September 19, 2025 • 50 mins
Today on Becoming Obsessed, we talk all about the art of telling your story and embracing your identity as a writer with Shana Hartman.
Shana is a former university English professor turned Embody Writing Coach, founder of Synergy Publishing Group, and an ICF and Body Mind Methods certified coach. In this episode, Shana shares her journey from academia to coaching, and reveals how writing can be a powerful tool for self-connection, healing, and sharing your voice with the world.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Have you ever thought about writing a book for work?
For fun fiction, Non fiction? Because in this episode, I want
you to set all of your doubts, your it couldn't be me aside and
give yourself permission to dream and to really spend this
(00:20):
next moment thinking about what if you did write a book.
Today we're becoming obsessed with telling your story.
And as today's guest says, you are a writer.
Even if you can't spell and you suck at grammar, you have
something important to say. I'm so excited to have today's
guest on Meet Shayna Hartman, a former university English
(00:44):
professor turned in body writingcoach.
She is the founder of Synergy Publishing Group and an ICF and
Body Mind Method Certified coachwho envisions a world where all
voices and experiences are valued, especially the
rebellious ones, which really caught my attention and I love
that. Shayna, welcome to becoming
(01:04):
obsessed. Hi, I'm so excited to be here.
I know you say something that I really want to just kick us
right off with that writing is really a pathway to connecting
with yourself. And I know that your company's
work really encourages the sharing of your voice with the
world, whether it's to promote community connections, and it
(01:26):
kind of has this collective healing potential and power when
we start to share our voices. Fill me in a little bit on how
you've gotten to this place and kind of what that actually looks
like in practice. Yeah, absolutely.
Bottom line, we're storytellers.We're languaged beings.
That is the distinction kind of among the species of mammals
(01:48):
that, you know, makes us who we are is the way that we are able
to communicate. And while that can look
different for everyone, we ultimately have something to say
and share. We're constantly using language
to understand, to process, to make sense of the world.
So writing is just an expressionof that or an addition or way to
(02:12):
process that. I always kind of jokingly say
like the hands are kind of your connection between your heart
and your head. And so it's really this tool,
this embodiment practice this way to get what's swirling.
If you're anything like me, constantly on the inside and in
my beautiful brain on the outside, to just process it, to
(02:33):
get it out of you, to make senseof it, to potentially, like you
said, share it with someone else.
So the reason I became an English teacher in the 1st place
is my love of words. And yes, I love reading, but I
really love the juicy magic of what can happen when you put pen
to paper, finger to keys, and explore thoughts and feelings
(02:56):
and experiences through words. And that kind of carried me to
where I am today in many ways. There's this saying I picked up
a few years ago that talks abouthow it's kind of like everyone's
like, oh, I'm not a writer, I'm not creative.
I couldn't do that. And it's like, well, what if
actually every time you're spokewords out loud, you just created
(03:18):
a sentence, you just told a story.
And so you are like you said, we're all storytellers.
You are a creative and we kind of release the expectation and
do it. I'm in this season of life where
I'm like, do it for the sake of it.
Create the worst thing you can think of because it doesn't have
to be good. Write the worst thing you can
think of, because just writing is the point.
(03:41):
Yes, that is all, 100% all the hands up.
Yes, yes, yes. I always say to some people's
annoyance, I'm like, what if you're always writing?
Like what? What do you mean?
Well, you know, there's this bigkind of broad brush
generalization that we're becoming more illiterate.
Nobody writes anymore, nobody can spell, you know, whatever,
whatever. But actually because of a lot of
(04:04):
the technology, we actually write way more and have far more
demand on us for writing than our just a generation or two or
especially 3 ago were required to be able to do.
So every little text message, every little e-mail, every
little thing that you're you're putting out into the world or
(04:24):
just for yourself. Like what if it all counts?
Yeah, what if I'm just talking and speaking and that is
writing. So I think the idea of what
counts and what gets to count aswriting and what is creative.
If you're making it and you didn't have it before, OK, you
just created something. And a lot of that doubt and what
(04:46):
is writing and what counts as writing and especially good
writing for almost every one of us, it comes from how we were
taught writing in school. And part of what made me want to
become an English teacher was, Iwon't say the English teacher's
name, but I had two very pivotalteachers.
And it wasn't because they were great.
It was because I thought, hold on, wait a minute.
(05:09):
Writing can't all be about just not making mistakes and doing it
right, You know, RIGHD. And I thought, Nah, I think I
could do this way better. I think there's another way.
And that was like my initial four way into this path of
teaching writing in English and whatnot, and now carrying over
some of those same elements to the aspiring writers and authors
(05:31):
that I get to work with today. Well, I have to say, English
teachers have a special place inmy heart because my aunt was my
high school English teacher. And so from before I even hit
high school, everyone knew Miss Dasney.
And then they knew the embarrassing stories about me
when I entered high school coaching so many people on just
(05:51):
content creation. I'm like, tell me the most
boring story you can. That's fine.
Write me the actual most boring paragraph that you can imagine,
please. Like if you think you're so
boring or you can't write, then give me the worst you got and
just start there. Yeah, We have all these
constructs and we're told because of where we're from,
what our dialect is, what peoplesounded like at home versus what
(06:12):
that sounded like in school. We kind of learned quickly
whether we match up to what we're supposed to sound like
when we write and what those words are supposed to be.
And what gets really cool is what if we just waived the
permission, want to sound exactly how we are and just show
up exactly as we are. Yes.
And write the worst stuff. I have a favorite.
(06:34):
It was a teacher, researcher, Donald Murray, and he said give
yourself permission to write theworst stuff in the world.
A lot of what you said, because kind of like sleep begets sleep
with babies, writing begets writing.
And probably the biggest disservice that we do to
ourselves is we're think we're supposed to know exactly what
(06:54):
we're supposed to write and say before we put the first word
down. And writing is an embodiment
tool. It's literally like a process.
It is a verb, not a product. And so it evolves as we do it
and it changes. And guess what?
You can always change it. Like you can delete stuff, you
can erase stuff, right? It's pretty cool.
People get so stuck. They might have all these ideas
(07:16):
and then think, I just have sucha hard time getting it out.
It's like, well, tell me about that more.
And oftentimes it's because they're censoring themselves and
telling themselves, no, no, that's no, I don't know how to
say that or that's not the rightway to say it.
