Ikigai-kan is honestly written and filled with Nick Kemp's experiences in Japan, the connections that he has made, as well as insights from his podcast guests. It gives people an understanding of feeling a life that is worth living.
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Writing is all about being personal and honest
Nick: I think when you write you discover yourself, because you are placing yourself in a position of contemplation and truth. So you have to accept your limitations and be honest with yourself when you write.
You've got to be open to obviously your editor's ideas and thoughts and suggestions and corrections. And yeah, that was really interesting. Because you could easily take some correction or some edit personally and go oh, but that's really important.
But for me, it never felt like that. So I thought you were so careful and caring with your editing.
Caitlin: It's worth saying really that from my point of view, as well, it was also challenging to edit, not because it had lots of things that needed to be fixed, but because you're absolutely right, you were being really personal and honest.
And I would get to sections and I would think, okay, maybe there's a grammatical thing that I should talk about. But if I change that grammatical thing, will it change the feel? Will it change the passion that's come through?
And if I suggest something about this really personal, you know, story about your family, your father or something, is that going to sound like I'm being uncaring. So it was really difficult to think through each thing and to really make sure that it was relevant and that it wasn't taking away from your message.
Because I know you say that you struggle with language sometimes but I think especially in conversation, the people listening to this now will notice when you're excited about something it comes across really well, and you're really eloquent and there's so much energy there.
And I didn't want to get in the way of that. I didn't want to stop that from coming through in the book.
Nick: You enhanced it. So you really helped me. And, as I said to you, I'm forever grateful I'll be buying you dinners and drinks for the rest of your life.