Wherever you are on your book writing adventure, you’ll find what you need here…
What to do if you’re just starting out on your Author Adventure: planning, preparation, and dealing with your Inner Dickhead
It’s my birthday today and here are 46 things I’ve learned. One for each year I’ve been alive. And here’s my gift to you…If you've been thinking about signing up for MicroBook Magic Season 7 —I’m offering a FREE 60-minute private coaching call to get you fully ready to go when the program kicks off.
The longer you leave it, the harder it gets. And the more pointless it seems…And the more you should have started last week, last month, last year — so you may as well not start at all. It’s too late now, after all. What is even the point of it allllllll?
The first time I picked up The Heretics by Will Storr I got about 25 pages into it — not even past the introduction — before I had to put it down because I got so angry.
It’s about people who think the Earth is flat, who believe homeopathy can cure cancer, who think they’ve been abducted by aliens. Climate change deniers and antivaxxers and Moon landing deniers.
It’s weird, what happens when we set out to write Something Important, like a book or an essay or even a social media post. Our bodies and minds are taken over by the ghost of our primary school selves, worried the teacher will take the ideas our imaginations made and squash them into a boring little cube that fits the system.
Lockdown, 2020.
I was a copywriter who also helped people write nonfiction books, but the world had just shattered + shut down.
And who the hell was going to indulge writing a book when the ship was sinking?
It was decision time: do I crash and burn? Or go all-in on what I really want to do?
This here is Toby Tortoise, who I take care of sometimes.
He lives just along the lane from me and he has strawberry on his face (living his best life!).
All he needed was a little sunshine and warmth to do the thing he does best: eat and snooze.
What do you need to do the thing you do best?
I’ve done a lot of scary things. Made a lot of terrifying decisions — and they were the best decisions I ever made.
You already know you want a book out there with your name on.
Maybe you’ve already started it!
But when it’s out there with your name on, people might see it, right? They might not love it. They might not love YOU.
Find a daffodil and look at it. Look at it until you remember how beautiful the world can be.
Stand in the sunshine and let the sun soak into your face, until you remember that there are more people who want the world to be kind and gentle than those who want to spread fear.
Then, pull your socks up, buckaroo, and get writing.
You’re a writer. You are, or you wouldn’t be here reading this.
So I have a question for you today: how do you feel about big tech AI companies stealing your work?
If you’re in the UK, please read on — then take action.
My face is one giant grin right now because I’m reading the reviews coming in from yesterday’s Find Your Funnybone microworkshop.
Julia’s starts with:
“The “find your funny bone” workshop had all the elements of a perfect workshop…”
Do you know what your most powerful weapon is in fighting the current rise of fascist ideas and literally saving the world?
It’s your brain. Your voice. Your ideas.
The words you use and how you put them together to subvert and combat misinformation, cruelty, and outright lies.
Have you ever created something and then just thought it’s the best thing you’ve ever done?
That's sort of how I feel about MicroBook Magic.
Back in November 2022, when the world was starting to get back to normal after all the Covid lockdowns, I realised something was changing.
Beauty lies in the gaps. In the imperfections.
Because the imperfections are what makes life interesting.
The way the trapeze spins slightly faster than you were anticipating, so your movement quality changes almost imperceptibly and surprisingly, and your face makes a different shape to the one you were planning — but it works.
One of my MicroBook Magicians asked me this week — what if I don’t feel like planning today? What if I just want to dive right in? I want to write write write but I know I need to research some stuff!
And to that I say: HURRAH!
Fill yer boots, because there is no wrong way to write a book.
Progress is never linear.
It never takes us in a straight line from bad to good to excellent.
It’s a wiggle.
I’d like to think the wiggle trends upwards but we have to give it time to do that. Two data points aren’t enough, because that gives us the illusion of a straight line but it’s not, really.
When literally everyone with a megaphone on social media tells us we must be authentic, our true and unedited selves, or we’ll fail at business, life, and the 100m relay, try this instead:
Don’t.
Nobody wants our 100% true and unedited and authentic selves.
Sometimes I get so many big feelings I worry that I actually will explode.
Like on Tuesday this week after my MicroBook Magic live call.
It’s structured so that my clients can send me their writing and ask for specific feedback, or ask questions.
I am currently obsessed with the TV show New Amsterdam.
It’s fabulous brain-out beautiful people in unlikely storylines telly.
But it also gets me thinking about perspectives, and how we badly need stories from people who don’t look, sound or live like us.