Like, why don't you just write down anything?
Even write down, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know
what to write. That's great because it is a
muscle to flex and we've got to kind of unpack some of those
(07:40):
layers of why we're not just letting ourselves go and flow.
We'll also often use the trick, at least with business owners,
creating content is more of the realm of writing.
I'm in so much. I'll say text it to me like
you're texting a friend. Just type it out the way that we
actually are used to typing it out or the way we're used to
(08:01):
speaking. Lose the business accent, the
influencer accent. And I think it does end up
wearing off as you go. You start to kind of have more
of your own voice come through. But I really am curious to pick
your brain. When somebody comes to you, they
kind of start working with you. Is it that they're having this
experience where they know what to say and they're like, I don't
(08:21):
know that I could write a book, but I've got to get this out or
I feel like there's also that experience of I want to write a
book and I don't know what to say.
And I'm just curious to how people find you, what kind of
state they're usually in and what those first steps are to
kind of get into the motion the.People who come to us and wind
up working with us at Synergy Publishing Group, we've sort of
(08:42):
realized there's kind of a couple of different things that
all in a similar journey and wayof being 1 is that they've
always been told they should write a book one day.
So maybe they're the person thatthey somehow catch your eye when
you're scrolling through social media.
If Theresa is saying it like I'mpaying attention.
(09:03):
Meanwhile, you might be just going, I'm just venting and
getting something out and this is my thought for today.
Well, I'm eating ice cream at 9:00 PM.
You know, no strong sway towardsit was just something you felt
and you put it out there. So a lot of our author clients
have always been told they should write a book one day.
The second layer to that is they've always felt or had a tug
or said things like, well, just chalk that up.
(09:24):
That'll be a chapter in the booksomeday.
So they're having lived experiences or they're going
through things that make it feelbook worthy.
This is something that needs to be put out into the world at
some point. And then the other is a lot of
people have been writing, working on a book all by
(09:45):
themselves in a silo because that's also a misperception that
we have. You know, we often look at all
these pretty things on our shelves and we're like, wow, I
don't know how to get to there. That feels really intimidating.
And often our perception of writers, especially like fiction
writers and whatnot, is that they're off by themselves and
their little chateaus or whatever.
(10:05):
But we forget that the great writers were like down at the
pub hanging out, talking to eachother, spitballing ideas, all
this kind of stuff. So writing is actually a really
communal act. We need to have kind of this
back and forth with people. So a lot of people come to us.
I've been working on my book formonths, even years, and then
they get with us, get some support.
(10:26):
I think of one of our authors, Brangardner, who was an art
professor and an artist, and she'd been writing her book for
years, and then within like fourmonths we had it out in the
world kind of a thing. So people start in different
places from idea to been drafting forever and ever and
written their book three times over by the time they come to us
and wherever they are beneath them, right where they are.
(10:47):
And it really is a matter of people hate the idea of like,
just write. Just start putting words down.
The people who work with us tendto not be outlined first.
People not dogging outlines. You will see plenty of things
about why you cannot write a book without an outline.
(11:07):
And I'm sitting here looking at all these books from my clients
and from myself, and not when outline, you know, from them
maybe later on, because we don'tknow what we're necessarily
writing. Now, if you're doing fiction,
that's a whole different thing. And, and I should caveat that
fiction's a little bit differentin that you're weaving together
the plot line and characters andthings like that.
(11:30):
Most of the people who are coming to us, we do have some
fiction writers, we have poetry writers, but a lot of them are
non fiction. Personal growth, self help,
business strategy, this beautiful collage of kind of
their own personal stories and the lessons from MAD and how
that supported different elements of either recovery or
starting a business or relationships or whatever it may
(11:51):
be. And outlines often keep us
stuck. I've talked to many people who
are like, yeah, when I get my outline, I'll come to you.
Cool. How long have you been working
on that? 03 years or so.
Like, Oh my God. It's like you can't figure out
where you're going until you getthere and you're one step away.
It's like take one step at a time and let the path unfold.
So the first is just flexing thewriting muscle, just starting to
(12:14):
put words down, and then somebody needs to look at it.
And that's the biggest thing toofor us is we don't know how our
words are landing if nobody is reading it.
And it's very scary. Writing is very vulnerable.
And there are your precious words.
So I get it. But the biggest thing that we
provide is like feedback. And we read stuff and we share
stuff on our writing days. Writing days are happening right
(12:36):
now with one of my other writingcoaches.
And I guarantee you somebody just wrote a line that they
shared in between their writing sprints that everybody went,
what? You just wrote that.
Holy cow. Like amazing.
And then the writer goes, what? That was good, OK, cool.
And then you're off to the races.
And that's what it's all about. We just don't know how powerful
(12:56):
and awesome we are most of the time.
I want to get into a little bit of the impact you see when
people are let's say like halfway 80% to actually
publishing and, and what comes next and really more the impact
on the author and maybe the community as well.
Yeah, I always tell people when they're considering should I
(13:18):
shouldn't Eyes is a book for me.I mean, kind of like most
anything, if you're feeling thattug, it's there for a reason.
And whether it's with us or on your own, usually when I talk to
people, I always say, let me just affirm this needs to be out
in the world. No matter where you go next.
Please get this out in the worldbecause we don't realize that
that there is someone many people who are like sitting
(13:41):
there hoping, wishing, praying for exactly like, does anybody
else feel this way? Has anybody else gone through
this? And so I can never guarantee
exactly what the impact of theirwords will be.
But as people start to get to that, oh, wow, this book is like
actually going to be in my handspretty soon.
Many things show up. 1 is they'll start to share some
(14:02):
things and they're like, Oh my gosh, I let my sister read it
and she cried. Or if they're, you know, have a
business business, they shared afew pages with their clients and
they were so excited. We just don't know the impact
that it's going to have. But I can always say I can't
guarantee what it's going to be,but it is going to be big and
strong and something you could never think of the way that your
words are going to impact. I don't want to say my latest
(14:23):
book is writing is not that hard.
And it's not because it's oh, easy peasy.
You know, everybody can do this.I do think we are all writers
and we are capable, but the act of writing is just so innate
that when we get out of our way,that's the easy part.
The thing that I always focus onis I coach the writer because
while we get excited that our book is about to come out, we
(14:43):
also are like, yeah, my book's about to come out.
