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
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes I work the pole. Or the trapeze.
Meaning, gutterface, that I practice and teach trapeze and pole dancing and it’s really good fun.
One of the funnest parts, for me, is watching people go from “I can’t do this” to “I’m doing it I’m doing it” to “wow that looks amazing.”
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.
According to Hootsuite, businesses spend about $1,600 on Facebook ads A MONTH!
There are good, smart, and seemingly rich people out there paying Meta a mortgage payment to ensure they can keep their business at the forefront of everyone's minds.
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.
