How do we get to be an author? We can tell ourselves forever we're going to
write a book but how do I start writing a book? That's what we're into today at
Live On Purpose TV.
So for about ten years, I told myself I'm going to write a
book, I am going to write a book, I've got a book in me. Have you ever thought that?
Okay, that was a problem for me because every time I said it, it was true, I'm
going to see how that can always be true, well it's not happening now but I'm
going to someday. Have you got a book in you? And my guess is, if you're watching
this video, you're probably thinking about it so let's see what it takes.
How am I going to get it done instead of just having it be something out there in
the future? The first thing, rewrite that phrase. I had an experience that changed
this for me because I realized in this experience that I had that I was telling
myself something that was not serving my progress. I'm going to write a book and
what changed for me is the phrasing so instead of I'm going try to book, I am an
author. Now think about the difference between those two phrases and you know
what? At first, it felt like I was lying to myself but the experience had to do
with friend of mine who is a New York Times bestselling author, her name is
Leslie Householder. Leslie, if you're watching this, I just love you and your
work and this made a difference for me when Leslie talked about telling the
truth in advance and it had to do with her becoming a New
York Times bestselling author which she wasn't at the time that she started
saying it to herself but the mind is an interesting thing
because we're giving it marching orders all the time and whatever we tell our
mind, it's like, "Aye aye, captain. I'll make that happen for you." And saying that I'm going
to write a book, it's like, "Yeah, that was easy, you're going to. We're onboard."
Changing it up so Leslie told the story about how one of her coaches told her,
hey, get from, you know, I'm going to and wishing and it's all in the future to
let's make this present tense, let's attach a little bit of emotion to it.
I am a best-selling author and she felt like she was lying to herself until she
figured out, wait a minute, if that is true someday then it is true
and I am telling the truth in advance. Interesting. That does
something to the mind because now, aye aye, captain, okay. Your mind is going to
put some things in place for you to actually pull that off, that's the first
step. What are you saying about this? That you're going to write a book or that you
are an author and you can add the bells and whistles like, I'm a best-selling
author or I'm an influential author or I'm a productive author or I am an
author of whatever, okay. Tell the truth in advance, at least to
yourself, okay. So that's going to get the psychology behind you. Now, once I changed
that phrase, my mind started working on making it true because I didn't feel
comfortable saying I'm an author if I'm not. Well what does an author do? An
author writes. Interesting, I wasn't writing at the time, I mean, I'd write
little things here and there, I had a blog post, I did a little empower message
that went out to my subscriber list but I wasn't writing my book at that,
at least I didn't think I was. Here's something that'll get you started and I
did this and it launched the whole process that culminated in my first book,
I'm calling it the authors book tour because authors go on author's book
tours, right? I'm not talking about the kind where you go sit in Costco and sign
your book for everybody, I'm talking about the one where today or tomorrow, I
don't know what time you're watching this video, you got to find out when the
bookstore is open, why is that important? Because you're going to do your author's
book tour at your next available time, might be today, it's something you can do
today, that's why I'm putting it in the present, okay. Here's what I did, my office
sits right here, Barnes and Noble is about three blocks that way, the biggest
bookstore in town, so I scheduled my office book tour for
right after I finished here at the office, I went over to Barnes & Noble,
here's what you're going to do, go into the bookstore and look for your book. Why are
we doing this? Because your book is going to be somewhere in that store, right? Now
I don't care if you ever market through Barnes & Noble. that's not what I'm
talking about. I'm talking about you walk into a
bookstore. where are you going to go? Are you going to the children's books?
Maybe. I didn't, that's not the kind of book I had in mind, you see what I'm
talking about? Well is it over in home and gardening?
Nope, it's not there either for me. Is it over in the baking section in the
cookbooks? No, that's now where my book.. Where's my book? See, this helped me to
start defining where's my book going to be in this environment of other books.
I headed over toward the psychology and self-help, okay, that makes sense to you,
right? Psychology and self-help because that's where my books going to be. Now
where's it going to be on this shelf? Is it going to be with sexuality and intimacy? No,
not that bold yet. Is it going to be over here with alternative medicine? No, it's
not going to be there either and I honed it down to a section where my book would
be in this positive thinking and mindset kind of areas. So you see what I'm
talking about? I'm finding my book in the bookstore. When you get to your section,
try to picture, where's my book going to be? Is it going to be between these two? And you
can start sorting by author, last name, I mean, get that specific and find out the
environment where your book would be if it were already sitting on the shelf at
the bookstore, that's a powerful experience in and of itself. Here's the
rest of the author's book tour, select from that shelf, around a nearby where
your book is going to be, six or so titles that speak to you. Titles that might be
similar, titles that are complementary toward your particular subject and take
those six books off of the shelf, get a stack of them and go find one of those
overstuffed chairs there at Barnes & Noble, plop down and start looking at those
books. Now here's what I did, I took a little digital image of the cover and of
the table of contents and then I thumbed through each of those books a little bit
just to get a feel for the layout and the length and as I did that,
some of them spoke to me more than others, some of them resonated with me at
a level of yeah, that's kind of like my book. Whichever one resonates the most
with you, purchase that book and so the book that spoke the most to me was this
one, this is Marc Muchnick, No More Regrets! And for whatever reason, Marc's
book, and Marc, if you're watching this, reach out to me, we need to talk.
