Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back together with the word you write all the beauty and piece and the magic that you'll start too fun. When you write your story, you get the words and said, don't you think it's time to let them out and write them down and cold?

Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back together with the word you write all the beauty and piece and the magic that you'll start too fun. When you write your story, you get the words and said, don't you think it's time to let them out and write them down and cold?

It's all about and write your story.

It's all about and write your story.

Write you write your story.

Write you write your story.

Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. This is Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode, I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about my personal journey with publishing. I know so many of you who are listening into the show have a book idea that you would love to write and publish one day. Or maybe some of you have a book idea that you would love to write one day and you aren't sure whether you're publish it. Maybe the idea of publishing sounds terrifying to you. But either way, whether you plan to publish your work or don't plan to publish your work, I find that people find the concept of publishing very interesting and are always wanting to know how I got into this work, how I got my books, my various books published, And so I thought I would share a little bit of that journey today on the podcast. And in order to answer the question how did I get into publishing or how did I publish a book, I need to rewind many, many years back to the early nineties. When I was in fourth grade in Missus Gillespie's class, the entire class was given an assignment to write a story. The story was supposed to be one page. I went home and got really excited about the story that I was writing, and the story that I turned in the next day ended up being nine pages front and back. And it was the first time in my life I remember really losing myself inside of a task. And then I also have vivid memories of being very affirmed and complimented on my skill as a writer. Missus Gillespie had me get up in front of the class and read what I had written, and then at the end of that school year, she handed me a composition notebook that just had a short note inside of it that said, Dear Allison, You're an amazing writer. Keep writing. And I still remember that to this day. I go back to that moment a lot. Whenever I teach writing workshops, I tell people that story because we all have early memories as it relates to writing that shaped our belief about ourselves as a writer. Some of us have really positive memories like the one that I have from Missus Gillspie's class. And if you have a memory like that, you probably feel drawn to writing in a very positive way. You feel like you have the identity of a writer, You feel affirmed in your abilities as a writer. But I find a lot of us have stories that are opposite from that, And many writers who I talk to have stories of being told by teachers early on that this just wasn't a gift for them, or handing back a paper with a lot of red markings on it, or getting a C or a D on an essay that you turned in an English class that you worked really hard on. So if you have memories like that that are a to writing, it's no wonder that some of us have a harder time owning the title of writer or imagining that we would ever be capable of publishing a story that we've written. So that moment is such a seminal moment for me. That moment with Missus Gillespie getting the composition notebook at the end of my fourth grade year. In fact, after that, after she handed me that notebook. For as long as I can remember, until present day, I have carried a notebook around with me as a place to write down my thoughts, to write down things that come up for me, to write down ideas that I have for stories or books or poems that I want to write. And I have hundreds and hundreds of composition notebooks that I have filled over the years with those kinds of ideas. So fast forward to high school and college, when people would ask me the inevitable question, what do you want to do with your life? What do you want to do when you grow up? What do you want to major in? In college? My answer was always that I wanted to be a writer. I always knew somewhere deep inside that I wanted to write professionally. Specifically, I really wanted to write a book. I always knew that was something that was coming for me. But the feedback that I would get from a lot of really well meeting adults was it's very difficult to make a living as a full time writer. What's your backup plan? What else could you do that could pair really nicely with writing? And because of so many of those conversations, I chose when I went away to college to major in English with the plan to become an English teacher, and eventually got my graduate degree, a master's in teaching, so that I could teach. In Oregon, you need a master's degree to teach middle school and high school, so that was my plan. I got my master's degree, I taught middle school in high school. I came out of grad school in two thousand and eight when the economy was not in a great place, but I got a job immediately, and I felt very thankful for that, and I thought, Okay, so here's the plan. I'm going to teach middle school and high school. I'm going to use the extra quote unquote extra time that I have to work on my book project, and someday, one day, I'm going to write a book and I'm going to become a publisher author. Now, if you're a teacher, or you know a teacher, or you have children who are in school, you can already see the flaw in my plan, which is that teachers, although it might appear that they have all this extra time on their hands because of the way that their schedule is set up, they have students, you know, from seven to three, so it's not like a nine to five kind of a job. They have the quote unquote summers off where you get a time of the year where you're not going into the classroom every day to teach. But I can tell you from personal experience, and I just this was my own naivete at the time. I didn't realize this that teaching is more than a full time job. It is the fullest time possible job that anyone could ever have. It is not for the faint of heart. It is an all consuming job. If you're going to do it the right way, if you're going to be really invested and involved in your students' lives, if you're going to be invested and involved in shaping the curriculum that you're teaching to these students, if you are going to give any sort of valuable feedback to the work that they turn into you. It's not just about the hours that you spend in the classroom. It's about so much more than that. And teaching is the most amazing investment of time that I've ever experienced. And I remember, in those early years of teaching, looking around me and realizing that the teachers who I really respected, who were my colleagues that were truly making a difference in students' lives were so invested in what they were doing. They didn't have outside projects that they were also toying with that were distracting them from the job at hand, like my book idea was so obviously doing for me. It was becoming more and more clear by the day that I couldn't really choose both paths. I had to pick one, and so in twenty ten I quit my full time job. Actually what happened was my contract came up for renewal and I just denied the renewal and I left that full time position in order to focus full time on writing a book. At the time, I was really good friends with a girl named Sharia, who I'm still friends with, but we just don't spend as much time together as we used to. And she and I had this idea. She was an aspiring musician, I was an aspiring author, and we thought, how cool would it be if we took a trip across the United States. If we did this sort of stunty thing where we packed all our physical possessions into our car and we spent six months or a year driving across the country. Blogging about it and playing shows and busking on the sidewalk. The idea was that in the early age of social media and blogging, this would be a great way to draw attention to ourselves and build a platform for ourselves and maybe give us both an opportunity to launch our respective careers. Everything that I couldn't fit in my super outback I sold, aside from a few special possessions that I put in my parents' garage, and I spent the next six months traveling all over the country with my friend Sharia, and we did we played shows at different venues that we booked for her. I acted sort of like her manager or her booking age wentner I don't even know. I don't know the music industry well enough to know who I was to her, but kind of like a jack of all trades for her music. And at the same time, I was blogging about our journey and sharing about what we were doing on Instagram and on Twitter and on Facebook, and exactly what we hoped would happen happened, which is that we got a lot of eyeballs on what we were doing and a lot of people interacting with our work, and we grew a very small but engaged platform of people who were excited about us and excited about the art that we were creating, and so that was a really great boost of confidence, I think for both of us. We came home from that tour in late twenty ten, and what happened for me is I kind of crashed and burned. First of all, the amount of energy that it took to live out of our car for six months really took a toll on me in a way that I wasn't expecting. And then also so I think in the back of my mind, I expected to write my book while we were out on tour, and I didn't realize that I was actually going to be busy around the clock writing blog posts and posting on Instagram and booking shows for Sharia that were paying our way. And so when I came home it was a huge letdown because I didn't have a book manuscript finished, I had been out of my full time job for six months. I didn't know what I was going to do next, and I