There’s also a great deal of intrinsic satisfaction in a bulging pocket that requires a few extra pins to keep it up!

Really? I didn’t know that. I would say those who think getting the end product (a book) is easy have not tried to create a book.

The process, as you said, is very important. Having written a book is said to “prove” you’re an expert at something. But, it is in writing the book that you become the expert or not. If you put the time and effort into the process, and get from the process all you can, you become the expert you will be as you write the book. The expertise is not only in what’s included, but what’s left out and leaving it own knowledgeably and not in ignorance. The expertise is in discovering what you have to say, versus what you thought you had to say when you started. It’s about learning and growing and, then, when that’s all over, ending up with something that offers your readers some small part of that learning and growth–but only part of it.

I stare up at my wall where I have the outline for a book pinned. I have created pockets for my notes and am slowly filling those pockets. All I knew and thought I knew was just the beginning. It’s in filling those pockets that my book-to-be gains value. It will be in distilling those pockets that my readers learn and grow. And, when I’m done, I will have earned my expertise–not from having written a book, but from writing it.