How I became a writer

I fell into writing accidentally. In fact I never really started reading books seriously until age 20 or so (though I ordered my first non-fiction on book on Amazon aged 18 – it was Plato).

From age 20, I started reading books on a range of non-fiction on topics. Here’s what a selection of my Amazon book orders looks like for the last 8 years.

See the big jump in year 4? That’s the year I wrote my first book. Ever since then I aim to read about 50 books a year (or one book a week).

Today, I read mainly on my Kindle but here’s what a fraction (about 20 %) of my book collection looks like:

So how did I get into writing? I think two factors played a pertinent role.

First, I was reading so much that I felt a strong urge to share all the cool stuff I was coming across. For example, did you know that happier people have stronger immune systems? How about willpower, did you know that it’s like a muscle and that while it can be strengthened via training, it can also be depleted via exertion? These are all things I shared in both my first and second book.

The second reason why I started writing was because it was a way of self-prescribing solutions to personal challenges in the past, present, or future. By pulling together ideas from a range of sources and writing about them, I cemented what I had learned during the ’research’ process.
These two reasons are also why I rarely write material that is overly personal, instead choosing to be more informative and prescriptive. But perhaps that will change. After all, writing with personality can be more fun for both the reader and author.
In sum, I write because I enjoy sharing insightful material. I also write because it helps me condense knowledge and ideas I have accumulated from all the reading that I do. As I grow older and experience more of the ups and downs that life has to offer, perhaps I will also start to write so people can relate.