In mid-November 2023, shortly after I released my 18 year longitudinal follow-up study in the very big book (3 pounds), The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us, I started to get requests to speak, do podcast interviews, etc. Basically, in my opinion, most of these experiences weren’t satisfying to me — and possibly not to the audiences, either — because I was asked to talk about my study’s findings. This in when I finally realized that a 207,000 word book — no matter how great or interesting the content — was not going to be read. *sigh*
Many people around me suggested the book was getting too long, but I didn’t see what — if anything — I could leave out. So I pushed through. I also had several little voices in my head nagging me to get it all out there, all shared, written down, and available to anyone even after I’m gone. I may have a 100 year old healthy father (born in 2024) and lots of longevity in my family, but my mother died before she was 80 and was taken down by a sequence of events (including sepsis after a surgery) that led to Alzheimer’s and a slow losing of her intelligence and memory. I felt such an obligation to get all I’d learned out there before it was too late for me to do it.
Aside from seeing that the book was literally too heavy and too long for most readers, I was at a loss for how to describe the book or my findings in any “elevator speech” or one hour interview or PowerPoint presentation. I also couldn’t effectively promote or advertise, either, to get it to the right audiences because I couldn’t narrow down who my audiences were! I realized I needed to give myself time to think about what I can do going forward to make this material more accessible.
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