Book Description

"The Zen of Writing" Author Alan O’Hashi is walking proof that perfection and organization are highly overrated. His parents and grandparents were all artists and applied a zen approach to nurturing their work, which influenced him as a creative entrepreneur. Rather than rigid plans and goals, they all were very contemplative and relied more on intuition and accepted life how it happened with no judgment. The story is partly a DIY personal growth book about how the author overcame self-doubt and perfection as a “Model Minority." He’s now more confident, no longer obsessed with perfection, and has become a prolific writer. The other part is a memoir about how the importance of owning life experiences and not being afraid to write about those. His writing is now much more emotional and no longer superficial. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” is what Ernest Hemingway says about the essence of good storytelling. This book is for anyone who is a writer of organized words, whether they are fiction, nonfiction, poetry, work memos, grant applications, academic papers, or love letters. Read this book if you’re a professional writer, a novelist just starting out, or a screenwriter with a half-done script lost deep in the bowels of a computer hard drive. Are you a writer who wonders how to get over self-doubt, kick your obsession with perfection, and for whatever reason, can’t quite finish your writing project? This book provides insight and a few tips through the author’s experiences about becoming more confident in your ability to balance perfection and accuracy that results in a higher likelihood of finishing your work. Author Alan O’Hashi relates how his lessons from life were significant influences that resulted in his first book pitch based on a typed-up piece of paper in June. He signed a contract and finished an 80,000-word manuscript five months later. Alan is a native of Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he began writing as a 12-year-old reporter for his junior high school newspaper, “The Tumbleweed.” He relates his growth as a writer surviving a 1,000-year flood, an emergency landing of an airplane with a fire on board, two job layoffs after 9/11, and getting up from his death bed.