think I had this idea that maybe the blog posts I had been writing would somehow sort of add up to the book. And it was a really big lesson for me that those two things are separate and not the same. Not that a book idea cannot be born out of a blog, but blog posts and a book idea are two separate things. A book manuscript is not a blog post. It's not a bunch of blog posts strung together. It's its own entity, and it deserves and requires so much energy and effort from the author that I hadn't had in me to give to the book yet, because I was giving that energy and effort to the tour that we were on. So while the tour definitely served its purpose, I had a real come to Jesus moment with myself at the end of twenty ten that I was like, I've been six months without a job. Now I've been surviving on booking these shows for my friend Sharia, and now I have no source of income. I have no book to show for myself, and I really have to get serious about this if I am going to actually get this book written. So then in early twenty eleven, I was connected with an agent out of Nashville who I had tangentially met while we were on our tour, and I was offered a meeting with him, and I jumped at the chance. This is a literary agent who if you want to publish a book traditionally, you will need a literary agent to represent your interest to the publisher. That's a long story for another time, but just know that if you choose to publish traditionally, you will need a literary agent. I knew that at the time, and so I jumped at the chance to meet with this agent who was willing to take a quick meeting with me. Darbucks and I literally flew to Nashville to take this meeting with this guy. I didn't have any idea what I was getting myself into. I was very naive at the time about publishing. And I sat down with him. He was so kind, and he acted really interested in my book. I don't know if he actually was, but he acted really interested in my idea. And he told me, yeah, sure, go ahead, send me your book proposal document and I will send it around to some people that I know, and we'll see if we can't find you a connection that works for you. And when he said book proposal document, this wave of dread just came over my body because I realized I don't know what he's talking about, and I feel that this term that he used is probably really important to what I'm trying to do, And I just felt so far out of my depth at that point that I was like, what am I even doing? Is this dream that I have ever going to come true? And like how stupid could I be for not knowing what a book proposal document was? So I left that meeting and immediately googled what is a book proposal document? And I found a handful of people who at the time were teaching really openly online, Michael Hyatt being one of them, who has since become a colleague and a friend. But Michael Hyatt at the time was blogging a lot about what it took to be an author and was sharing resources, and I became really involved in his online community. And another author named Jeff Goins out of Nashville was doing the same thing, and I started following along with what he was doing and just learning a lot about how to put together a book proposal document, and I started working on my own book proposal document. By the end of twenty eleven, I had completed a book proposal document. In twenty twelve, I signed a book contract with Moody Publishers out of Chicago for my first book, which is called Packing Light. If you haven't read it, Packing Light thoughts on living life with less baggage. It was the story of taking this trip with my friend and really stepping out and trying something kind of unique and new and different for the first time. Now, the idea of going on a road trip for six months doesn't seem all that unique, but in twenty ten, it felt really unique to me. So that's the story of taking that trip with my friend and trying to figure out what I was here for and what I was supposed to do with my life. So it's a metaphor for letting go of physical baggage, is a metaphor for letting go of the emotional baggage. And signed that book contract with Moody Publishers and then set to work actually writing the book. I spent most of twenty twelve writing Packing Light, and I wrote that manuscript several times. I would write it and throw it in the garbage, and write it again, and throw it in the garbage, and write it again and throw out in the garbage. In part because I was trying to write the book without an outline. I was very said on writing the book without an outline. I felt like it was the only pure way to write a book, which is so ridiculous, but that's how I felt at the time. I really wanted to be struck with inspiration, and I wanted the thing to just flow through me. I didn't want to diminish the story to something that was to simplify. In my mind, it was very nuanced. I wanted it to be rich. I really wanted it to be more complicated than it needed to be, and so I was so attached to doing it without an outline that I ended up having to write the manuscript multiple times. I did finally land on a manuscript, A version of the manuscript that I liked, turned then into the publishers. That book was published in twenty thirteen. So if you're doing the math, you'll see that I quit my full time job in twenty ten and didn't publish my first book, Packing Light, until twenty thirteen. So that's three years of not having a secure expected income. Not to mention that you'll also recognize if you've ever known anyone who's written or sold a book, that unless the book is going to sell millions of copies, the book coming out in twenty thirteen. Also isn't going to probably feed me and pay my rent. More than likely, unless you're selling hundreds of thousands of copies of your book, the book is not going to pay your rent. For that is simply because you have to think you're selling a product that at best is selling at twenty dollars a pop. And that's twenty dollars a pop to the consumer. So to the retailer, the book is selling at maybe eight to twelve dollars a pop. And to you, because the publisher keeps eighty five to ninety percent of that to you, it's like a dollar a book at the most, probably pennies on the dollar. So if you're making pennies on the dollar for each unit you sell, just do the quick math in your head for how many units you have to sell in order to pay whatever it is. At the time, I think it was paying like five hundred dollars a month for rent, but that's unheard of now. So to make fifteen hundred dollars or two thousand dollars a month or whatever you need to pay your rent and then not to mention all of your other expenses. Selling books is not the greatest way to get to a full time living. So I started to do a handful of other things in twenty thirteen that were ways for me to generate some revenue for myself. So I started an online magazine. I was the editor in chief of that magazine. I started working with authors one on one to help them outline their books and get their manuscripts written. Based on my experience that I had had, and also based on my background with curriculum development, I just thought I could put together a course that would help people to understand how to write a manuscript, and so I started doing that. I started working one on one with people. I did an online course, I had an online magazine, and that was the first time in twenty thirteen when my business started to grow out of my drive and desire to become a full time author. Also, the story will be confusing if I don't add this part, although I would love to skip over this part. Also, the story will be confusing if I don't add this part, although I love to skip over this part. But if I don't say this part, it'll be confusing. If you're new here and you don't know my history, which is that somewhere in there in the twenty eleven twenty twelve range. I met a man online who was a literary agent who became very interested in helping me publish my book, who became very invested in my work, who I eventually married, and after Packing Light came out in twenty fourteen, we had been married for a couple of years. I had signed a deal to write a second book that was called Our First Years. It was a book about how challenging and difficult the first few years of marriage can be. And while I was in the process of writing that book, I was also really really suffering inside of that relationship. The relationship was extremely toxic on every level. I kept feeling like, I can fix this, I can get us out of this toxic cycle that we're in. I was really embarrassed by the way that I acted inside of the relationship. It seemed to bring out the absolute world in me. So I spent years and years really trying to fix that dynamic, trying to work on myself so that the dynamic could become more constructive. And no matter how much work I did on myself, the dynamic did not become more constructive. In fact, it just became more and more and more destructive. So, while I was struggling to write that book called Our First Years that would have been my second book, our marriage fell apart right in front of me, I uncovered some information that just informed me that there was a lot more going on here than just the arguments that we would have that were really unproductive, but that there was like a whole secret life being lived behind the scenes that I hadn't known about. And that piece of information, for me, really freed me up to make the decision I had been wanting to make for a long time, which was to leave the relationship. So the reason that piece of personal information matters is because my personal life and my professional life were really really deeply intertwined at that time. I had an agent who was representing me on this project, Our First Years, and I had publishers who were waiting to see what was the next book that I was going to come out with, because Packing Light meanwhile is selling in the marketplace and did very well. It did better than anyone expected it to do, and so publishers when that happens, are kind of waiting to see, like, Okay, what is she going to write next? And so I was very excited