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Want to write a book? Answer these questions first

When someone discovers that I help people write books, she usually asks me how to get on track and stay focused until the book is finished.

Before I can respond, I have to ask them some questions. I never want to make assumptions about the author’s motivations.

If you’re considering writing a book, take some time to write your answers to my coaching inquiries. This will help clarify your motivation for any major project. Your answers will help you decide whether you should do it or shelve the idea.

  • What’s important for you about finishing this book?
  • Who is this book for, specifically?
  • What impact do you want this book to have on your readers?
  • What impact do you want for you and your work?
  • What kind of help do you need now to get started and stay on track?

Self-publish or traditionally publish?

Based on your answers, you can look at the self-publishing possibility. This is a very personal decision and is largely based on whether you have a large enough platform to attract the interest of an agent and publisher. If the word ‘platform’ is not familiar to you, it’s likely self-publishing will be your route.

That’s a generalized statement. Each author has to choose her own path based on her answers to the questions I pose above. I love helping my clients sort out which direction is right for them.

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Target the Heart of Your Book to Write More Easily

This is part of the Claim Your Authority series.
You feel the urge to write a book. You’re haunted by an idea or a cluster of ideas, but have no clue how they will hang together in a meaningful way to form a book.
This is a common problem: most people are trying to write a book from a surface level. As a coach, I’m always helping my clients dig deeper to find the core of their impulses.
Connecting to the heart of your book provides a powerful anchor to make what you’re expressing in your book easier.
Here’s a simple but profound exercise to target the heart of your book so the ‘what’s it about’ question will no longer haunt you.

Values + themes + stories = the heart of your book

Values in the middle, then themes, then surface stories

Okay, let’s look at a strategy to dig deeper to connect with the heart of your book. Remember the last CYA post where I asked you to identify a short list of your values? Get those out.
We’ll use a target to map stories, themes and values. At the core are your values. The next ring represents your themes. The outer and most visible ring stand for the stories you’re telling. Here’s an example of the model.
 
In my novel Chasing Sylvia Beach, here’s the top layer of story:

  • My character, Lily Heller, is bored and aimless
  • Lily wants to be a writer but doesn’t know how to get started
  • She looks to the life of Sylvia Beach as a model for a life of meaning and influence

In the next layer we find the themes:

  • Desire to live an interesting life
  • Desire to express something creatively/be a writer
  • The heroine’s journey – who am I and what am I doing here?

Finally, we see these values I hold:

  • Adventure/stretching/travel/learning
  • Creativity/expression
  • Learning/growth/expansion

As you do this, you should experience some ‘aha’ moments, where you access the deeper levels of your work.
Once you are connected to the core of your book, it’s easier to make the time and space to write it.
Homework:  Try this process to connect with the heart of your book. You can do this on a big piece of paper, dry erase board or use index cards…whatever method you like.

Using index cards in 2006 to map out Chasing Sylvia Beach

I suggest three different colored index cards, one color for themes, another for values and the third color for stories.
Play around with the cards, seeing how they connect to form the heart of your novel or non-fiction book.
Depending on how you think, you may start from the center (values) or the outer ring (stories). Let this exercise flow organically and don’t worry about figuring it out in a linear way. Take your time with this and let the process be yours.
Try any of these three approaches:
1. Start with your values and work your way to your themes, then the stories that represent the values that are deeply meaningful to you.
2. Identify the themes or topics that keep recurring in your writing and match them with values, then find stories that express those values.
3. Look at the stories you tell often. What themes are inherent in them, and what values are you expressing when you relate these stories?
If this seems confusing or daunting, leave a question below and I’ll help sort it out.
This is one of the juicy exercises we’ll do together in the Claim Your Authority retreat on July 10th – 12th, 2012, on the Oregon Coast. Together we’ll work through this to clarify the core of your book to make it easier to write. Reserve your spot before March 30th to get the early registration discount.
How does identifying your values help you write your book? What did you learn from doing this exercise?  Let me know in a comment below.
Download a pdf of this article  to make Claiming Your Authority easier.

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Seven Boons of Writing a Book

This is part of the Claim Your Authority series.
I’m standing in front of a crowd at the Boulder Bookstore. In my hands is my novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach. The heady brew of emotions that swirl in me include joy, wonder and a huge whoosh of gratitude.

Speaking at the Boulder Bookstore for Create Your Writer's Life

The combination prompts a sense of overwhelming joy that makes my knees buckle. Flush with gratitude, I share the story I’ve worked on for more than a decade.
Even in my imagination, this emotional cocktail is potent and unexpected. When publishing a book, you’d imagine a lot of happiness and celebration. What’s surprising to me is the profound amazement and wonder that infuses me.
It makes all the work and sacrifice that I invested in this book worthwhile.

What will writing your book bring you?