No more regrets, this spoke to me more than all of the others, the length of it,
the feel of it, kind of the layout, the the energy that I felt from this book
spoke to me more than the other so I bought this one, I went home, I read it, I
studied how it was created, just got a feel for the book itself and then this
became part of the inspiration for my book. Now what's next? The author's book
tour by the way is a lot of fun and it's very illuminating, you're going to learn a
lot about yourself and your book by doing that. Now what's next? Set an
appointment, set an appointment. Do you keep your appointments? I hope you do, I
do, I keep my appointments, if I've got an appointment in my calendar, I'm going to
keep that appointment, right. Where is my writing appointment? See, at the time, I
didn't have one but after the author's book tour, the next thing that I did was
set an appointment with myself, it's a writing appointment, keep your
appointment, okay. Pick a time that serves you well. I'm a morning person, my best
thinking, my creativity, my production happens in the morning. I wrote my entire
doctoral dissertation before the hour of 7:00 a.m. and it's because that's when
my brain is on, that's when I work. What day? Well, Saturday is going to be best for
me because I don't have other conflicting schedules on a Saturday
morning, my family doesn't want me as long as it's before 7:00. Right, you see
where I'm going? So my writing appointment was from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m.
on Saturday and it repeats every week. Okay, now I knew I was on track some of
you are going to hear that, you're going to be like, no, why? I'm not getting up at
5 o'clock on a Saturday morning. Well that to me works because that's when I don't
have other conflicts, that's when my mind is the most creative, that's when I'm
going to get my best work done and I knew I was on track when Friday night came
around and I couldn't wait, I felt so excited. Now if you're dreading it, then
you need to find a different time, okay. Or
you're not in tune with your topic yet but if you feel excited, if it's going to
get you out of bed and I didn't even need an alarm quite frankly because I
was so excited to get engaged in that process and I kept that writing
appointment, if you don't know what to write then write that. Honestly, it's okay
for you to sit down and type into your word processor, I don't know what to write,
get yourself writing, whatever it is that comes to your mind because that's going to
loosen up other ideas and it's going to start to flow and then pretty soon
you've got some some content coming. Now, I told you that I mentioned a word
processor because that's how I chose to do it, the next note that I have here is,
pick a method that works for you and I had to remind myself of this because not
everyone is going to be proficient or comfortable sitting down at a keyboard
and letting their fingers do the writing. That works great for me because I can
type almost as fast as I can talk and so that works for me and I can
create a lot of content and it flows freely and there's no encumbrances, there
are software's out there, there are programs, there are transcribers, if it's
easier for you to speak it, then speak it and then go on Fiverr, fiverr.com or
some other website where you can hire someone for a very low cost to
transcribe your words into text, get it out there somehow, use a method that
works for you. Two other suggestions and I'm going to let you go write or do your
author's book tour, you might want to do that today.
The next suggestion is to engage other people on your team. Now this might be
editors, proof readers, graphics designers, there's people out there who can do the
parts that you're not very good at but the other thing is, you want to put some
other minds onto this and I hired a creative editor, big kudos to you, Thomas
Cantrell, thank you so much for the good work you did with me
at this phase of the creation process, get someone who can look at your ideas
and give you feedback about it. Now this is risky at first because what you're
writing becomes your baby and you don't want to show your baby to someone and
have them say, oh, your baby's ugly and some people will, okay, they're not your
audience but other people will give you some nice accurate helpful feedback
about your ideas, about how you're presenting them, about other ways you
might want to go with it to increase your audience,
whatever your audience is. So engage people on your team. I mentioned Thomas
Cantrell who's my creative editor and a brilliant man and there are also about
30 other people that Thomas and I gathered to help review certain ideas or
the text after we got it all drafted or to give us feedback in editorial
comments and do proofreading, probably about 30 or so people
contributed to the production my first book so engage some other people, be open
to that, be humble enough to give it a try and get a thick enough skin that you
can get some feedback about your writing. Now one last thing, I want to comment
about the value of visualization, this is a powerful way to give your mind a
direction to go, a goal to work toward, you have to be able to see it. We started
that process in the author's book tour. Remember when we went to the bookstore
and we tried to visualize where it's going to be the book, where is it
going to be on the shelf, what books will it be next too, what's it most like? That
helps with the visualization but I'm talking about a very specific visual
creation of what you're making, okay. So I hired a graphic designer to do
the mock-up of my cover and she sent me a very rough draft of that, it's all
latin filler on the back and and the first draft of the cover for
pathological positivity. I printed it out on a piece of paper and I taped it to
somebody else's book, it's a physical first copy of my book
and it's not even my book but it helps me to visualize what I'm creating. Does
that make sense to you? This made it more real for me and I felt almost as excited
to see this copy as I did to see this copy and this is the proof copy that I
got back from CreateSpace. Incidentally, a big fan of
create space, it's an Amazon company that allows you to self publish and they do
print on demand. I published my first book through CreateSpace and you get to
do a draft copy, once you finish all your manuscript and you've got all your
design and everything, they send you an actual copy of your book and this is the
first one that I got, this is the draft copy. I made some other revisions after
this and then it manifested as pathological positivity and I can say
now I am an author and it's not telling the truth in advance, it's absolutely
true and I published a book every year for the last three years, it's just, it's
a life-changing experience to write that book. Let's see what we can do to get out
of our own way and actually make that thing happen, hopefully, these ideas have
been helpful. Okay, I have to admit, I had a selfish reason for doing this video
today because I want to leave your book. Post your book idea down below, I'll see
if I can help you.