to be working on this book, but every time I would sit down to write it, and every time I would send pages to my agent, we would just be like, Yeah, this isn't clicking, it's not really working, it's not coming together in the way that we want it to come together. And the words just weren't coming and it was such a frustrating phase of writer's block. And during that time was when the marriage fell apart. And as soon as the marriage fell apart, it was so clear to me why I had been stuck in this phase of writer's block, because writer's block is not just writer's block, right, it's life block. That when there's something that we're trying to say on the page that isn't coming through, clearly, more than likely it represents something that we're wanting to say or do in our real life that we feel we can't say or do. And in my case, it was definitely to leave the marriage. So I filed for divorce in twenty sixteen, and almost immediately, actually even before I filed for divorce. At the end of twenty fifteen, I started writing little bits of what would later become my second book, called Indestructible, And I started writing this book without knowing that it was a book. I just started writing what was happening for me in my life. I started writing what was coming up for me. I started writing about events that had taken place inside of my marriage that I had never talked about, never told anyone, never been open about, and I just needed to see them on the page to know that they were real and to try to figure out what the hell was going on here, Like I needed to understand how I had gotten here, and writing was the only way that I could think to do that and to make money. At the time, was also working part time for a business called story Brand. Story Brand is a business started by Donald Miller, who's a friend and a colleague of mine, and it's designed to help businesses uncover the narrative of their business so that they can speak more clearly about what they sell and what they do. And I was learning the framework for how to create a narrative arc for a business. And as I was learning that to teach to other business owners, I was trying to figure out, like, could I use this same framework to help me understand my story? Could I use parts of this framework and overlay them on my personal story to better understand what I had been going through. And there were certain parts of the framework that fit really well with my personal story and other parts of the framework that didn't fit as well. But one of the things that really shifted for me during this time is I realized how helpful a framework could be. I went from someone who was like an outline that would just steal all the joy out of this process to being someone who was like, oh my god, a framework, this is going to help me find clarity and make sense and feel safe enough to actually express what was going on during this time. So I really latched on to that framework, or at least parts of it, and I started morphing it to help me understand how personal narrative works, how I could put this story together as part of one cohesive whole, how I could find the thread that was inside of it. And it was a really really miraculous time for me because what I found is as I did that, my story started speaking to me. My story started showing me things about myself that I hadn't been able to see before. It started showing things about what had taken place that I hadn't been able to see before. It really expanded my awareness and grew my consciousness and turned me in to the type of person who could solve this story for myself. So obviously you can see the connection here between what I do at write your Story and what was happening for me during that time. My work helping people outline their stories grew out of that very difficult time in my life. So twenty sixteen, I finished writing Indestructible. I put the book away on my computer, never planning to publish that book, but just feeling proud that I had turned it into a cohesive thing that was, you know, forty to fifty thousand words. It felt like a book to me, but I didn't plan to share it with anyone other than a few close friends. And then in twenty seventeen, I met my now husband, Matt, on a business trip in La I was teaching a couple of writing workshops. Out in LA I bumped into a mutual friend of ours who was really close to Matt and more of an acquaintance to me, and struck up a conversation with him, and he was like, you know, what are you, what's your life like these days? What are you doing? Do you have a boyfriend? Are you otherwise? It's attached, And at first I found the conversation kind of odd because I was like, isn't he married? Why is he asking me if I have a boyfriend? But he was like, I have a friend I want to connect you to. Would you be willing to go on a date? And set us up on a blind date that night? And the rest is kind of history. But that happened at the end, well middle to end, August of twenty seventeen. At the beginning of twenty eighteen, Matt started asking me if I ever thought I would publish Indestructible because I had shared parts of it with him, and I had shared the entire manuscript with a handful of friends, and Matt just started wondering, is this ever something that you want to share publicly? It just got me thinking about it, and I went back to revisit the manuscript, and when I did, I realized that the first draft of the manuscript really wasn't the way that I wanted to tell the story. The first draft of the manuscript was absolutely necessary, and it was exactly the way that I needed to tell the story to myself in the beginning. It wasn't the way that I wanted to crystallize the story. It wasn't the way that I wanted it to go down in history. So the first draft of the story was very angry. I was really angry for the first time in years. I hadn't had the permission, I hadn't given myself the permission to be mad inside of the relationship, Mad that things had gone the way that they had, Mad that I had tried so hard and I couldn't figure out a way to fix it. So the first draft of that story read really angry, and what I wanted to do, regardless of whether I ever decided to publish it, was I wanted to go back and rewrite the story from where I was in twenty eighteen, after I had done a ton a ton of healing, and even a new level of healing had come to me when I had met Matt and started dating him. Because Matt was such a different person than my ex husband was, our relationship dynamics were so different, and I found myself having a lot of the same glitches is internally that I had had in my past relationship inside of this new relationship, even though the relationship dynamics were so different. So I found myself feeling really afraid. I found myself feeling really reactive, and being a part of that relationship had called out of me this whole new level of healing, and I really wanted that healing to come through and indestructible. So at the beginning of twenty eighteen, I went back through the manuscript and I edited it with what I now call narrator voice. The narrator voice is the healed part of me that's telling the story. So the narrative voice says to the reader. It signals to the reader, this person has already healed from this, even though they're telling you this traumatic thing that happened. Obviously, there's always more healing to be done. I'm not saying that I healed completely. I'm just saying that when you insert a narrative voice into a memoir, a personal narrative, what you say to the reader is there an arc that we're taking you somewhere. That the hero of the story starts off in this really dark place, but they don't stay there. They're headed to a destination where there's more beauty and more joy, and more vision and more clarity. That's what the narrative voice does for the reader. So I went back through the manuscript and wove in that narrative voice that wasn't angry anymore, that wasn't still hurting in the same kind of acute way that I had been hurting at the beginning of the story when I wrote it, and when I did that, Indestructible as a book became something that I thought, you know, this could really serve people. The first draft of it served me, and I needed that draft. But the second draft of it, or the fiftieth draft, you know, I went through a handful of times editing. But that final draft, I thought this could serve people who have had a similar experience to me, because I'm standing on the other side of the bridge now, and it could serve people in a way to say, there's another side to the bridge. You don't have to stay on that side of the bridge. So I spent most of twenty eighteen trying to figure out a way to get that book published. I met with a bunch of agents. I had a few agents really interested in what I was working on, But ultimately, when the agents read the story the way that it was written, I couldn't find an agent who was willing to be fully on board with the way that I wanted to tell the story. I wanted to be completely honest about what had taken place. I really wanted to take responsibility for my side of things. I didn't want to shy away from the more difficult parts of the story. I wanted to share it all. And I didn't want the story to end in some sort of like and then another man swooped in and saved me from my darkness. I wanted the story to end before I had met Matt. I wanted the story to end where I had stood with confidence on my own two feet and looked at myself in the mirror and been really proud of the process that I had been through. And I couldn't find an agent who was willing to stand completely with me on that story. And so I decided to publish the book in an unconventional way, and to publish the book with a publisher called a hybrid publisher, where you don't need an agent to represent you, you get to keep a bigger percentage of the royalty split, and you don't have to send your content through such a rigorous process of editing. You get to make more of the creative decisions on your own that seems like the best fit for Indestructible the way it was written, and so I took that opportunity when it.

Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. This is Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode, I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about my personal journey with publishing. I know so many of you who are listening into the show have a book idea that you would love to write and publish one day. Or maybe some of you have a book idea that you would love to write one day and you aren't sure whether you're publish it. Maybe the idea of publishing sounds terrifying to you. But either way, whether you plan to publish your work or don't plan to publish your work, I find that people find the concept of publishing very interesting and are always wanting to know how I got into this work, how I got my books, my various books published, And so I thought I would share a little bit of that journey today on the podcast. And in order to answer the question how did I get into publishing or how did I publish a book, I need to rewind many, many years back to the early nineties. When I was in fourth grade in Missus Gillespie's class, the entire class was given an assignment to write a story. The story was supposed to be one page. I went home and got really excited about the story that I was writing, and the story that I turned in the next day ended up being nine pages front and back. And it was the first time in my life I remember really losing myself inside of a task. And then I also have vivid memories of being very affirmed and complimented on my skill as a writer. Missus Gillespie had me get up in front of the class and read what I had written, and then at the end of that school year, she handed me a composition notebook that just had a short note inside of it that said, Dear Allison, You're an amazing writer. Keep writing. And I still remember that to this day. I go back to that moment a lot. Whenever I teach writing workshops, I tell people that story because we all have early memories as it relates to writing that shaped our belief about ourselves as a writer. Some of us have really positive memories like the one that I have from Missus Gillspie's class. And if you have a memory like that, you probably feel drawn to writing in a very positive way. You feel like you have the identity of a writer, You feel affirmed in your abilities as a writer. But I find a lot of us have stories that are opposite from that, And many writers who I talk to have stories of being told by teachers early on that this just wasn't a gift for them, or handing back a paper with a lot of red markings on it, or getting a C or a D on an essay that you turned in an English class that you worked really hard on. So if you have memories like that that are a to writing, it's no wonder that some of us have a harder time owning the title of writer or imagining that we would ever be capable of publishing a story that we've written. So that moment is such a seminal moment for me. That moment with Missus Gillespie getting the composition notebook at the end of my fourth grade year. In fact, after that, after she handed me that notebook. For as long as I can remember, until present day, I have carried a notebook around with me as a place to write down my thoughts, to write down things that come up for me, to write down ideas that I have for stories or books or poems that I want to write. And I have hundreds and hundreds of composition notebooks that I have filled over the years with those kinds of ideas. So fast forward to high school and college, when people would ask me the inevitable question, what do you want to do with your life? What do you want to do when you grow up? What do you want to major in? In college? My answer was always that I wanted to be a writer. I always knew somewhere deep inside that I wanted to write professionally. Specifically, I really wanted to write a book. I always knew that was something that was coming for me. But the feedback that I would get from a lot of really well meeting adults was it's very difficult to make a living as a full time writer. What's your backup plan? What else could you do that could pair really nicely with writing? And because of so many of those conversations, I chose when I went away to college to major in English with the plan to become an English teacher, and eventually got my graduate degree, a master's in teaching, so that I could teach. In Oregon, you need a master's degree to teach middle school and high school, so that was my plan. I got my master's degree, I taught middle school in high school. I came out of grad school in two thousand and eight when the economy was not in a great place, but I got a job immediately, and I felt very thankful for that, and I thought, Okay, so here's the plan. I'm going to teach middle school and high school. I'm going to use the extra quote unquote extra time that I have to work on my book project, and someday, one day, I'm going to write a book and I'm going to become a publisher author. Now, if you're a teacher, or you know a teacher, or you have children who are in school, you can already see the flaw in my plan, which is that teachers, although it might appear that they have all this extra time on their hands because of the way that their schedule is set up, they have students, you know, from seven to three, so it's not like a nine to five kind of a job. They have the quote unquote summers off where you get a time of the year where you're not going into the classroom every day to teach. But I can tell you from personal experience, and I just this was my own naivete at the time. I didn't realize this that teaching is more than a full time job. It is the fullest time possible job that anyone could ever have. It is not for the faint of heart. It is an all consuming job. If you're going to do it the right way, if you're going to be really invested and involved in your students' lives, if you're going to be invested and involved in shaping the curriculum that you're teaching to these students, if you are going to give any sort of valuable feedback to the work that they turn into you. It's not just about the hours that you spend in the classroom. It's about so much more than that. And teaching is the most amazing investment of time that I've ever experienced. And I remember, in those early years of teaching, looking around me and realizing that the teachers who I really respected, who were my colleagues that were truly making a difference in students' lives were so invested in what they were doing. They didn't have outside projects that they were also toying with that were distracting them from the job at hand, like my book idea was so obviously doing for me. It was becoming more and more clear by the day that I couldn't really choose both paths. I had to pick one, and so in twenty ten I quit my full time job. Actually what happened was my contract came up for renewal and I just denied the renewal and I left that full time position in order to focus full time on writing a book. At the time, I was really good friends with a girl named Sharia, who I'm still friends with, but we just don't spend as much time together as we used to. And she and I had this idea. She was an aspiring musician, I was an aspiring author, and we thought, how cool would it be if we took a trip across the United States. If we did this sort of stunty thing where we packed all our physical possessions into our car and we spent six months or a year driving across the country. Blogging about it and playing shows and busking on the sidewalk. The idea was that in the early age of social media and blogging, this would be a great way to draw attention to ourselves and build a platform for ourselves and maybe give us both an opportunity to launch our respective careers. Everything that I couldn't fit in my super outback I sold, aside from a few special possessions that I put in my parents' garage, and I spent the next six months traveling all over the country with my friend Sharia, and we did we played shows at different venues that we booked for her. I acted sort of like her manager or her booking age wentner I don't even know. I don't know the music industry well enough to know who I was to her, but kind of like a jack of all trades for her music. And at the same time, I was blogging about our journey and sharing about what we were doing on Instagram and on Twitter and on Facebook, and exactly what we hoped would happen happened, which is that we got a lot of eyeballs on what we were doing and a lot of people interacting with our work, and we grew a very small but engaged platform of people who were excited about us and excited about the art that we were creating, and so that was a really great boost of confidence, I think for both of us. We came home from that tour in late