Does everyone really have a book in them?

Much has been written about the notion ‘everyone has a book in them’. There are those who believe firmly that, yes, everyone does have a book in them – somewhere. There are also those who believe that the idea is nonsense, and that most people don’t have a book in them at all. In fact, they’d be lucky to squeeze out a short story.

It’s certainly true that regardless of what you think of the idea, most people won’t ever write a book. A lot of people talk about it, sure, but most of them don’t get around to it.

Plus there are those people who do manage to write books, but who might well have been better off not writing them. It all depends on how you look at it.

Perhaps the truth of it is that not everyone has a book in them. However, what we can’t deny is that everyone has a story in them. Whether that is their own life story or the product of their imagination, everyone has the capacity to produce some sort of narrative. That narrative might be non-fiction or fiction, it might be prose or poetry, a book or short story or novella, or a stream of consciousness, or a simple idea spoken out loud.

 

Everyone has something, and something that’s worth saying (or writing). It just so happens that it’s the ones who manage to write the books who currently get the glory.

What do you think – does everyone have a book in them, or is it all a myth?