My Journey to Writing a Book: Becoming a Writer

Nothing beats writing by hand with a Japanese gel pen!

It’s an extra special Friday at Yes, It’s Friday! Today is the day before Halloween, which also happens to be my birthday. My early present is a proof copy of my upcoming book, Radically Authentic: How Quiet Achievers Stop Fitting In and Start Playing Big!

This feels surreal, because writing a book was never my ambition or even part of my 2026 plans. It seemed like such a gargantuan effort in completely unknown territory. And what would I write about? 

As the manuscript progressed over the last several months and I finally felt comfortable revealing that I was writing a book, people started asking me about the process. It’s a bit of a long story, so for today, I’ll focus on the first step: the internal shift that allowed me to see myself as a writer.

It Started with a Diary

My journey to writing a book started with a slow-burn love story and the gradual stepping into my identity as a writer. My on-again, off-again practice of journaling began when I received my first little blue Hello Kitty (or was it Holly Hobbie?) diary with a lock and key in elementary school. It was an early outlet to document my life and process significant events like my best friend moving to another country and secret crushes on boys. Sometimes I went for years without journaling, but I always came back to it during trying times as an outlet for reflection and venting.

I never would have called myself a writer. In school I excelled at math and foreign languages, not English. My verbal skills weren’t lacking, but I operated under an unspoken rule: to claim an identity, I had to be recognized as one of the best. However, I was recently reminded by a former classmate that I tied for second place as most likely to write a bestseller (and become mayor of Urbana, Illinois!) in our 6th grade yearbook, so maybe my classmates saw something in me that I missed. This also reminded me that my friend Pari and I had won a Young Authors’ Award for a short book we wrote together.

My early dabbling became a structured discipline in high school, when my sophomore English teacher Mrs. Baker assigned weekly writing. We started with nonfiction, and over time, I explored a variety of personal topics. I still have some of my writing in a folder, a mix of works handwritten in pencil on ruled paper and dot-matrix printed. In the margins were encouraging comments from Mrs. Baker that emboldened me to experiment with different themes as we incorporated fiction writing: teen angst, illicit drugs (something I was amusingly ignorant about!), and the exhausting pressure of constant striving for success. 

This weekly writing practice built my confidence and helped to develop my love of writing. At the time, I was painfully shy, so it felt like a safe means of self-expression.

Writing as a Complement to Coaching

Then, about five years ago, I signed up for executive coaching through Google to boost my leadership skills and confidence. My coach Valerie and I had great rapport, and her supportive and empowering approach was ideal for someone like me: already self-aware and high-achieving, but struggling with a strong inner critic and imposter syndrome.

As a passionate learner, I was constantly seeking out frameworks and tools to help me lead effectively and be more productive, and I often brought them up in our coaching sessions. At one point, Valerie said, “You should write a book!” I hemmed and hawed at the thought, but at that moment, a tiny seed was planted in the back of my mind.

In the meantime, I started formal coach training. I had already been a mentor for many years and enjoyed supporting others. Through candid mentoring conversations, I gained clear insight into the struggles Googlers and members of my college alumni community faced every day. But as I trained to become a coach, I learned a fundamental difference between coaching and mentoring: coaches don’t give advice; they ask questions. I had accumulated years of personal lessons and practical advice that I wanted to share, and I needed an outlet. 

I found a way to resolve that tension: rekindling my love for writing and starting a blog. I wrote about topics that were on my mind, and it was like therapy to process and download my thoughts. More importantly, it became a space to address the common challenges so many professionals face but rarely voice publicly. I hoped that by sharing my ideas, I might be able to help others, a core value of mine. 

Occasionally, I shared personal stories, and those got the most positive response. In one long and vulnerable post, I wrote about three adverse and transformative incidents in my early adulthood: my mother’s death when I was 18 years old, the 1996 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, and my first marriage ending in divorce. These experiences developed my resilience, and writing about them was more than just an exercise; it was how I made sense of disruption and pain.

I wrote weekly articles consistently for about a year and a half, including while I was on vacation overseas. I had so much I wanted to say. When my burnout led to panic attacks, my streak of weekly posts ended. But I have continued to write new articles regularly and have dipped back into my archive of over 80 articles to share again on social media.

Claiming the Identity

Then last year, when I had more free time after leaving my corporate job, I signed up for a three-day virtual writing retreat. It was there that I finally gave myself permission to call myself a writer, stepping into a new identity. I began tackling longer pieces, writing a travelogue about our two-week trip to Japan in summer 2025. I realized that after investing hundreds of hours over multiple years writing and honing my skills, with people actively reading my work, this was an occupation, not a hobby. I didn’t need a bestseller or an award to qualify.

I am a writer because I write. Plain and simple. 

Overcoming that mental hurdle was a critical first step, even though writing an entire book still wasn’t on my radar.

In Part 2 next week, I’ll share the events that led to my commitment to the project, finding the theme, and completing the initial manuscript. 

To learn more about the book or subscribe for updates, visit carolineykim.com/book.