Tips for authors

Blocks, Purpose, Tips for authors

When I launched this business in May, there was fear. But it was fast heart-beating giddy fear. Fun fear. Holy shit I’m really doing this fear. Adrenaline fear.

Now, four months later, there’s a different kind of fear. It’s a more solitary fear. It’s Oh no, what if this doesn’t work?  How long will it take? What if no one shows up? fear.

Not too different from being a few months into a writing project, right?

What if I don’t finish? Do I really have enough to say? This isn’t very much fun. What will my family think?  Am I even going to make any money doing this?

In Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck calls this stage Square Three: The Hero’s Saga.

This means you’ve already been through Square 1: Death and Rebirth and Square 2: Dreaming and Scheming. You’ve already shed the work you don’t want to do and dreamed up the work you do want to do. You’ve announced it to everyone and anyone. You’ve started living life on your new path, or with your new commitment.

And now here you are, faced with doing the work.

This will be the hardest part. There will be dark forests and fire breathing dragons. At times you will wonder if you’ll ever make it through.

This is normal. This is the good stuff. This means you are really doing it.

So together, let’s replace the fear with trust and keep each other company on our journey. Dragons and all.

(In case you are wondering, there is a Square 4 in Martha Beck’s book. It’s called The Promised Land, which you’ll get to enjoy briefly before starting all over at Square One.)

 

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Literary agents, Tips for authors

When it comes to finding a literary agent, should you:

  • Wine and dine that health author you know until she agrees to get her agent to look at your historical novel
  • Figure out who Seth Godin’s agent is — she must be good
  • Send a query letter to every agent in the LMP within a 100 mile radius of where you live
  • NONE OF THE ABOVE!

It happens so often I can’t even believe it

Authors wasting their time and energy trying to get in front of agents who have never and will never represent the genre the author is pitching.

Why does this matter?

For the same reason you wouldn’t hire a tourism PR agency to hype your tech startup: Connections.

Believe me when I tell you that an agent who represents young adult fiction will not do you any favors by taking on your well-researched guide to personal happiness.

Transform that passion of yours into a strategy

First find the agents who are already kicking ass in your genre. Then find the up and coming junior agents at the well-established agencies. And direct your pile of stamps to them.

Book writing, Industry, Literary agents, Q&As, Tips for authors

If you are writing a book on health or wellness, you should know up front that you’ll meet some resistance from publishers if you don’t have “credentials” (code for an MD or PhD).

In this video, I asked literary agent Ned Leavitt to share some ways authors can overcome this resistance, play up the credentials you do have, and yes, land a big book deal.

NEW: Download the MP3

Tip: Import the mp3 into iTunes so you can listen to this in your car or while you’re making dinner

What you’ll learn

  • What are some of the biggest hurdles for health coaches who want to publish with a mainstream publisher (1:26)
  • What made one Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) graduate shine in front of publishers (2:40)
  • Slight audio issue at 4:38 — it passes
  • The one element your book proposal absolutely must have  (5:04)
  • Other strategies for demonstrating your credentials (7:20)
  • Should you go back and get traditional credentials (an MD or PhD) in order to get published? (9:35)
  • The role your client’s stories play in your content and your credentials (10:20)
  • Book proposals: longer? shorter? How many sample chapters should you include? Including the one mistake Ned urges you not to make (11:13)
  • How starting with a writing coach can help you through the process… including one Ned recommends (12:30)
  • If you’re not ready to write your big book, should you write and self-publish a smaller book first, such as an e-book? (Including the risks of taking this route) (13:47)

“Sometimes the people with the self experience are ahead of the curve, and so they’re discovering things that the people who are immersed in getting the credentials are not discovering.” –Ned Leavitt, literary agent

The bottom line

As Ned said, “I’m here to tell you that it’s your voice that’s going to make it work or not.”

Focus on your story. Focus on your voice. Focus on creating something that’s truly unique. Build your credentials, but don’t forget that the writing is the core piece. It’s about your story and how you tell it.

And if you need help telling that story, you know where to find it.

About Ned Leavitt

Ned is the literary agent behind Geneen Roth, Caroline Myss, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Joan Borysenko and many more leading health, spirituality, and psychology writers of our time.

The author he mentions in the video is Alisa Vitti, founder and CEO of Flo Living. Alisa helps women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s naturally correct hormonal imbalances through food and lifestyle changes. Her forthcoming book (title TBD) will be published by Harper One in 2013.

Book writing, Q&As, Tips for authors

“I thought she liked me because I was different, but maybe she just liked me because she thought she could make me the same.”

–from The Whole Story of Half a Girl

In my very first video Q&A, I asked Veera Hiranandani to tell us about her journey to getting published.

 

 

Veera is the author of The Whole Story of Half a Girl, published earlier this year by Delacorte Books for Young Readers. Lyrical prose, an insightful young narrator, and the universal struggle of finding your place in the world make this middle grade novel a work that could easily have been published as adult fiction.

