Thomas M. Wells Wrote Two Books With Scribe Media to Share a Lifetime of Giving Back
“[Scribe] let me do it my way, but it's professional. In other words, it's, the sentences are well-written.”
Thomas M. Wells, Author of Naked on the Highway and Dream, Plan, Do!
Thomas M. Wells spent four decades as an attorney, built his own law firm, and sat on bank and nonprofit boards. Then he wrote two books with Scribe Media. One is a candid memoir in 40 stand-alone stories. The other tells how a single tuition gift grew into a foundation supporting a thousand scholars in 56 countries.
A lawyer with a lifelong habit of giving back
Clip · Tom on giving back · 8s
Tom grew up the oldest of six children in New Jersey, went to Bucknell, went to law school in Ohio, and came home to start his own firm. Along the way he owned businesses, served on public bank boards and nonprofit boards, and ran a beloved independent bookstore in Bristol, Vermont for about ten years.
Through all of it ran one idea, which he traces to a plaque on his mother's kitchen wall: what we are is God's gift to us, and what we become is our gift to God. It became the organizing philosophy of his life, and of both books.
“It's made my life really very special, you know, that by just always focusing on trying to give back wherever I can.”
— Thomas M. Wells
One tuition gift that became a thousand scholars
Clip · Tom on a thousand scholars · 13s
In 2005, one of Tom's daughters came home from Africa and asked whether the family could help her host sister pay for school. The cost was about $2,000 to $3,000. Tom said yes, liked it so much that he asked friends to join in, and the Wells Mountain Initiative was born. One student became four, then nine, then eleven. His goal for years was to reach a hundred.
Today WMI supports a thousand scholars, every one of them asked to give 100 hours of volunteer service each semester they are in school. That story is Dream, Plan, Do!, the history of the foundation's first 20 years.
“So we now have this cadre of really special young, bright people in 56 countries, a thousand of them who are very committed to giving back and helping in their communities.”
— Thomas M. Wells
Tom is clear that the best part of that book is the part he did not write.
“The book isn't really, it's the story of WMI, but it's really the story of all these people. And the best section in the book is, wasn't written by me. It's, it's a chapter where I asked 12 of them to write their own stories and they each write their own stories about their lives.”
— Thomas M. Wells
Why the Scribe team pushed him to tell the hard parts
Clip · Tom on telling the hard parts · 43s
Tom started his memoir, Naked on the Highway, on an upbeat note. He had been blessed, and he said so. His Scribe editors pushed back: a memoir with no adversity in it is not much of a story. So he went to the places he had never written about, including the depression he had lived with most of his life and had never discussed publicly.
“So that was a little bit traumatic, but also a little, you know, enlightening to do it.”
— Thomas M. Wells
“The process of writing, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Process of editing was harder than I thought it would be.”
— Thomas M. Wells
From twelve-clause legal prose to a book that reads
Clip · Tom on the Scribe edit · 19s
Tom wrote the memoir through Scribe's Guided Author program: an initial session, then writing the book with the team alongside him. He had been writing his whole career, but legal writing is its own language, and he had to unlearn some of it.
“It's good to work within a structure and Scribe has a structure and helps you a little bit.”
— Thomas M. Wells
The editors also gave him advice he chose not to take. They told him a book should either share knowledge or tell stories, not both. Tom wanted both, and the book is full of his stories alongside lists of lessons. What he valued was that the team helped him make that choice work instead of overruling it: tightening the prose, cutting the chapters that did not belong, and reorganizing the rest.
“Instead of my lawyer sentence, which is 12 clauses, that it's now three sentences [...] they helped me clean it up and put it, you know, they, when I first didn't always have exactly 40 chapters, but they helped me know which ones just didn't make any sense.”
— Thomas M. Wells
Two books in, and a third on the way
Clip · Tom on working with Scribe · 13s
Tom did not write for a bestseller list or a sales funnel. He wrote to tell his story and share what he has learned, and he has kept going. He is now marketing his books through Substack and Medium columns, and he is at work on a third book, Walk the Walk, about the golden rule and how deeply it runs through nearly every moral tradition.
“I think [Scribe] provide[s] a way to help somebody do something that they're not necessarily good at. [Scribe] bring[s] [its] professional expertise to the forefront and help[s] me accomplish something I want to do.”
— Thomas M. Wells
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