BTS: A Sailor at Heart, a Psychologist by Trade, and a Book in the Making

How I Wrote My Second Book  

A pastor once told me I was three things: a teacher, a pastor, and a writer. At the time, I understood the first two roles in life, but a writer? Seeing myself as a writer felt like a different persona altogether. 

Up to that point, I had spent my career writing research articles and academic chapters. I knew that storytelling required another kind of courage, the kind that allowed me to reflect on my past experiences and life events. What kind of stories can I tell?

So in 2021, my first book was published, Psychology Confidential: A Crazy Professor Tells Almost All the Adventures and Misadventures of His Life in Psychology. A book that was meant to be a personal memoir of my career teaching and working in the field of psychology.  

Writing that book reinforced a truth I finally accepted and felt inside: I am a storyteller at heart. 

Fast forward to today. Who knew that after one book, I would muster more courage to write another: 7 Sheets to the Wind. It took nearly ten years and a good deal of reflection to admit that my sailing adventures were the best classroom I ever had.

“Sailing has been a long lesson in grace, patience, and healing. Perhaps these lessons I caught while at sea is the legacy I want to pass along while I still can. ”

For both books, I decided that I would not write as a dour, pontificating professor but from the perspective of a different kind of truth telling psychologist and guy, and for this second one, as a sailor at heart who happens to be a psychologist. They were connected. After all, I had nearly sixty years of adventures (and misadventures) across at least seven sailboats (and thirty years of teaching and researching) and figured I had earned the right to translate a respectable number of questionable decisions and near-misses while professoring and now as sailing into usable life advice.  

My Writing Process

“When do you find the time to write?” my friends and colleagues typically ask - with good reason. 

They are often curious about my writing discipline, especially because I wear different hats balancing professional positions and life roles. 

Due to my schedule, I may not be available to sit down at a desk every morning at 9:00 AM and push out drafts, like Summerset Maugham quipped about having writing passion come over him every day at 9 am. My process is much more like the ocean. Writing comes in surges. 

I might not write a single word for a month. Then at 2 AM in the morning, the stories well up and surface and I can write until dawn. I have spent many nights in my home office writing all night and “in the flow”. It can feel chaotic to work this way (ask my wife!), but I have learned to trust my internal compass, timing, and wave-like passion.. 

So I work in surges because it works for me.   

Choosing a Tone for the Book

The process of writing also forced me to wrestle with the tension between sharing my own experiences and practicing the humility I believe is essential for the many roles I serve in life. 

In academia, we are often trained to act "as God," which is a dangerous and prideful place to live. In contrast, when I began writing my books, I made a deliberate choice to avoid this. I had a friend who suggested I write in third person, but I questioned him on that legitimate point at avoiding self-glorification with the problem of how to tell personal stories from a distance without using my voice.  I wanted the tone of my writing to be approachable to many types of readers, whether they were psychologists or not.

My lightbulb moment came when I realized I needed to reach people like my brother, who prefers “stupid humor” over lectures. I remember asking him one day what it would take to read a book I wrote on psychology. He said, “If it were like Dave Barry, I would read it. If it were stupid funny, I would read it.”

In our household, we grew up reading Dave Barry because my dad loved his writing. Dave is an outrageous and relentlessly self‑mocking author. He makes fun of everything, especially himself. In that spirit, I decided to use a tone both familiar and occasionally self‑deprecating (not a hard thing to relate!)  in my indie authorship. In my second book, this tone positions me as a slightly bewildered captain who is occasionally unsure of what he is doing, and honest enough to admit that sometimes he probably ought to.  

Keeping the Stories In

I think another important choice for me was deciding which stories to keep.

Through my work with professional editors (which I do recommend), I learned the technical discipline required to organize a manuscript and push it forward from a simple idea to a finished book. I give much credit in that to Paper Raven Books, who helped me craft these two books. Editing matters, and good constraints can make a book stronger. 

But for me, knowing when to advocate for a story was just as important as knowing what to cut. 

There’s one particular story in the book about my brother and me dragging a sailboat trailer through a fast-food drive-through and accidentally uprooting the landscaping. Two different editors tried to remove the story, but I kept putting it back.

Looking back, I kept the story because the silly moments are often the ones that make us feel the most connected. More human. They remind of my own goofy choices and a life that has been lived, not lectured. When used with care, this kind of humor helps me share something real and grounded, the kind of vulnerability that I hope invites my reader to keep turning the page.

What’s next?

For those who continue to stay curious, I will likely write about more of my writing process and the behind-the-scenes work to get a book published and up online.

Bookmark my site or come back for more. 

Oh, and I will announce the book launch soon. Thanks for reading!