I'm about to be seen in a very big way.
This is going to be in this space and this online bookstore
and I want to put it in my localbookstore.
And that's kind of tear excitingall at the same time.
So this is where really getting people reminding them of their
(15:06):
why, which we get really clear on, and connecting them with how
this is supporting their big picture values and goals in life
and how their words are not justthis trivial trite thing.
Yeah, go slam out a book in a weekend, but genuinely a part of
the path and the trajectory and the purpose that they're on.
(15:28):
And it's not that the book is the end all be all.
It's a part of this ecosystem that they're building.
Their words are going to supportthe other things they want to
do, will support the words. It's this nice reciprocal back
and forth. I'm really clear in that we are
not the write your book in a weekend people.
I'm glad that exists in the world.
I'm glad that AI makes things more accessible to many people
(15:50):
who want that kind of help and all of that.
I have no shade, no problem. It's just not who we tend to
work with. Our people are like the ooey
gooey healer, feeler, empaths, purpose makers and super
heartfelt, super mission driven.And so writing is just as much
for themselves as it is for whomever is going to wind up
(16:13):
reading it and the impact that it's going to have, which is
always fun to see. You talked about your high
school English teachers and thatkind of led you into wanting to
be an English teacher or professor, but where did that
merge with authorship and where did your journey with books and
being an author? Where did that start?
(16:34):
Well, I was published in 4th grade, no?
So for those English teachers that I had the side eye with, I
do want to shout out Miss Parkerand Miss Perkins, which were 4th
and 5th grade Magic teachers in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Shout out Hunter Elementary School.
And we put. Together, this like book of
writings about different businesses and organizations and
(16:55):
stuff in our community and we all got to have our own little
like part in that. And I do remember getting my
first kind of journal diary situation at a young age and
always having been an overthinker and feeler and
almost only child, I have much younger siblings, brother and
sister. I needed a place and a space,
and writing was that for me. I always knew I wanted to teach,
(17:20):
and I wanted to teach English and I wanted to teach at the
university level because I hit acollege campus and I thought the
schedule is pretty nice. I like this.
Yeah. There's a lot of freedom here.
I kind of want to never leave. How do I make that happen?
Oh, OK. You just got to get 3°.
No big deal. So my first forays after my
little childhood foray into publishing was in academia and
(17:41):
academic publishing and writing about writing.
And my dissertation was studyinghigh school English teachers and
how their beliefs about writing manifested kind of into their
classroom teachings about writing.
And that got really interesting and just always been fascinated
about like how we do take thingsfrom the inside and put them on
the outside and words and just always believed in the power and
(18:04):
magic of writing. And we've all felt that gut
punch when we read something andare like, Dang, do they know?
How do they know? I needed to hear that right now.
So that's always been and the underpinning and academic
writing obviously very differentand it can be very published or
perish and moving forward becamea tenured professor and all of
that. And slowly my soul was being
(18:26):
sucked out of me because it justwas another kind of institution
that was not as freeing as I thought it would be.
So I started to look for a way out of that and discovered
coaching essentially and life coaching, personal growth, all
that kind of stuff. And things just clicked into
place and I was like, this is the way out.
(18:48):
This is the pathway. Fun little sidebar, I had
actually gone back to school because I apparently needed more
to get licensed as a massage therapist.
And it was just this purely you talk about like just for the joy
of it. I always side eye people who
don't like massages, but I'm like, what are you doing with
your life? Yeah, you're like, why don't you
like joy and pleasure? But OK.
(19:08):
And rest. And yeah, so I always thought
like in retirement would be coolto be like, you know, something
to do, make a little money, all that kind of stuff became this
opportunity in a time that looking back, I really needed
something that was just for me. I had a young child, My didn't
know it at the time, but my marriage was slowly but surely
deteriorating. I don't practice massage any
(19:30):
longer, but I found that and because of that is when I first
saw Laura Wick, the CEO and founder of Body Mind Coaching,
who's also written book with us,the Body Mind Method, which is
awesome. So then started to play an
explore while I was still teaching the coaching and the
massage. And then there were clients who
didn't live near me, you know, who were kind of acquaintances.
(19:51):
And I would coach them. And it was often moms who were
struggling with similar things. I was struggling with being all
the things to everyone and not to yourself at all and losing
yourself. And then Laura Wick wound up
asking me. She was putting together a
digital magazine, and she asked if I would be the managing
editor and support the writers who were writing in this
magazine. And it was the biggest, you
(20:12):
know, duh. Honk on the head.
Oh, I became a teacher because Ilove writing and I love talking
about writing and I love helpingpeople find their boys and share
it in ways that feel really aligned.
And I love coaching. And.
Here we go so that was 2021 and 30 plus whatever books later
that have come out yeah. Synergy Publishing Group has
grown and evolved. And the fun thing is is to watch
(20:34):
myself too because my publishingand sharing slowed down because
I was helping other people first.
So I had to get myself right with that.
And luckily if few books have come out since then for me, But
yeah, that's kind of been the journey.
And we're just continuing to grow and evolve and be really
committed to not hustle and grind, but alignment and making
(20:56):
a difference and supporting people and like being permission
ones for their community. And yeah, just super exciting,
big honor. And always just a joy to hold
people's books in my hand that they often never thought could
come to fruition. Well, and I know that you
mentioned you have your next collaborative book, that you're
(21:19):
kind of gathering authors for the Unveiling the Secrets
series. I wanna know more about this.
I don't really know too much about it.
And I was like, oh, this sounds really cool.
Yeah, well, the first book I ever published, I was a
co-author with it was a group ofus teachers thinking out loud on
paper. We talked about this tool that
we used in the classroom called day Books.
(21:40):
And I can see that like it's allthe same ideas of like writing
to write, letting your true selfcome forward and letting it be
messy by using these colored notebooks, those Mead
composition notebooks that are like for elementary school.
My college and graduate studentslove those because it just
switched their brain into like, oh, I don't have to be perfect.
(22:00):
I just get to play and explore and draw and glue things in and
make a mess and something comes out of that that is shareable
and worthy of putting it out there.
