As I reflect on my non-fiction writing career, I’ve discovered I write for several reasons: to survive, to share, and to learn. 

 

Writing to survive.

As a young researcher at Battelle Memorial Institute (Columbus, Ohio), I wrote reports for clients in many different industries—from auto to steel, industrial diamonds to canned fruits and vegetables. That experience taught me to try and make writing clear, concise, and compelling, if that’s possible when analyzing vegetables. 

 

Then I moved to the academic world where the job was teaching, research, and service. I eventually learned to teach and I could easily serve on committees, but I had to “publish or perish” or I’d lose my job. That meant, primarily, publishing in academic journals, which I did for years. For both jobs—research scientist and professor—I wrote to keep my job and survive. 

 

But when I learned that, on average, only ten people read a given academic article, I choked. All that work for so few readers. So, I searched for ways to get my ideas out to more people, which meant…

 

Writing to share. 

I began writing articles and books on questions that came from students, managers, and leaders I met over the years, including during my nine years working in Vietnam. The book topics were wide ranging, including women working abroad, economies in transition, and creativity and insight. I left my office and went into the field where I interviewed loads of people and did case studies on diverse, high-performing organizations—from college football to theater, from a jail to software. When USA Today wrote a story about the football coach I worked with and I was part of the story, I was thrilled that the notion of creativity was something people wanted to learn about because of the coach.

 

I found more outlets for sharing ideas. I gave talks in the U.S., Australia, the U.K., and Korea. For seven years, I delivered daily business comments on my NPR local affiliate. I began writing a column for the local newspaper and a blog for Psychologytoday.com, which I still do today. And when I run into someone who says, “Your column made me think differently about something,” that means more than when someone tells me she read my article on “Product Diversification, Performance Criteria, and…” because I’m asleep before the title is over. During those years, of course, I wrote to find the answers to questions. That brings me to a bigger reason of…

 

Writing to learn.

So much of non-fiction writing is to analyze a question and solve a problem, but in the end, writing has become one of the major ways I learn. Of course, I learn from reading, watching, and listening, but I also learn when I write and it's sometimes a mystery how that happens. Often I’ll discover I’ve written something in a way that I don’t know how I got there. When that happens, I find an idea is different, clearer, and more interesting. I’ve moved into a phase where a specific expectation no longer holds. I find that, if I’m lucky—or persistent—magic happens and an idea appears or a  connection jumps into play. I realize again how lucky I am to learn…and write… for a living.