Need a story to tell at your next presentation?
Blogs to craft? A memoir to shape? A thesis to personalize?
A book inside you burning to be written…in digital, in print, for the world, or for your private time capsule?

Think you’re starting from scratch? You’re not.
Your life is your content.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

– Jules Renard, “Diary” February 1895

Nothing is matter-of-fact for a writer. Everything is a matter of life.@DanielleLaPorte
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Live like a writer, like an active author, an artist, an observer of the human condition, a reporter of faith, a poet of utility, a slammer of futility! Make a story out of everything. Your life is one teachable moment after the next. Preach it.

Capture your everyday, lifetime, take-it-for-granted experiences and turn them into insight, humor, education, and information — a book:

• Calling your friend to wail about your divorce? Record it. Transcribe it. That’s platinum for your forthcoming memoir, or a great segment in a speaking gig.
• Rummaging through old blog posts for a Best Of Year in review? Hold up. THAT’s the makings of your book outline sitting right there.
• Read through old client testimonials. There in is your raison d’etre. Your market. The problem that your writing will solve for people.
• Aha moments in therapy? Turn them into a how-to list.
• Those ten clients, with ten different situations, are ten unique chapters.
• That mentoring you’ve been giving so freely? Recapitulate the wisdom you’ve been dispensing into a manifesto, a guide, a set of cases studies and success stories.
• That survey you conducted last quarter? Package the results with supporting interviews and you’ve got yourself the beginning of a chapter summary.

Your message dwells within. One thing I learned from a public speaking coach I worked with, Gail Larsen, is that we have our creative process backwards. Whether we’re writing a speech or a thesis, what we tend to do is think of our message first, and then think of stories that will support and illustrate our message. When really, we should first pay attention to the stories that are living in our psyche — the tales we’ve never forgotten, the images that left a deep impression. And then we should look for the message that is inside of those stories. There’s a reason the stories stuck with us: they point to our core theory and teaching.

Your book (your speech, your product) has already been written — it’s hidden in plain sight, in your client session audio files, blog interviews, scandalous email chains, coffee shop convos, that one post that went viral, your teenage journal, your vision boards, your workshop materials. It’s all there. Capture and conquer!

Danielle LaPorte is the outspoken creator of The Desire Map, author of The Fire Starter Sessions (Random House/Crown), and co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan. An inspirational speaker, former think tank exec and business strategist, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over a million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality”, and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes.

You can also find her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter @daniellelaporte.

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