My friend, if you’ve ever thought you need inspiration to strike in order to write your book, LET ME TELL YOU about inspiration.
We’ve been sold a lie by antique romantic poets who — let’s be honest — were all off their tits on opium.
“I’m Alexis Rose!" I trilled, as I booped a complete stranger on the nose.
Laughs around the room and I breathed a sigh of relief and launched into a story about how I used to be engaged to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia until I was kidnapped by pirates.
Some things are just good for your brain.
No matter what’s going on inside it, what illnesses or challenges or mental health issues we may have — some activities are magic.
Like…Walking among trees. Moving your body. Human contact. Journalling.
Sarah wrote her first book, Small Island Big Business, with my help — then came back, knowing she wanted to dive in again.
This time, the book idea was a quirky mix of travel stories and a much-needed mindset shift for translators who hate the idea of marketing.
Ready for your own “I never thought I could do this” moment?
This subject line dropped into my inbox today from an old client and I thought YES QUEEN.
When’s the last time you did something you never thought you’d be able to do?
What was it?
One of the reasons people don’t write books
(and I know this to be true because they tell me)
is that the idea of writing a book is just Too Big.
And I totally understand that; I’ve written several books and they are Very Big. But I write for a living; it’s literally what I do.
“You’re an author? That’s so cool!”
“I self-published it, it’s not in Waterstones or anything,” I replied.
I had this conversation — paraphrased, natch — a few years ago, just after I wrote my first book. I felt uncomfortable with the praise, like publishing it myself was pure vanity.
Tantrums to Titles: that was the name of the talk I gave yesterday at Circle Networks Live24.
I stood up in front of a couple of hundred people…
Shared some of my favourite book writing wisdom…
And was beyond delighted when so many people said their big takeaway from the day was that they wanted to write a book of their own!
Ever wondered if your book idea (or you) is too... weird?
Like — you look at all the nonfiction and business books out there, and yours doesn’t seem to fit?
Maybe your face doesn’t fit, or your voice seems too brash, or your story seems a bit too out there compared to others in your niche...
You see yet another “viral” post on LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever you choose to doomscroll in which someone says something so eyeball-grindingly obvious and shallow about your area of expertise you CANNOT EVEN and yet they’ve got 1,826 likes and 97 comments.
Come with me. Lemme lift the tablecloth and usher you into the den.
Because you might be wondering: what’s it actually like to write a book?
Well, tbh I don’t know what it’s like for you… but I can tell what it ISN’T like.
One of the first books I ever read when I became a copywriter, in my first iteration of being a business owner, was A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young.
It’s a teeny tiny little book of just 60-odd pages, a handful of which are (slightly overblown) prefaces by ad industry dudes.
Do you have a manifesto? A set of values? Principles? Something you’ll stand behind, in front of, and defend with an entire drawerful of improvised cutlery weapons? The idea of a manifesto gives me chills and thrills, like a relic of a bygone era.
There are approximately 8,193 notes in my Notes app. Even more in my Notion.
I’d say more-or-less 48% of them are lists. Plans. Plots, if you like.
I live my life via lists, plans, and plots, or nothing would ever happen. They’re comforting and they make me feel like I’m making progress.
Every time I sit down to write it’s like whack-a-mole: which obstacle is my brain gonna chuck in the way today? Who knows? It’s a surprise!
One consistent blockage, though, is my arrogant and pathological need to write a brilliant first sentence.
Once upon a time about a year ago, Sarah Silva, the Chemical Translator, wrote a MicroBook called Your Ticket to Explore: Essential preparation for your translation marketing adventures.
When I used to have a job, I often wondered why it sucked so much.
Of course, part of the problem was me and my attitude. Part of the problem was my undiagnosed AuDHD.
I rage Google stuff all the time. The results that came at me were mostly listicles about how not to be chronically late, why people who are late are basically the devil, or pop-psychology.
3 pieces of writing advice you may want to put in the bin — and what to try instead…
+ barbers, the RSPB, and good tech
![Job ads, the safety dance, and why words matter [Friday Goodie Bag]](https://moxiebooks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Why-Words-Matter-scaled-1920x0-c-default.webp)
![Improv, letter-writing, and hiding from reality 🤡💌 [Friday Goodie Bag]](https://moxiebooks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/roJmo4CTqBg6Yktz127XRp-scaled-1920x0-c-default.jpg)
