The Book You Want to Read

“Write the book you want to read.”

Not sure where I first heard that advice. Not even sure whether I ever actually heard it before.

Either way, it feels familiar because it’s advice I’ve followed – perhaps instinctively. And whatever success I’ve had as a writer, I owe to that advice.

Cheri and I heard it Saturday night from David McCullough while watching “Painting with Words”, a documentary about his life and work.

You may know McCullough as a historian who’s written biographies of Harry Truman, John Adams, the Wright brothers, and the Brooklyn Bridge. His work has been honored with two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

If you’re a writer, you’ll hear hundreds of times that you must know your audience, and write for its members: Give them what they want.

You’ll hear you must know your subject cold, and write accordingly.

You’ll hear plenty of other prescriptions.

A lot of those counsels are wise advice. But none of them mean a thing if you don’t first do Job One: Write the book you want to read! (Or blog post, short story, or news report.)

When I finished drafting The Challenge of Bahá’u’lláh, the book contained two chapters on modern science. One covered the philosophy of scientific method. One contained extensive material on physics — general relativity, quantum mechanics, astrodynamics, and whatnot.

Nearly all my pre-publication reviewers warned me that I’d lose all my readers with that boring technical stuff. No one cares, they told me. It’s over the heads of your audience, they told me.

I disagreed, citing three reasons: (1) I felt confident I had made the material both clear and engaging. (2) While I was writing, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (which, while perhaps engaging, hardly strikes me as clear) was camping out for more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list. This suggested to me that there’s a massive audience for science information. (3) For better or worse, the chapters at issue were integral to my book’s very premise. Removing them would leave it without any reason to exist.

When I did decide, though, to leave in all the science stuff, it wasn’t for any of those reasons. It was simply because this was my book, written first for myself. No one else! Even if I lost my audience (I told my advisers), I would write the book I’d want to read.

Well, you know what happened: The book was hugely successful. It’s been through four editions so far. (Soon to be five; stay tuned!) It resonated with readers, many of whom wrote me or button-holed me at conferences to say what they especially liked about it.

The most popular sections by far were those on science and scientific method!

This experience taught me a lot: Don’t ever underestimate your readers. Don’t “dumb down” your material. Don’t hesitate to ignore reviewers whose advice just doesn’t feel right.

But the clearest lesson was: Write the book you want to read. Then, even if you are its only reader, you’re a winner. Better that than writing a smash bestseller that leaves you feeling empty.

What you’ll probably find, though, is that you’re a lot more like your readers than you realized. Writing for yourself is the best and only way truly to write for them.