But if you just talk about all of your problems, and then once they start talking, you get up and leave—that’s not empathizing. That’s dumping. There is a big difference. There is one last thing I’d recommend though: speak from your scars, not your open wounds. Meaning, don’t put stuff in your book that you haven’t worked through. Your book is for sharing what you know, not working through things you haven’t processed yet. Even if you process by writing, that’s OK, just make sure what goes in the book is hard-earned wisdom, not emotional release that only serves you. Showing emotion—especially in writing—can be very hard. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve worked with authors and they describe a horrific scene—some sort of major trauma—with total detachment. Maybe they had a bankruptcy where they lost everything, or they had someone in their family die, or they lost a business to a cheat- ing partner, and we’ll hear them talk about this and they’ll just describe the facts. They won’t talk about how they felt or how it affected them. We’ll push these authors to then talk about their feelings. When that happened, what did you feel? What was it like? How did it affect you? If you are going to tell stories like that, then you should absolutely talk about your emotions, to the extent that it is relevant. In fact, for many authors, we have to first tell them that their story hOW MUCh Of yOUr STOry ShOUlD BE iN yOUr BOOk? · 419