The book writing advice that could be perfect for all your relationships as well

Who is your intellectual crush?

You know, that person that is so smart, so fun to listen to or to read, so brilliant, so damn good, that they could talk for two hours about the phone book and you would still be all in for that.

As you may already or may not know yet, one of my biggest and dearest intellectual crushes is Naomi Dunford, no strings attached and no sex involved. But still.

I don't care about what she is talking about, I am in, brainal after brainal. Because, well, she is that good.

[Intellectual crushes, anyone?

Nope, I am not talking about Christopher Reeve

with his sexy glasses, the one and only Clark Kent for me

(sorry, Henry Cavill, Dean Cain & Tom Welling!)]

So, even if I am not planning to write a book right now, I got hooked on the launch articles she wrote for her class Write A Book With Me a couple of months ago and a sentence just clicked with me:

When you know what your objectives are for YOU and for your READER, you now have a permanent mental model for what to put IN and what to leave OUT.

Naomi Dunford

How To Write A Book: Your 5 Necessary (And 1 Optional) Steps

Writing books aside, is this not just what every healthy relationship (partnership, friendship, working collaboration, unicorn relationships whatsoever) should be about?

[Rocks, mountains and high walls, and yet you can see the stars?

Healthy relationships of any kind are all about 

hard work, team spirit and being there for the long haul, 

without losing sight of the starry turquoise sky above you...

Image credit: ISO Republic]

Defining together the non-negotiable items and the nice to have ones, pointing out no-nos and red flags, designing an effective and respectful communication frame and aiming for a win-win situation, where the needs of both get acknowledged and met?

Who begins too much accomplishes little.

German proverb

A good relationship of any kind is about shared values, shared expectations, shared best practices.

It is about both people knowing what they are willing to give, what they are ready to accept, what they could expect, which compromises they can make, what they need no matter what in order to stay in the relationship and how the two people are making this work, on a regular basis. Consistently. While walking the talk.

The rest is just some sort of hocus pocus, maybe nice for a couple of days but not sustainable and long-lasting in the long term.

This one is for Matthias P.

Tags: Naomi Dunford, Emotional crush, Healthy relationships, Quotes

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