twenty ten, and what happened for me is I kind of crashed and burned. First of all, the amount of energy that it took to live out of our car for six months really took a toll on me in a way that I wasn't expecting. And then also so I think in the back of my mind, I expected to write my book while we were out on tour, and I didn't realize that I was actually going to be busy around the clock writing blog posts and posting on Instagram and booking shows for Sharia that were paying our way. And so when I came home it was a huge letdown because I didn't have a book manuscript finished, I had been out of my full time job for six months. I didn't know what I was going to do next, and I think I had this idea that maybe the blog posts I had been writing would somehow sort of add up to the book. And it was a really big lesson for me that those two things are separate and not the same. Not that a book idea cannot be born out of a blog, but blog posts and a book idea are two separate things. A book manuscript is not a blog post. It's not a bunch of blog posts strung together. It's its own entity, and it deserves and requires so much energy and effort from the author that I hadn't had in me to give to the book yet, because I was giving that energy and effort to the tour that we were on. So while the tour definitely served its purpose, I had a real come to Jesus moment with myself at the end of twenty ten that I was like, I've been six months without a job. Now I've been surviving on booking these shows for my friend Sharia, and now I have no source of income. I have no book to show for myself, and I really have to get serious about this if I am going to actually get this book written. So then in early twenty eleven, I was connected with an agent out of Nashville who I had tangentially met while we were on our tour, and I was offered a meeting with him, and I jumped at the chance. This is a literary agent who if you want to publish a book traditionally, you will need a literary agent to represent your interest to the publisher. That's a long story for another time, but just know that if you choose to publish traditionally, you will need a literary agent. I knew that at the time, and so I jumped at the chance to meet with this agent who was willing to take a quick meeting with me. Darbucks and I literally flew to Nashville to take this meeting with this guy. I didn't have any idea what I was getting myself into. I was very naive at the time about publishing. And I sat down with him. He was so kind, and he acted really interested in my book. I don't know if he actually was, but he acted really interested in my idea. And he told me, yeah, sure, go ahead, send me your book proposal document and I will send it around to some people that I know, and we'll see if we can't find you a connection that works for you. And when he said book proposal document, this wave of dread just came over my body because I realized I don't know what he's talking about, and I feel that this term that he used is probably really important to what I'm trying to do, And I just felt so far out of my depth at that point that I was like, what am I even doing? Is this dream that I have ever going to come true? And like how stupid could I be for not knowing what a book proposal document was? So I left that meeting and immediately googled what is a book proposal document? And I found a handful of people who at the time were teaching really openly online, Michael Hyatt being one of them, who has since become a colleague and a friend. But Michael Hyatt at the time was blogging a lot about what it took to be an author and was sharing resources, and I became really involved in his online community. And another author named Jeff Goins out of Nashville was doing the same thing, and I started following along with what he was doing and just learning a lot about how to put together a book proposal document, and I started working on my own book proposal document. By the end of twenty eleven, I had completed a book proposal document. In twenty twelve, I signed a book contract with Moody Publishers out of Chicago for my first book, which is called Packing Light. If you haven't read it, Packing Light thoughts on living life with less baggage. It was the story of taking this trip with my friend and really stepping out and trying something kind of unique and new and different for the first time. Now, the idea of going on a road trip for six months doesn't seem all that unique, but in twenty ten, it felt really unique to me. So that's the story of taking that trip with my friend and trying to figure out what I was here for and what I was supposed to do with my life. So it's a metaphor for letting go of physical baggage, is a metaphor for letting go of the emotional baggage. And signed that book contract with Moody Publishers and then set to work actually writing the book. I spent most of twenty twelve writing Packing Light, and I wrote that manuscript several times. I would write it and throw it in the garbage, and write it again, and throw it in the garbage, and write it again and throw out in the garbage. In part because I was trying to write the book without an outline. I was very said on writing the book without an outline. I felt like it was the only pure way to write a book, which is so ridiculous, but that's how I felt at the time. I really wanted to be struck with inspiration, and I wanted the thing to just flow through me. I didn't want to diminish the story to something that was to simplify. In my mind, it was very nuanced. I wanted it to be rich. I really wanted it to be more complicated than it needed to be, and so I was so attached to doing it without an outline that I ended up having to write the manuscript multiple times. I did finally land on a manuscript, A version of the manuscript that I liked, turned then into the publishers. That book was published in twenty thirteen. So if you're doing the math, you'll see that I quit my full time job in twenty ten and didn't publish my first book, Packing Light, until twenty thirteen. So that's three years of not having a secure expected income. Not to mention that you'll also recognize if you've ever known anyone who's written or sold a book, that unless the book is going to sell millions of copies, the book coming out in twenty thirteen. Also isn't going to probably feed me and pay my rent. More than likely, unless you're selling hundreds of thousands of copies of your book, the book is not going to pay your rent. For that is simply because you have to think you're selling a product that at best is selling at twenty dollars a pop. And that's twenty dollars a pop to the consumer. So to the retailer, the book is selling at maybe eight to twelve dollars a pop. And to you, because the publisher keeps eighty five to ninety percent of that to you, it's like a dollar a book at the most, probably pennies on the dollar. So if you're making pennies on the dollar for each unit you sell, just do the quick math in your head for how many units you have to sell in order to pay whatever it is. At the time, I think it was paying like five hundred dollars a month for rent, but that's unheard of now. So to make fifteen hundred dollars or two thousand dollars a month or whatever you need to pay your rent and then not to mention all of your other expenses. Selling books is not the greatest way to get to a full time living. So I started to do a handful of other things in twenty thirteen that were ways for me to generate some revenue for myself. So I started an online magazine. I was the editor in chief of that magazine. I started working with authors one on one to help them outline their books and get their manuscripts written. Based on my experience that I had had, and also based on my background with curriculum development, I just thought I could put together a course that would help people to understand how to write a manuscript, and so I started doing that. I started working one on one with people. I did an online course, I had an online magazine, and that was the first time in twenty thirteen when my business started to grow out of my drive and desire to become a full time author. Also, the story will be confusing if I don't add this part, although I would love to skip over this part. Also, the story will be confusing if I don't add this part, although I love to skip over this part. But if I don't say this part, it'll be confusing. If you're new here and you don't know my history, which is that somewhere in there in the twenty eleven twenty twelve range. I met a man online who was a literary agent who became very interested in helping me publish my book, who became very invested in my work, who I eventually married, and after Packing Light came out