And so a lot of my work in academia, whether it's
conferences or whatever, there'salways been a collaborative
element to it. When I started to kind of
develop the idea of Synergy Publishing group and helping
(22:20):
people essentially hybrid self publish their books, the sense
of some people, the idea of their own book to go from not
sure if I can write a book or I have an idea to write into their
own book felt like a little bit of a big leap, a little too
much. And so we're always in our
writing days in communities likewe're just having conversations
(22:42):
about life and coaching things that are coming up.
And so let's see, I think it wasin 2023, we put together our
first collaborative book called Capturing the In Between because
we were all just like in this liminal space of in.
Between a little messy middle. Yeah.
And then it's like, oh, well, we're always in that.
And so we kind of, we're all having these conversations and
we were like, what if we just put some pieces together around
(23:05):
this and put it between 2 covers?
And that's, you know, a book. And so that was sort of the
birth of how. And that helped a lot of people
who wanted to write their own book have a place to start,
realize they could do it, gain alittle confidence and oh, by the
way, be published, you know, andsell that book and do you know
with it what they want? And then the next one was
(23:25):
Unveiling the secrets. We had an idea from a friend.
It's called the encyclopedia of life or something like that.
So we played upon the idea of like everybody took a letter and
unveiling the secrets. And it was an encyclopedia by
women for women and those who love them was the subtitle.
And so we were all that one was all about like, why don't people
tell us this as female identifying humans?
(23:46):
Like why do we have to find thisin like secret whispers by our
cool aunt? And you know, why aren't we
talking about these things more?And then unveiling the secrets
we realized was like this catch all, unveiling the secrets of
filling the blank, you know, taking up space, relationships,
business, all of this stuff has started to come up.
And so now it's a series and we are exploring how that wants to
(24:09):
grow. The clients who started in those
books now have their own books out and they want to lead
unveiling the secrets books. So that's kind of the gathering
that we're doing right now and building a little writing
community around that. So again, like just really love
the name of your podcast becauseit's, yeah, I'm super obsessed
(24:31):
with how does it get to show up with ease?
And then I don't have to be at the helm and I get to stay
grounded, stay committed, be open and see how things want to
show up versus that pressure, especially in entrepreneurship
where it's I have to come up with everything and has to be
all of me. And so that's how the Unveiling
the Secrets book has kind of come forward, and we're really
(24:55):
excited because it's just a little more accessible way for
people to get started. Well, and I have a handful of
bugs that are a collection of authors.
And sometimes you just want the little tidbit.
Like sometimes I don't have, I mean, with my attention span
nowadays, you know, collectivelyit's like a great chapter is
(25:17):
what I need. And then I can come back and
read another one and not feel like, OK, what was going on, But
something else that I love aboutjust the way you show up.
And this kind of approach is almost taking pressure off the
first book. I think a lot of us, this is
something I've been playing withthis year.
And I think part of this comes from Rick Rubin's book, but he
(25:39):
talks so much about, and this iswhat I've been exploring is more
of a legacy of work and not so much I'm going to write one
book. This has to be the book.
This has to do a certain thing. And it's like, well, if I wrote
a book right now, that's my book.
Like I'm 29, that's my book for now.
When I'm 60, I will have much different things to say.
(26:01):
And what if that first book or that first Co authorship is not
meant to be? And I hate to say, I'm not
saying your books aren't good guys, but what if it's not meant
to be quote UN quote good? What if you take the pressure
off that and it's just a piece of your work?
This weekend I was in Chicago and I went to the Art Institute
and there was like a few dozen Monets, some Van Gogh, a lot of
(26:27):
contemporary artists. And I was looking at in this
room of Monets and there is somewhere between 5:00 and 8:00
paintings. It was the exact same scene and
it was just haystackin, no haystackin sun Haystackin this
season 2 haystacks and it's in amuseum now and we see it and
(26:48):
we're like, that is a Monet thatis such a great piece of work.
And he's like, dude, I was practicing.
I was just seeing like what it looks like in different light.
And what if we embody that more?And like you've done to take the
pressure off and live the life that feels aligned and feels
good to you so that you want to keep being obsessed, you want to
keep showing up. And then how do we OK, sometimes
(27:10):
a full book is a lot. So let's start a little, you
know, more manageable. And I just love that.
I love everything you're saying.And I was just gifted listening
to a conversation on Instagram, you know, just the way we
randomly find things. And it was, you've got to
actually do it wrong in order todo it right.
Yes, using wrong, right, you know, in very loose terms.
(27:31):
But it was the idea of like, we can really paralyze ourselves
with doing anything that we feela tug towards because our
beautiful cranial brain is very linear and it can only think of
the past. Oh, well, we've never written a
book before. OK, We can project into the
future, right? But what you're talking about is
what if I just sit here in the present and just let things show
(27:54):
up and maybe get some help with someone who can go uh huh, yeah,
that I want to hear more about that.
And then over here. That's great.
Let that be. And then what about down here?
What do you want? You know, what's the So what
like where do you want to end this?
And then you've got a piece, you've got a contribution like
sitting right there. I don't know anyone who can put
together 3 to 5 pages to contribute towards a something a
(28:18):
common theme or curiosity or question.
But really what you're speaking to is that books do have St.
cred and I love that. And I think we we are done with
books being definitive answers for things and the I'm going to
go find it in a book and that's it.
And I'm done. It's actually how are books
invitations? And I'm just elbowing my way and
(28:41):
sitting among the table of otherhumans who are having these
conversations. And what a great kind of forever
beyond you living legacy that will go on forever.
That's the cool thing about books is they're not going
anywhere. They may change the shape.
You know, we've seen them go digital, all that kind of stuff.
Audio books, awesome, making them more accessible.
They're not going anywhere. Like we're always going to have
(29:02):
books in some way, shape or formand they're going to live beyond
you and how cool that you can bea part of whatever that
continued conversation or shift to go.
Yeah, I used to say it this way.Now I say it this way to refer
to your own self and your earlier self and all of that.
So one thing that does paralyze people is, is that this has got
(29:23):
to be. And I'm like, what if you don't
save the world with this or thiscontribution to this book or
this paragraph or this social media post or this anything that
you're putting out there? What if it doesn't save the
world? That's OK.
What if you're just curious and let the way you're thinking
about it show up and invite other people to do the same?
(29:45):
Well, and another piece of this kind of creation conversation
that really hit me in the gut too is that, you know, you talk
about people who have been working on an outline for three
years or working on, I know people work on books for decades
and just never get it published.There's something beautiful
about it being a representation of you in that moment in time.
