Writing your book: An opportunity assessment

By Dennis Mellersh

In his book Opportunities: A Handbook of Business Opportunity Search*, cognitive/thinking expert Edward de Bono discusses the concept of ‘opportunity space.’

And, although de Bono is not discussing the writing of books within his ideas on opportunity, but rather is focussed on business and industry, nevertheless his ideas can be applied to writing and publishing the book you want to produce.

De Bono sums up ‘opportunity space’ and our ability to seize opportunity as follows:
“If an opportunity is within our opportunity space, then we can act upon it.”

Further, “The opportunity space includes all the changes, decisions, and choices that we can make. It includes all the assets we are using and the actions we can take.”

Let’s make the reasonable assumption that (a) you are capable of writing a book; (b) that there is a market for the book you decide to write and; (c) you have access to tools or assets that can be applied to your writing and to the potential market for your book.

Granting these assumptions, and to use de Bono’s criteria, you (as someone who wants to write a book) have both the opportunity and you have the ‘opportunity space.’

The particular opportunity for you lies in determining where you have some control with your individual ‘opportunity space’ elements.

You actually will have significant control.

Your particular areas of ‘opportunity space’ control are yours alone, but here are a few general examples I can suggest:

• You decide the type of book you want to write, whether it is fiction, or non-fiction and you decide the specific writing format your book will take; a traditional approach or something experimental. You can control/decide the way your book is written and presented to a given reading audience.
• You make the decision on what your book will be about: the subject matter, theme, and the ideas that will be presented in your writing efforts.
• You control whether your book will be traditionally published in a print format or whether it will be an e-book. You decide how it will be designed, marketed, promoted and sold, if you make the decision to self-publish your writing.
• You decide when you will do your writing in terms of scheduling, and you decide where you will write your book – home office, library, coffee shop. You decide when you can afford to take some time off from writing to recharge your creative batteries. You also decide on the way you will write and the materials you will use:  pen or pencil on paper, dictating, computer or tablet.
• You have the choice and the ability to let your individual personality and the originality of your personal ideas come through strongly in your book.

There are many additional areas of control in the ‘opportunity space’ of writing and publishing your book that I could list here.

 

But now it’s up to you to analyze your particular circumstances and desires and see where you and your book fit in to this picture of opportunity and ‘opportunity space.’

 

* Edward de Bono, Opportunities: A Handbook of Business Opportunity Search, Penguin Books