in twenty fourteen, we had been married for a couple of years. I had signed a deal to write a second book that was called Our First Years. It was a book about how challenging and difficult the first few years of marriage can be. And while I was in the process of writing that book, I was also really really suffering inside of that relationship. The relationship was extremely toxic on every level. I kept feeling like, I can fix this, I can get us out of this toxic cycle that we're in. I was really embarrassed by the way that I acted inside of the relationship. It seemed to bring out the absolute world in me. So I spent years and years really trying to fix that dynamic, trying to work on myself so that the dynamic could become more constructive. And no matter how much work I did on myself, the dynamic did not become more constructive. In fact, it just became more and more and more destructive. So, while I was struggling to write that book called Our First Years that would have been my second book, our marriage fell apart right in front of me, I uncovered some information that just informed me that there was a lot more going on here than just the arguments that we would have that were really unproductive, but that there was like a whole secret life being lived behind the scenes that I hadn't known about. And that piece of information, for me, really freed me up to make the decision I had been wanting to make for a long time, which was to leave the relationship. So the reason that piece of personal information matters is because my personal life and my professional life were really really deeply intertwined at that time. I had an agent who was representing me on this project, Our First Years, and I had publishers who were waiting to see what was the next book that I was going to come out with, because Packing Light meanwhile is selling in the marketplace and did very well. It did better than anyone expected it to do, and so publishers when that happens, are kind of waiting to see, like, Okay, what is she going to write next? And so I was very excited to be working on this book, but every time I would sit down to write it, and every time I would send pages to my agent, we would just be like, Yeah, this isn't clicking, it's not really working, it's not coming together in the way that we want it to come together. And the words just weren't coming and it was such a frustrating phase of writer's block. And during that time was when the marriage fell apart. And as soon as the marriage fell apart, it was so clear to me why I had been stuck in this phase of writer's block, because writer's block is not just writer's block, right, it's life block. That when there's something that we're trying to say on the page that isn't coming through, clearly, more than likely it represents something that we're wanting to say or do in our real life that we feel we can't say or do. And in my case, it was definitely to leave the marriage. So I filed for divorce in twenty sixteen, and almost immediately, actually even before I filed for divorce. At the end of twenty fifteen, I started writing little bits of what would later become my second book, called Indestructible, And I started writing this book without knowing that it was a book. I just started writing what was happening for me in my life. I started writing what was coming up for me. I started writing about events that had taken place inside of my marriage that I had never talked about, never told anyone, never been open about, and I just needed to see them on the page to know that they were real and to try to figure out what the hell was going on here, Like I needed to understand how I had gotten here, and writing was the only way that I could think to do that and to make money. At the time, was also working part time for a business called story Brand. Story Brand is a business started by Donald Miller, who's a friend and a colleague of mine, and it's designed to help businesses uncover the narrative of their business so that they can speak more clearly about what they sell and what they do. And I was learning the framework for how to create a narrative arc for a business. And as I was learning that to teach to other business owners, I was trying to figure out, like, could I use this same framework to help me understand my story? Could I use parts of this framework and overlay them on my personal story to better understand what I had been going through. And there were certain parts of the framework that fit really well with my personal story and other parts of the framework that didn't fit as well. But one of the things that really shifted for me during this time is I realized how helpful a framework could be. I went from someone who was like an outline that would just steal all the joy out of this process to being someone who was like, oh my god, a framework, this is going to help me find clarity and make sense and feel safe enough to actually express what was going on during this time. So I really latched on to that framework, or at least parts of it, and I started morphing it to help me understand how personal narrative works, how I could put this story together as part of one cohesive whole, how I could find the thread that was inside of it. And it was a really really miraculous time for me because what I found is as I did that, my story started speaking to me. My story started showing me things about myself that I hadn't been able to see before. It started showing things about what had taken place that I hadn't been able to see before. It really expanded my awareness and grew my consciousness and turned me in to the type of person who could solve this story for myself. So obviously you can see the connection here between what I do at write your Story and what was happening for me during that time. My work helping people outline their stories grew out of that very difficult time in my life. So twenty sixteen, I finished writing Indestructible. I put the book away on my computer, never planning to publish that book, but just feeling proud that I had turned it into a cohesive thing that was, you know, forty to fifty thousand words. It felt like a book to me, but I didn't plan to share it with anyone other than a few close friends. And then in twenty seventeen, I met my now husband, Matt, on a business trip in La I was teaching a couple of writing workshops. Out in LA I bumped into a mutual friend of ours who was really close to Matt and more of an acquaintance to me, and struck up a conversation with him, and he was like, you know, what are you, what's your life like these days? What are you doing? Do you have a boyfriend? Are you otherwise? It's attached, And at first I found the conversation kind of odd because I was like, isn't he married? Why is he asking me if I have a boyfriend? But he was like, I have a friend I want to connect you to. Would you be willing to go on a date? And set us up on a blind date that night? And the rest is kind of history. But that happened at the end, well middle to end, August of twenty seventeen. At the beginning of twenty eighteen, Matt started asking me if I ever thought I would publish Indestructible because I had shared parts of it with him, and I had shared the entire manuscript with a handful of friends, and Matt just started wondering, is this ever something that you want to share publicly? It just got me thinking about it, and I went back to revisit the manuscript, and when I did, I realized that the first draft of the manuscript really wasn't the way that I wanted to tell the story. The first draft of the manuscript was absolutely necessary, and it was exactly the way that I needed to tell the story to myself in the beginning. It wasn't the way that I wanted to crystallize the story. It wasn't the way that I wanted it to go down in history. So the first draft of the story was very angry. I was really angry for the first time in years. I hadn't had the permission, I hadn't given myself the permission to be mad inside of the relationship, Mad that things had gone the way that they had, Mad that I had tried so hard and I couldn't figure out a way to fix it. So the first draft of that story read really angry, and what I wanted to do, regardless of whether I ever decided to publish it, was I wanted to go back and rewrite the story from where I was in twenty eighteen, after I had done a ton a ton of healing, and even a new level of healing had come to me when I had met Matt and started dating him. Because Matt was such a different person than my ex husband was, our relationship dynamics were so different, and I found myself having a lot of the same glitches is internally that I had had in my past relationship inside of this new relationship, even though