(30:08):
And something that Rick Rubin talks about in his book about
creation and creativity and all of that is that if you wait too
long till finish it, good, bad, whatever, you have now changed
enough as a person that that work no longer represents you,
and trying to keep that work to represent who you now are.
Doesn't. Necessarily work and this is
something that really hits home for me because of the way my
(30:32):
brain is wired. Like with this podcast.
My solo episodes are me literally with my phone like
this one hand on the wheel driving.
Don't recommend don't try this at home guys.
But it really is because if I don't get it out in that moment,
I'm not a person who writes it down and then can revisit it and
feel as inspired about the thing.
(30:53):
And so this whole idea of just right, even just talk it out,
I'm always like, talk it out andtranscribe it.
Now it's literally free to transcribe whatever you want.
We have so many authors who write out loud like that's how
they write their book, and we love that.
And it's like, don't wait for this moment to pass, even if
it's an unfinished work, even ifin, you know, 5 minutes, you
(31:14):
wouldn't say it that way again, you know, not everything has to
get full set into the world, butdon't wait so long that you miss
a moment to kind of capture thatversion of you and your work.
Yeah, it's showing up for a reason.
So to not honor it kind of tellsthose parts of you like, yeah,
that's great, but we're not going to handle.
And that's just sad. And for probably most people
(31:36):
listening to this, that's not why you're here.
Like you are meant to get it outagain.
Or people are writing about all kinds of things, and some of
them are really, really heavy and personal and vulnerable.
So we get really clear, too, that just because you've written
it down doesn't mean it needs tobe shared.
We don't even have to read it. But for you yourself, that
enactment of embodying it through words is going to be
(31:57):
powerful. It's going to be supportive in
some way, shape or form, even ifyou don't know what it is or
can't understand it now. So yeah, write something.
Write it often. Don't worry about what it is.
Don't worry about what it soundslike.
The way you say things, the way you write them are beautiful.
All the rules are BS anyway. They don't even make sense.
They come from different languages that aren't even
(32:17):
English. Just what if we took a breath,
put it all down and just said what needed to be said, wrote
what needed to be written in thein the moment and trust that
that's it. That's my job, yeah.
Yeah, that is the next right step.
That is enough. And then there'll be another
moment, and you'll take that onetoo.
Absolutely. I level that.
I mean, you know, there's some statistic out there.
You just see different numbers that like 80% of the population
(32:40):
desire to write a book and then only actually 2% do it.
You hear a lot about discipline and you got to write every day
and all this kind of stuff. And Cindy Urbanski, who's my
partner in crime and our main writing coach talks about
writing around the edges. And, you know, you're doing
laundry and something shows up, Grab that phone, do a little OK.
You know, we use Boxer with our clients.
(33:03):
And so just like you're talking about, they'll hit, they're on a
drive and they're like, I don't know what this is, but you know,
amazingness comes out and we're like, OK, we will be
transcribing that. Now I'm putting it in your
Google Doc. Like we're there to be your
writing partners to help you getit down and get it captured
Writing around the edges. I mean, there's a few people.
That's the other misconception, is I've got to stop life and go
(33:23):
off and be this writer or do this thing, and it's just not
true. Yeah, there's cool things.
We have retreats and all that kind of stuff, and those are
amazing and people get a lot of writing done at them.
And it's in the little nooks andcrannies of life that these
things get written and get completed and get out in the
world. So I feel like I've got part of
that like down. I don't always do it, but often
(33:47):
I'll make the know I'll record the thing.
And so when you were saying it, I was like, OK, what I'm really
curious about is I have so much random shit that I'm like, this
is great, but I have almost 100 podcasts recorded.
Where do you start to actually process and put it into a form?
(34:11):
Put it into the unwritten outline.
How does that look? Yeah, totally.
You're making me think about Juliette Kuhn, who's a therapist
here in the Charlotte area. And she read the book Who You
Calling Crazy? And she's all about
destigmatizing therapy. And it started as let's take all
your podcasts because she has podcasts.
Who you going crazy? Let's get them all.
They were already transcribed. We dumped them all in.
(34:31):
She thought that was going to bethe book because she thought she
couldn't just have her words. It needed to be these interviews
and other people and all this kind of stuff.
So we nodded along to that and we started there.
Cool, cool, cool. And many of us have so many word
assets. That's the other thing too, is
when people are like, I don't know, it's all right.
I'm like, give me your computer,give me your phone, let me see
(34:52):
your social media. And I could literally just like
copy and paste, copy and paste. So gathering those, what I call
word assets is a great place to start.
And even if you feel like you don't have words, like what are
the questions that people are always coming to you with?
Or what are the things when you're starting to work with a
new client or get to know someone, what are the things you
like? I like to ask.
And those can be great little places to start to find what I
(35:15):
call like these are your sort ofconstants, the things you're
always saying over and over and over.
And again, if we went and listened back to this podcast,
you've probably done it a coupleof times and then we could start
to sort. So sometimes it's a matter of,
yeah, those word assets do need to stay and we can start to sort
them into where they might want to go.
(35:36):
So maybe episode 1 and episode 25 have some common thread that
we want to put together so we can start there.
Then when you're kind of smashing and mashing stuff
around, you'll read back throughit.
We'll read back through it together and you'll feel the
disconnect when there's a jump, when there's you just, you know,
(35:58):
because you're talking. We often just stop into a
thought, carry on with another. And when we're talking, we can
do that when we're having conversation because we've got a
live human connection. When someone is reading our
words, I always say like, you'vegot to hold the reader by the
hand and you want to walk them down or up the stairs side by
side. So anytime there's that jump,
(36:20):
either you've jumped ahead a couple of steps or you're behind
and they're like, wait, what? Where are we?
What's going on? So then we start to find those
little places and make decisionsabout, OK, does this actually
stay? Does this actually fit?
And that's the beautiful messy revision part where we're seeing
what threads need to be pulled through to make this come
(36:40):
together in a way that a reader will be able to follow along
with you. And readers can handle a lot.
I am all about. It doesn't have to be bang over
the head to the reader. This is what you're supposed to
be getting from these words thatI just told you about.
I use Glenn Doyle's Untamed. It's just pieces, it's essays,
and they're not tied together inwhat we might consider
(37:03):
traditional with transition sentences and all of this kind
of stuff. Here's this one now here's this
one, now here's this. There's common things.
