hear from me again until you can purchase the book, just click here.

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For everyone else, you can keep reading or listen right here.  
Let's dive in.  🌊 

A few months ago, I was feeling some kind of way about my book, and I found myself googling “ego death."

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Wikipedia informed me that the term came from the realms of Buddhism, mysticism, Jungian psychology, New Age spirituality, and psychedelic drugs. It meant something like “complete loss of subjective self-identity" or "transcendence of the self."

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And that felt… fine. But not quite right.

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🫠 

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You see,  I was trying to figure out how I had become an entirely different person by writing my book. I had lost myself in the process. But it was more like losing Myself than losing my Self… 

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It wasn't quite an ego death. So I kept searching.

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That led me to revisit Roland Barthe's famous essay, “The Death of the Author.” In the final sentence, he asserts:

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🤯

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That felt a little more like it. For my book to be released, I had to completely let go of control. I'm no longer the authority on its meaning. Readers get to interpret (and misinterpret) as they like.

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But I was still searching for a death that happened earlier in the process. Not the death of the author when the book meets readers, but a death-rebirth cycle I had to go through to get the words out of me at all.

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Here's what I'd figured out: I had to die (metaphorically) for my book to come to life (literally).

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But had someone found the words to describe this process?

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🥸

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Eventually my internet-wanderings led me to a review by Angelica Jade Bastién which she concludes with this gorgeous sentence:

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Reading those words, I got chills.

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Trauma obliterates our sense of self. Creation is the opposite of that process and the path to healing that process. 

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YES. This finally felt fully, entirely True.

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❤️‍🩹

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It felt true, not because writing my book addressed a Big Trauma in my life. (It's not really that kind of book.)

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But rather, because writing this book required me to revisit every big hurt and small disappointment that had clung to my creative self over the past five years.

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I had to revisit my perfectionism, my fear of being misunderstood, my need to get things Right, my investment in being seen as smart, my self-imposed pressure to be the Best, and so many other harms, habits, and hellscapes I put myself through.

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I also had to exorcise cutting comments, harsh critiques, failed sales, and the very real (and mean) things I'd experienced in that time. 

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Some of the harm came from the outside. Some of it came from within. All of it had to be reopened, reconsidered, and rewritten in the process of bring the book to life.

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😖

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Do I think every book requires this of its author?

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Probably not.

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But did this book require it of me?

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Absolutely.

In the upcoming weeks, I'll share more about book-writing as a healing process. I'll also tell you more about what's in my book and how it might help heal something in you too.

 

For now, thanks for being here and reading this, First name / my friend. Never forget that your attention is sacred. Just like you.   xoxo