the relationship dynamics were so different. So I found myself feeling really afraid. I found myself feeling really reactive, and being a part of that relationship had called out of me this whole new level of healing, and I really wanted that healing to come through and indestructible. So at the beginning of twenty eighteen, I went back through the manuscript and I edited it with what I now call narrator voice. The narrator voice is the healed part of me that's telling the story. So the narrative voice says to the reader. It signals to the reader, this person has already healed from this, even though they're telling you this traumatic thing that happened. Obviously, there's always more healing to be done. I'm not saying that I healed completely. I'm just saying that when you insert a narrative voice into a memoir, a personal narrative, what you say to the reader is there an arc that we're taking you somewhere. That the hero of the story starts off in this really dark place, but they don't stay there. They're headed to a destination where there's more beauty and more joy, and more vision and more clarity. That's what the narrative voice does for the reader. So I went back through the manuscript and wove in that narrative voice that wasn't angry anymore, that wasn't still hurting in the same kind of acute way that I had been hurting at the beginning of the story when I wrote it, and when I did that, Indestructible as a book became something that I thought, you know, this could really serve people. The first draft of it served me, and I needed that draft. But the second draft of it, or the fiftieth draft, you know, I went through a handful of times editing. But that final draft, I thought this could serve people who have had a similar experience to me, because I'm standing on the other side of the bridge now, and it could serve people in a way to say, there's another side to the bridge. You don't have to stay on that side of the bridge. So I spent most of twenty eighteen trying to figure out a way to get that book published. I met with a bunch of agents. I had a few agents really interested in what I was working on, But ultimately, when the agents read the story the way that it was written, I couldn't find an agent who was willing to be fully on board with the way that I wanted to tell the story. I wanted to be completely honest about what had taken place. I really wanted to take responsibility for my side of things. I didn't want to shy away from the more difficult parts of the story. I wanted to share it all. And I didn't want the story to end in some sort of like and then another man swooped in and saved me from my darkness. I wanted the story to end before I had met Matt. I wanted the story to end where I had stood with confidence on my own two feet and looked at myself in the mirror and been really proud of the process that I had been through. And I couldn't find an agent who was willing to stand completely with me on that story. And so I decided to publish the book in an unconventional way, and to publish the book with a publisher called a hybrid publisher, where you don't need an agent to represent you, you get to keep a bigger percentage of the royalty split, and you don't have to send your content through such a rigorous process of editing. You get to make more of the creative decisions on your own that seems like the best fit for Indestructible the way it was written, and so I took that opportunity when it.

Came to me.

Came to me.

So Indestructible published at the end of twenty eighteen, and I'm really really proud of that book. Of all the three books that I've written and published so far, Indestructible is the one that I'm the most proud of, even though it maybe has sold the fewest number of copies. I think Packing Light is sold. I don't know twenty five to thirty thousand copies. Indestructible has sold maybe ten to twelve. And The Power Writing It Down. I actually don't know the latest numbers for The Power Writing It Down, but I would imagine it's around fifteen. So speaking of The Power Writing it Down. In twenty nineteen, I was speaking at a conference. I was speaking at story conference here in Nashville, and I was pulled aside by an acquisitions editor at a publisher. I loved this acquisitions editor. I loved because she had been my editor Unpacking Light. I am such a huge fan of her. Stephanie Smith, if you're listening to this, you are one of my favorite people that works in publishing, and I just really love the work that you do. Anyway, she pulled me aside at Story and asked if I would be interested in writing a book about writing writing a book about what I was speaking about at Story, which is that the power of writing down what's going on in your life is that it absolutely transforms you from the inside out. That it can improve your physical health, it can improve your mental health, it can improve your emotional health, it can improve every single of your life, from your relationships to your money, to your career, et cetera. And she wanted to know if I'd be interested in writing a book like that, and I was just like, yes, yes, Yes, a thousand times yes. So I signed the contract in September of twenty nineteen to write the Power of Writing It Down. And I knew I needed to write the manuscript fairly quickly because I was getting married in November, and I really wanted to send the manuscript off to the publisher before I went on my honeymoon. So I worked very quickly on that book. I got the manuscript written, I sent it in like days before I got married to Matt. We got married in November of twenty nineteen and then obviously early twenty twenty March of twenty twenty, we all went into lockdown, and I remember doing the edits for the power of writing it down shortly after a lockdown started. It was like late March, I want to say that I was doing those edits, and it was such a bizarre experience to do edits on a manuscript I had written in another world before COVID had happened, and then I'm doing edits on the book and it's like, wow, I have to edit this to make it make sense for this new world that we're all living in. And I was also doing that on the fly while we were making sense of this new world that we were all living in that didn't make sense to any of us. And it was just such a bizarre time to be working on a book that you know is going to go on a shelf and you can't edit it later. It's different than writing a blog post, which you can go back and update or edit later. When you're writing a book, those words are going to be immortalized inside the book. You cannot go back and edit that once those physical words are out in the world. So it's such a bizarre experience to be like, we're guestimating at what's going to happen in the world, and I'm having to put it down here in black and white. So that book was an interesting experience because it also it came out in January of twenty twenty one, January ninth, twenty twenty one, which, if you'll remember, was three days after the insurrection at the Capitol. Also because of the way that publishing shifted so dramatically when COVID happened, My publishing team at the publisher shifted around dramatically. In fact, I think the leadership team changed and the publisher at the time left his position or maybe was fired, I don't remember one hundred percent. And my marketing director left or was fired. So my entire publishing team that was working with me to get this book out in the world shifted overnight, and then the book came out, and it was just really not great timing for an author to have a book come out three days after this massive thing happens in the media. It was really difficult to get traction, and I think the book just didn't quite find its place in the world the way that a lot of us thought that it would. And you know, I mean, the years of COVID are a really interesting time to be an author in the world. I had a lot of friends who had their contracts canceled during COVID because maybe they were in the process two steps before me with writing their book where they had to fully finished the manuscript yet, and because publishers were having to slash their budgets, they were like, we're going to have to take half of these authors off of our roster. And so a handful of my friends had their contracts canceled completely. And I also had a handful of friends who had books fully edited and written in coming out in March and April of twenty twenty, and because of that, their book tours were canceled. Their book sales were impacted dramatically. People stopped going to in person retail bookstores for quite some time in twenty twenty, and it changed the way that books sold, and it was a really confusing time to be an author. Now, I say that