There's things that you're pulling from it.
So gathering your word assets, dumping them all together,
really looking at them. Does any of this make sense?
What am I noticing are kind of the common things?
What are the things that I'm saying all the time over and
over when people are curious about what their book should be,
(37:25):
It's often the thing. What are the thing you're so
sick of saying that you want to put in a book and pretend you
never have to say I'm ever again.
Now I can move on to the next day.
Now I've got this beautiful thing this, you know, talk about
passive income, a book, technically it can become
passive income. You create it once and then
boom, it's out there forever. And then the So what?
Who cares about any of these things?
What is the overall? So what that is made that I want
(37:47):
to make sure the reader knows orunderstands or is able to do or
feels or experiences by the timethey finish this chapter, this
section and then this entire book.
And that helps us feel into how it all gets to come together.
Now, there'll be people listening there go.
Well, yeah. But if you could just create an
outline from the start and have all that clear, then you can
(38:08):
write through the outline and like, uh huh.
How's that working? Yeah.
Like so you've done it and you have a book now, right?
Because that works so well. Yeah, because usually you look
at the outline and you're like, yes, I've got a plan.
And and then you go to start sorting your words into that and
something just, again, for the people that we tend to connect
with, just doesn't quite work, but that we need a little more
what for some feels like mess. The actual sharing of the
(38:31):
journey and letting it evolve instead of, again, being so
rigid in what you think it should be.
And that's what I was saying with this podcast even is, you
know, maybe I should do a littlemore of those guys.
Don't hold me to never doing this.
But if I have more of a plan andan outline, then I'll sit there
and be like, well, in this moment, I don't really have
(38:52):
thoughts on that. But if I get off this podcast
and then I'm like, OK, now I'm thinking of things and I can't
direct what I'm going to be inspired by, but I can capture
that. And like you're saying,
different people do it in different ways.
But especially for me, I relate to that because I'm like, yeah,
if you give me an outline, like I can do it when I've said it so
(39:13):
many times, like when I do a workshop, it's like, great,
here's the very simple, like what you need to know.
But yeah, sometimes there's magic in the edges of life that
you don't expect. Well, and it also takes if, if
we're. So I need to plan it and then I
need to execute the plan, make the plan.
(39:34):
You know, it actually eliminatesthe beautiful creation part,
which is once the words start tocome out, it develops its own
life and it's reciprocal. And so it's this recursive back
and forth. You're breathing into it.
I mean, we're doing it right now, live.
We're breathing into this conversation and each other in
this space, in this context, this time period, all of that
(39:54):
stuff. And then as we're doing that,
new things are showing up that we could not have anticipated
that we were going to say talk about etcetera, etcetera.
So that's where like the over planning, the outlining.
And this does not mean that we don't have structure or
organization or anything like that.
That's where sometimes people get confused.
(40:15):
It's like, no, no, no, these books are organized, they're
structured, they've got a pathway in a direction and
clarity and all of that kind of stuff.
It's just how we get there. And what feels most aligned for
me, it's not the process that I teach anybody to do.
I'm trying to help you find yourprocess to get things out and
create so that you can go rinse and repeat and do that over and
over again. And by the way, it changes.
(40:36):
It's going to change what workedfor you last book.
You might need to do something different next time.
So that piece of letting what wants to show up, show up.
We've got to make space for thatand be open to that because
that's where the unexpected getsto happen.
And we go, I don't know. That's what this book wanted to
be, and here we are. And that's really cool.
Well, and if we know anything about humans, it's that we don't
(40:58):
really know ourselves very much.And then it's exciting to let
those things kind of show up, too.
It can be uncomfortable but veryexciting all at the same time.
Well, I have a few last questions, and it's funny
because I want to. I'm like, oh, the perfect
question is, what books are you obsessed with?
(41:19):
But then I come back and I'm like, do you read outside of
working hours? You spend so much time in
authorship and books and publishing.
Do you do that in your free timetoo?
Or how do you like to spend yourfree time?
Yeah. So I will say what I want to
read has shifted since a lot of what I read up until this kind
of starting Synergy Publishing Group, a lot of what I was drawn
(41:40):
to was non fiction, personal growth, self help, all that kind
of stuff. Now, because most of our clients
write that I love to go into fantasy, not here, you know,
snotty fairiness, all the good things.
So I just am in. I started the Throne of Glass
series, so a little obsessed with that and I think I've
(42:02):
caught it in my local libraries where like people are kind of
like behind that series. So I'm now getting things
because I'm like, Oh yes, this is perfect timing because it's
the worst when you get into a series and then you got to wait
a bajillion years for the next whatever.
And I'm also someone what I'm obsessed with is I'll toggle
easily. I'm a person that can have free
books for books going at the same time.
(42:25):
One or two might be an audiobook, 1 might be on my
Kindle, 1 might be paperback, you know, print in my hand.
And I'm pretty obsessed in general right now with doing
what I want to do when I want todo it.
Yes, I'm here for all of that. Books are a part of that, yes.
Are there other things that you kind of are doing when it comes
(42:46):
to play and rest and taking careof yourself as you are also an
entrepreneur and running a company?
Yeah, so I dance. I do ballroom and Latin dancing.
If you go and follow my social media, you will, for better or
worse, see me cheering about that.
Yeah. That was a gift to myself post
(43:08):
divorce about two years ago. I'd always wanted to do it.
I'm like the first person on thedance floor, all that kind of
stuff. Music's going, I'm shaking my
butt. But I'd never done ballroom or
anything like that. And then the little girl did
like, ballet, jazz, that sort ofstuff.
I was the easiest sell. Luckily, my partner that I got
paired with initially shout out to Jake Davies Midtown Ballroom
(43:28):
in Charlotte. He's amazing and also I'm pretty
tall human. He's one of the only and
ballroom people tend to be tiny humans in general, especially
Latin and rhythm dancers. So he was taller to me and I was
like, this is amazing. And it's just been so fun.
I get to learn all kinds of new things and I've even done dance
competitions and locally and wasin Italy last year doing 1.
(43:52):
So that is the Super playful, super joyful just because and
lots of fun things. Of course, when we do those
things, like lots of fun things emerge because of that, which is
great. Well now I have to ask, what are
you were you most obsessed with in Italy when you went?