When I coach people, I help them cast their sights to the other side of the process, to imagine and see what’s possible after the long, quiet hours alone working on the book.
Bringing a work of art into the world will yield a blend of internal and external rewards. There’s what you gain from bringing the work to fruition and what you will glean from how others receive it.
It will be different for everyone, but here are seven possible boons that await you when you claim your authority.
1 Be a finisher. So many of us suffer at the hands of our inner critic who loves to point out how often you abandon things. Here’s your chance to finally prove to yourself that yes, indeed, you can finish something. This engenders huge reservoirs of confidence that can extend to future projects.
2 Know yourself and your material on a new level. You get to experience your work – whether fiction or non-fiction – in form. Having a tangible expression of what’s meaningful to you reflects you back to yourself in ways that empower deeper explorations and satisfaction.
3 Start global conversations. All art and writing that makes its way into the world initiates dialogue with others. How people respond is a fascinating process that allows what that they feel, think and believe to interact with what you’ve shared in your book.
4 Elevate your status. Having a book means you claim a new position both in the eyes of the world and for yourself. Imagine for a moment that you’ve written your book. How do you perceive yourself differently?
5 Earn money. Most of us don’t get into writing because it’s such a lucrative field. But more money can be earned from a book than from a cluster of ideas that merely perambulate in your head.

Seeing your book on the bestseller shelf at the bookstore...

6 Invite unforeseen opportunities. This is the best part. An idea for a book niggles at you. Speaking about it to others will likely bore them. But a completed book generates excitement in your audience and prompts opportunities you can’t even imagine. If I show up to do the work to write, publish and promote you book, something absolutely amazing could happen.
7  Give a gift to your readers. All of this is well and good for you, but what about your readers? We have a variety of motivations for writing, but many of us hope for a powerful impact on our readers. My non-fiction books are designed to both inspire and instigate action. I write them with nothing short of the lofty intention of changing people’s lives. And they do.
I can’t predict exactly what awaits you when you claim your AUTHORity. Everyone’s path is different. But I do know that every book we write works us in some way.
Our job is to heed the call to write our book, to get our words and ideas out of our head and onto paper so others can experience it too.
What do you imagine your AUTHORity will do for you? How do you want being an author to change your life?
 Download a pdf of this post. 

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Seven Time Management Tips to Write Your Book

This is part of the Claim Your Authority series.
I’m having coffee with a friend, chatting. He makes a declaration of desire to write a book, met by my great enthusiasm.
And then the backpedaling ensues. He pulls out everyone’s best fake excuse.
“I don’t have time,” he claims. But a thread of doubt haunts his statement.
I stare at him, unblinking. My look tells him I know he’s full of it. He squirms. Finally I speak.
“Time is all you have.”
He shrugs and resumes the litany of things that occupy his day, desperately shoring up his excuse for why he’s not writing a book.
I listen, hoping that hearing his own excuses will show him that they’re not truth, but choices. Is that you, clinging to this common excuse?

Lack of time is your biggest fake excuse

I have been coaching creatives on time management since 1999. I know how valid this excuse seems. We believe lack of time is the reason we’re not doing our work.

When we pull this out, everyone nods and commiserates because we’re all victims of the ticking clock and our propensity to fill our time with activities.

But I’ve coached everyone from extremely busy executives to retirees to working mothers, and here’s the truth: you can make time for what’s important to you.

Seven strategies to become a superhero at time management

1. Get real. Disengage from the notion that you do not have time to do what matters to you.
Be a hero, not a victim of your creative impulses.
2. Get clear. Return to your original impulse for writing your book. This is your stake, your driving motivation. If you don’t know this in one gut-vibrating sentence, you will easily blow off your writing sessions for laundry, dates with friends, shopping, whatever.
Use this original impulse as fuel to stay committed to being an author.
3. Get brief. We imagine we need long, uninterrupted hours to do our writing. And while that may be nice, chances are that perfect getaway isn’t the answer to our time dilemma.
Brief writing sessions – 15-30 minutes – add up over time.
4. Get it on the calendar. This is so dead simple, but frankly, most solutions are ridiculously simple.
Block out time on your calendar at the beginning of the week and stick to it like glue. 
5. Get focused. When writing a book, some things need to fall away temporarily. To be a creator, you need to reduce your consumption.
No need to become a hermit; just reduce your time-consuming news, tracking social media, watching TV or movies.
6. Get still. As we spend more time bouncing around online, it gets more difficult to quiet ourselves and focus on the deeper work of writing. Extroverts may find it difficult to step away from the roar and clatter of life, but remind yourself that the pause is only temporary.
Distinguish between these two kinds of attention – fragmented and ‘out there’ and focused on your topic. Balance time between the two.
7. Get support. We tend to honor our commitment to others more than our own self-commitments. Honestly, accountability is one of the main reasons people hire a coach to help them write their books. It’s not that I have such brilliant advice – it’s all pretty simple, as you can see.
We value what we pay for, and if we pay someone to help us, we’re going to rise to the occasion to get our money’s worth.

I know these things work because my clients practice them with great success.

I, too, have to deal with making the best choices with my time. It’s not always easy to step away from the bustle to go into the writing cave, but it’s always, always satisfying.

And it’s these strategies that have allowed me to publish a book, five e-books, hundreds of articles and my novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach.

I want this authority for you. Try this:

Throughout your day, notice the choices you make about how you spend your time.
Notice when you could choose to draft your book instead.

Notice the thoughts or feelings that arise when you consider writing. That – the fears and insecurities – is what is really in the way, not lack of time.

Claim your authority over your time. Watch how your authority grows when you honor your impulse to write your book. 

What choices are you making with your time? What helps you claim your authority so you can write your book?