also knowing that now in late twenty twenty three, as I record this episode, this is a really exciting time to be an author or even an aspiring author, because publishing is changing so dramatically and it actually really favors authors just like you who have a book idea but who haven't quite found your path in traditionalublishing yet. Or maybe you have published a book in traditional publishing, but you're wondering if maybe there's another idea that you'd like to put out in the world that isn't quite a fit for traditional publishing. Even an author like me. I'm considered what publishers call a mid level author, which just means I'm going to sell fifteen to twenty five thousand copies of a book. I've got a decent social media following, I've got an email list, but I'm not a celebrity. I'm not a public figure. I'm not going to sell millions of copies of the book unless something really unexpected happens, in which case amazing and we will welcome that. But I'm considered a mid level author, which means I can continue down this path of traditional publishing, and I may continue to do that. I am a huge fan of so many friends who work in traditional publishing, and I think traditional publishing has so much to offer to the world, and I definitely don't believe that we should write off traditional publishing. But I will tell you that with this next book that I have written and edited and coming out next year in twenty twenty four, that I've decided to publish with a publisher called Forefront Books out of Nashville that is also a hybrid publisher. This is really really exciting because it means that I have a lot more control over what goes inside of the book, and I have a lot more control over how we choose to release the book to the world, how I choose to talk about it, how I price the book. All of those choices I get to participate in in a way that I don't get to participate when I'm publishing with a traditional publisher. So I'm really excited to test this out because I work with so many authors who I recommend take a self publishing or hybrid publishing path, and I haven't really done a hybrid publishing path where I've really given it a go. Even though Indestructible was a hybrid published book, Indestructible for me was like a I'm going to just share this with my readers who need it, and there wasn't a lot of strategy put behind it in the same way that there will be with this book. So I'm really excited for this next book that I have come out in May of next year. I can't announce the title yet, but we're really close to being able to announce the title. I think that we're pretty much settled on what the title and subtitle are going to be, and so really soon I'll get to tell you about the title of that book. But for now, I just want to talk about how exciting it is that there are so many options available for authors in twenty twenty three, in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five who want to publish books, but who don't want to chase social media followers, chase down an agent to represent them, chase down a publisher. You know you have an idea, you know you do, and this isn't from you. It's from something other than you that's trying to come through you that you're supposed to put on the page, but you stop yourself from doing it because you worry that you couldn't find all the pieces of the puzzle to come together. And what I would say is, don't worry about the pieces of the puzzle. Let those come together on their own. Maybe it's traditional publishing, maybe it's not, but don't let it stop you that you don't have the pieces for traditional publishing. Don't let that stop you from writing the book. Just write the book and get it out of you, and work with the material that you have, work with the material that's been given, and take the reins on this thing. So I'm really excited to tell you more as my journey unfolds. That's from nineteen ninety three until twenty twenty three, that is my publishing journey, and there's obviously going to be a lot more to share as the story unfolds. So I'm excited to share that with you and excited to share how it all goes. And I especially can't wait to share my book that's coming out next year. But the takeaway from this podcast episode isn't really about my books. It's about the book that you know that you're supposed to write. Because you do know that you're supposed to write a book. If you're still listening to this, the reason you're listening to it is because you know that there's a book in you that needs to come out. And I'm going to tell you from experience that the book idea is not going anywhere. It's not going to disappear just because you ignore it. It's going to show up in your dreams, it's going to show up in your desires. It's going to show up in those moments when you're supposed to be focused on your job and instead you're typing something away furiously into your phone or into your computer. So the idea is not going anywhere, and I would really love to be someone who could help you get it out of your head and onto paper. I have a workshop coming up on November eleventh. If you're listening to this the day it comes out, it's this coming weekend, November eleventh, from ten am Central Standard Time to one pm Central Standard Time. This workshop is all about helping you unpack your book idea. So you can come to this workshop with no idea what you want to write about. You can come with some vague, obscure idea of what you want to write about. You can come with ten ideas and you're not sure which one to start with. Wherever you are. You will leave the workshop with a very clear idea of what your book is about, ready to engage with the process. A lot of people say to me, I have a book idea, but I'm procrastinating. I actually don't think you're procrastinating. I think you just lack the clarity that you need in order to move forward. What I want to give you is the clarity that you need in order to move forward. So that clarity is around how the publishing industry even works. I can share with you what is traditional publishing? What do you need to walk that path? What is hybrid publishing? What do you need to walk that path? What is self publishing? There are a lot of misconceptions about self publishing that I can clarify for you. Clarity around your actual book idea. So what is the idea? What's the hook for the reader? Is this interesting to anyone else but me? Is anyone ever going to read it? Is it going to be a waste of my time? Those are always questions that people want answered at the beginning of this process, and then finally clarity about why you're the one who needs to write this book. A lot of people write themselves off as authors because they think, well, so and so already talks about this, and they would write a better book than I would, or maybe so and so has already written a book about this, and it's better, a better book than I could ever write, and I want to give you clarity on why you, and only you can write this book. This book is coming to you, coming to your mind and coming to your heart for a reason. It's not by accident, and I want to help you gain the clarity that you need to actually say yes to the thing and make it a reality. This has been what twenty ten really is when I've really jumped into this full time to twenty twenty three, so thirteen years of a roller coaster. I didn't even include the books that I've ghost written in here, because there's three of my own and then ten for other people, So I've ghost written a bunch of books. I didn't include that in this journey. It's a crazy roller coaster, and it's one that I would absolutely go on again, if only for the book Indestructible. I'm telling you, I know it seems crazy, but that book is the one that has changed my life the most of all the books that I've written, it's the one that if I was running This doesn't really fit as an analogy, but if I was running out of a burning building, I can only save one of the books I would save, Instructible Indestructible saved my life and it doesn't really matter how many copies it's sold. So, if you're listening to this and this is you, and you have a book idea that you've been putting off, come to my workshop on Saturday November eleventh, ten am Central Standard time. So join us for the workshop. If you're listening to this after the fact, you can still hear a recording of the workshop. Go to the link that's in the show notes to either register for the workshop that's coming up on the eleventh, or this is if this is after the eleventh. For you still click that link. Go there. You'll be able to watch a recording of the workshop. And I can't wait to see you in class. I believe in you, I believe in your book idea, and we'll talk soon