I'm going to Italy for a month in the fall.
(44:13):
I would like to be in your suitcase please.
OK, I was obsessed with the juxtaposition, the constant
juxtaposition. I don't think I fully understood
the geographical landscape of the country until there where
you can be in a city and feel city, but then the ocean is
(44:34):
there and then mountains are there, and then there's a
volcano. And just the constant and
relative ease of going back and forth.
And then you can go into the, you know, winery, rolling hills,
countryside kind of thing. That paired with the history
that I will be. So you'll have to let me know
how that feels because I was notprepared for how that was going
(44:57):
to land like in my body to be ontile and structures from like
8th century BCEI still can't like I couldn't wrap my brain
around it. Or to be in a a Duomo, a church,
knowing when it was constructed and just thinking of I had
(45:17):
moments of like, So what if the people who are like looking for
bread think about this showing up because the opulence game is
strong. Like the Vatican City and you're
just like, OK, so this is where everybody's tithe money is gone
for centuries. Yes, like you want to talk about
dudes making sure their dudenesswas prominent and it displayed
(45:43):
and like. Talk about the patriarchy.
Yes, yes, yes. And you know, the Colosseum, all
of it. And then everyone is gorgeous.
I just, I want to marry everyone.
I want to eat everything. And you can't eat everything
because it's fresh and it's realand so you're going to have fun.
(46:03):
And I was looking at real estatethe whole time.
So tell us what you buying and we'll buy something.
Oh, my partner, he is literally,while I'm on Instagram, he's on
Zillow all over the world. And so we definitely have seen
some properties that we would not be super mad at.
But I have done Rome, but I'm really excited.
(46:26):
We're going to do Sicily and we're going to get up to the
Dolomites and then we're going to do something in the middle.
But what you're saying really iswhere you're like, oh, this has
just been here forever. And how many people have, you
know, celebrated here? And how many people have, I'll
just say died here going to the Coliseum?
(46:51):
This is actually going to make me sound really dumb, but it's
one of those things that you just kind of in your head
picture and then you get there and you're like, oh, wait, I was
like, there's no blood on the floor.
Like, where's all the blood frompeople dying for hundreds of
years? And it was just like, not there
is no blood. I hear myself say it.
I know how it sounds. But it was one of those things
(47:12):
where you just picture these bigbattles and and then you get
there and you're like, OK, so I can just walk here and take a
photo. And that's what this is now,
Yes. And then to understand why the
battles and the day of debaucheries were happening and
what that was, do it just the historical context of how this
(47:33):
kept people entertained and tamed by showing these fights to
the dev. And they had great tools.
And I mean, the technology in all of Italy, the historical
stuff, I mean, you're just like,Oh my God, they were just
brilliant. And you understand why we
structure like everybody wanted to be.
They wanted to be the Egyptians,and then everybody wanted to be
(47:53):
the Romans, you know? But yeah, they had stuff on the
floor to get rid of the blood sothat we didn't have it piling up
over. Yeah, you're like, they also can
use sand that you can like take in and out or whatever they did.
I don't really. Know yeah wrapping your head
around it yeah it's gonna be awesome it was like a 10/12 day
trip so obviously didn't get to do all the things so I want to
(48:16):
come back for sure you're gonna have so much fun yeah.
I am so excited and it's funny because I have no outline.
I'm going to get there and let the next step lead me into the
next step for a month. Yes, it's funny you say a month,
I need a month to come back. Actually I was like I need a
month and about each place so. Well this is been amazing.
(48:38):
I feel even more inspired. One day I will write a book.
You've got many probably. I mean, that's also the other
thing I didn't say. Most of the people we come in
contact with, it's they've got the one and that feels like a
big hurdle and that's great and amazing.
And then it's like just there's many more to come for sure.
So our signature program is called Legacy Author for a
reason, because they are writingall the things forever.
(49:00):
I love that. How can people work with you and
just connect with you and stay in your world?
Yeah, so easy, simple, just to get connected and say hello and
see my silly dance videos, amongother things, just on Instagram
at the Shayna under score B, I'msure we'll have it in the show
notes and stuff. And then one fun thing I just
(49:20):
have a fun kind of workshop thatI love to share with people and
also allow them to get access toin a different way to my book is
just heading over to shaynahartman.com.
Writing is not that hard. We'll make sure that everything
is linked and ready to go. Thank you for coming on,
(49:42):
becoming obsessed and just sharing your whole self with us.
Super fun, thank you so much. If you're still listening, let
us know. We want to know if you have a
book because we think you do. Send either one of us Adm on
Instagram. Send me a voice note.
I love voice notes and if this helped you, entertained you,
(50:04):
share it with a friend, post it on your story, send a text, give
us a five star review. It really helps get the show in
front of more people so they canlive a life they love too.
All right y'all, let's go get obsessed.
Have you ever thought about writing a book for work?
For fun fiction, Non fiction? Because in this episode, I want
you to set all of your doubts, your it couldn't be me aside and
give yourself permission to dream and to really spend this
(00:20):
next moment thinking about what if you did write a book.
Today we're becoming obsessed with telling your story.
And as today's guest says, you are a writer.
Even if you can't spell and you suck at grammar, you have
something important to say. I'm so excited to have today's
guest on Meet Shayna Hartman, a former university English
(00:44):
professor turned in body writingcoach.
She is the founder of Synergy Publishing Group and an ICF and
Body Mind Method Certified coachwho envisions a world where all
voices and experiences are valued, especially the
rebellious ones, which really caught my attention and I love
that. Shayna, welcome to becoming
(01:04):
obsessed. Hi, I'm so excited to be here.
I know you say something that I really want to just kick us
right off with that writing is really a pathway to connecting
with yourself. And I know that your company's
work really encourages the sharing of your voice with the
world, whether it's to promote community connections, and it
(01:26):
kind of has this collective healing potential and power when
we start to share our voices. Fill me in a little bit on how
you've gotten to this place and kind of what that actually looks
like in practice. Yeah, absolutely.
Bottom line, we're storytellers.We're languaged beings.
That is the distinction kind of among the species of mammals
(01:48):
that, you know, makes us who we are is the way that we are able
to communicate. And while that can look
different for everyone, we ultimately have something to say
and share. We're constantly using language
to understand, to process, to make sense of the world.