Highlights from our interview:

  • How it took 4 years of writing, 2 years of editing, and one big heartbreak to publish her novel
  • How Veera wrote this book after becoming a full-time mom to two very young children
  • The benefits of working closely with an editor
  • How having a polished, complete manuscript ultimately helped her land an agent and a book deal lightning fast

 

Connect with Veera on Twitter
Read an excerpt
Buy The Whole Story of Half a Girl on Amazon

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Blocks, Book writing, Tips for authors

It’s the part of writing that is absolutely the hardest: shutting ourselves off from the world long enough to write more than a few hundred words on the page.

It’s also the part we never actually see. We see writers at parties, at book signings, and on Facebook when they come up for air. But we don’t see them holed up at their desks wearing yesterday’s yoga pants surrounded by half-eaten bags of chips, empty coffee cups, and inspirational post-it notes.

One of my clients is working on a deadline for a Penguin Putnam imprint.

When we first started working together, she had 16 weeks to deliver her manuscript. She is now halfway done.

Hitting this deadline has required a furious pace of weekly chapter deadlines, closing herself off from the world (“I say ‘no’ way more than I am comfortable with,” she says), and thinking about her book constantly (“when I shower, when I’m brushing my teeth, when I’m putting my kids’ shoes on…”).

What she doesn’t spend a lot of time doing is facing blank pages.

Before she sits down to write a chapter, she’ll spend a few hours reading through her notes and thinking through how she’ll connect the various story threads. Many of the threads have already been written (she writes up scenes directly after they happen or as soon as an interview is over — a great tip for making sure you capture your material when it is fresh and full of vivid detail), but need to be connected and shaped into well-crafted chapters.

Here’s something else she does that I love — before she starts writing she thinks about how she wants readers to feel when they read each chapter. For her most recent chapter, she says:

“I want it to feel like a joyride, where you see lots of cool stuff out the window, sometimes you stop and get out and take in the air, and at the end you arrive somewhere you’re totally psyched to be, with someone who made you laugh and feel like you were in good hands the whole time.”

And then she sits down to write.

//

What are your favorite tips for getting words on the page?

How do you shut yourself off from the world in order to write? Do you have any rituals that help get you into the flow of writing? Leave a comment below!

(Extra points if you can you guess what novel I had in mind when I wrote this post’s title.)

 

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Blocks, Purpose, Tips for authors

Does the world really need your book?

It’s a paralyzing thought: Does the world need another book? Another spiritual memoir, another business guide, another living your best life manual, another inspirational journey, another health how-to?

(And for that matter, does the world need another writing coach?)

Maybe, maybe not.

But this is not the right question to ask.

Do you have a calling? Do you know that you must write a book? Is the discomfort of not trying greater than the discomfort of the fear? Do you know there’s a tribe out there, however large or small, who will receive your words and hold them close?

Will it be a profound loss if you don’t at least try?

When I was dreaming up my book coaching business, these thoughts almost held me back. After all, aren’t there enough out of work book editors who could help authors do their best work?

I found great inspiration in these words from my coach, Hannah Marcotti:

“Find your voice, love up your tribe, dance in your purpose and it all comes together.” 

She added:

“Nobody has my voice, my style, my unique point of view. My story has brought me to this place and is unique and needs to be shared.”
—
In her beautiful book This I Know, Susannah Conway addresses this same block, writing:

“It can feel intimidating starting a blog when there are so many others clamoring for attention online, but just like any other party, all you need do is find your corner, get comfortable, and start making conversation.” 
—
Any creative pursuit is an act of personal obligation–the world will not stop if we fail to follow our heart. Our job is to feel the fear and write anyway.
Book writing, Purpose, Tips for authors

Sure you could write your book with a simple formula.

But why?

This is your only chance to write the best book you can write.

Even if you are writing an ebook, what are the odds your readers are going to go back and read every version you release?

Give your book the time and space it deserves.  If what you are writing is truly important, it will be just as relevant twelve months from now as it will be tomorrow.

 

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Book writing, Tips for authors

“If writing a book starts with an outline, I guess I’ll never write a book.”

One of my brilliant clients said this to me recently and I couldn’t wait to prove her wrong.

While it’s true that starting with an outline gives you a clear vision of your book project, verifies that your idea can span the length of a book, and functions as the map you’ll be working from for the next several months, an outline does not have to look like something you did back in junior high.

And even though one of my favorite activities in junior high was to organize the local library’s card catalog, I can understand that not everyone does their best thinking in neatly organized lines.

So let’s look at the things you do enjoy:

  • Map making
  • Vision boarding
  • Post-it note-ing
  • Life size whiteboarding
  • Notebook doodling
  • Paper napkin dreaming

Guess what? You can outline your book using any of these methods.

In fact, you’ll be in good company: I know a bestselling author who has written 15 books. The outline for his upcoming title is currently plastered in post-its across the south side his office wall.

When you publish your book, no one is going to come back and grade you on your outline.

Don’t let technicalities hold you back from doing the work you were meant to do.