January 28, 2021 • bachelor insider
Why Ben Higgins 'Broke Down Crying' Writing the Last Chapter of His New Book 'Alone in Plain Sight'
Ben Higgins stopped by “Click Bait with Bachelor Nation” to chat with co-hosts Tayshia Adams, Joe Amabile, and Natasha Parker about writing his first book, “Alone in Plain Sight: Searching for Connection When You’re Seen but Not Known.”
The literary project — which hits bookshelves February 2 — features personal stories of how the Season 20 Bachelor went from feeling lonely and rejected to finally feeling seen after pursuing authentic connections with himself, with others, and with God.
“In order to write it effectively, I had to pull out some of the things that I typically want to hide,” Ben explained on “Click Bait.” “And then three-fourths of the way through, I brought in a ghostwriter because I was going back to that surface-level writing where I was sharing just enough to be enough. I recognized that if I was going to do this and I was going to actually write a book that hit somewhere deep, I was going to have to pull out deeper stories, deeper thoughts. And, so, I brought in this ghostwriter and started asking those questions.”
“Alone in Plain Sight” tackles death, grief, addiction, and spirituality, among other heavy topics. According to Ben, the writing process was emotionally taxing — and, in fact, penning the book’s final chapter pushed him to tears.
“We got into stuff that broke me. I remember I was on tour for ‘The Bachelor Live on Stage’ and I was in the back of a tour bus and I just broke down crying at 3 o’clock in the morning because I was writing this last section of the book and I had been broken through the process,” he recounted. “It was hard to do at the time. But I recognize now that is where I wanted to be when I wrote this book. I wanted to be raw, stripped away, willing to share anything.”
Listen to Ben’s entire “Click Bait with Bachelor Nation” interview below.