So writing is just an expressionof that or an addition or way to
(02:12):
process that. I always kind of jokingly say
like the hands are kind of your connection between your heart
and your head. And so it's really this tool,
this embodiment practice this way to get what's swirling.
If you're anything like me, constantly on the inside and in
my beautiful brain on the outside, to just process it, to
(02:33):
get it out of you, to make senseof it, to potentially, like you
said, share it with someone else.
So the reason I became an English teacher in the 1st place
is my love of words. And yes, I love reading, but I
really love the juicy magic of what can happen when you put pen
to paper, finger to keys, and explore thoughts and feelings
(02:56):
and experiences through words. And that kind of carried me to
where I am today in many ways. There's this saying I picked up
a few years ago that talks abouthow it's kind of like everyone's
like, oh, I'm not a writer, I'm not creative.
I couldn't do that. And it's like, well, what if
actually every time you're spokewords out loud, you just created
(03:18):
a sentence, you just told a story.
And so you are like you said, we're all storytellers.
You are a creative and we kind of release the expectation and
do it. I'm in this season of life where
I'm like, do it for the sake of it.
Create the worst thing you can think of because it doesn't have
to be good. Write the worst thing you can
think of, because just writing is the point.
(03:41):
Yes, that is all, 100% all the hands up.
Yes, yes, yes. I always say to some people's
annoyance, I'm like, what if you're always writing?
Like what? What do you mean?
Well, you know, there's this bigkind of broad brush
generalization that we're becoming more illiterate.
Nobody writes anymore, nobody can spell, you know, whatever,
whatever. But actually because of a lot of
(04:04):
the technology, we actually write way more and have far more
demand on us for writing than our just a generation or two or
especially 3 ago were required to be able to do.
So every little text message, every little e-mail, every
little thing that you're you're putting out into the world or
(04:24):
just for yourself. Like what if it all counts?
Yeah, what if I'm just talking and speaking and that is
writing. So I think the idea of what
counts and what gets to count aswriting and what is creative.
If you're making it and you didn't have it before, OK, you
just created something. And a lot of that doubt and what
(04:46):
is writing and what counts as writing and especially good
writing for almost every one of us, it comes from how we were
taught writing in school. And part of what made me want to
become an English teacher was, Iwon't say the English teacher's
name, but I had two very pivotalteachers.
And it wasn't because they were great.
It was because I thought, hold on, wait a minute.
(05:09):
Writing can't all be about just not making mistakes and doing it
right, You know, RIGHD. And I thought, Nah, I think I
could do this way better. I think there's another way.
And that was like my initial four way into this path of
teaching writing in English and whatnot, and now carrying over
some of those same elements to the aspiring writers and authors
(05:31):
that I get to work with today. Well, I have to say, English
teachers have a special place inmy heart because my aunt was my
high school English teacher. And so from before I even hit
high school, everyone knew Miss Dasney.
And then they knew the embarrassing stories about me
when I entered high school coaching so many people on just
(05:51):
content creation. I'm like, tell me the most
boring story you can. That's fine.
Write me the actual most boring paragraph that you can imagine,
please. Like if you think you're so
boring or you can't write, then give me the worst you got and
just start there. Yeah, We have all these
constructs and we're told because of where we're from,
what our dialect is, what peoplesounded like at home versus what
(06:12):
that sounded like in school. We kind of learned quickly
whether we match up to what we're supposed to sound like
when we write and what those words are supposed to be.
And what gets really cool is what if we just waived the
permission, want to sound exactly how we are and just show
up exactly as we are. Yes.
And write the worst stuff. I have a favorite.
(06:34):
It was a teacher, researcher, Donald Murray, and he said give
yourself permission to write theworst stuff in the world.
A lot of what you said, because kind of like sleep begets sleep
with babies, writing begets writing.
And probably the biggest disservice that we do to
ourselves is we're think we're supposed to know exactly what
(06:54):
we're supposed to write and say before we put the first word
down. And writing is an embodiment
tool. It's literally like a process.
It is a verb, not a product. And so it evolves as we do it
and it changes. And guess what?
You can always change it. Like you can delete stuff, you
can erase stuff, right? It's pretty cool.
People get so stuck. They might have all these ideas
(07:16):
and then think, I just have sucha hard time getting it out.
It's like, well, tell me about that more.
And oftentimes it's because they're censoring themselves and
telling themselves, no, no, that's no, I don't know how to
say that or that's not the rightway to say it.
Like, why don't you just write down anything?
Even write down, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know
what to write. That's great because it is a
muscle to flex and we've got to kind of unpack some of those
(07:40):
layers of why we're not just letting ourselves go and flow.
We'll also often use the trick, at least with business owners,
creating content is more of the realm of writing.
I'm in so much. I'll say text it to me like
you're texting a friend. Just type it out the way that we
actually are used to typing it out or the way we're used to
(08:01):
speaking. Lose the business accent, the
influencer accent. And I think it does end up
wearing off as you go. You start to kind of have more
of your own voice come through. But I really am curious to pick
your brain. When somebody comes to you, they
kind of start working with you. Is it that they're having this
experience where they know what to say and they're like, I don't
(08:21):
know that I could write a book, but I've got to get this out or
I feel like there's also that experience of I want to write a
book and I don't know what to say.
And I'm just curious to how people find you, what kind of
state they're usually in and what those first steps are to
kind of get into the motion the.People who come to us and wind
up working with us at Synergy Publishing Group, we've sort of
(08:42):
realized there's kind of a couple of different things that
all in a similar journey and wayof being 1 is that they've
always been told they should write a book one day.
So maybe they're the person thatthey somehow catch your eye when
you're scrolling through social media.
If Theresa is saying it like I'mpaying attention.
(09:03):
Meanwhile, you might be just going, I'm just venting and
getting something out and this is my thought for today.
Well, I'm eating ice cream at 9:00 PM.
You know, no strong sway towardsit was just something you felt
and you put it out there. So a lot of our author clients
have always been told they should write a book one day.
The second layer to that is they've always felt or had a tug
or said things like, well, just chalk that up.
(09:24):
That'll be a chapter in the booksomeday.
So they're having lived experiences or they're going
through things that make it feelbook worthy.
This is something that needs to be put out into the world at
some point. And then the other is a lot of
people have been writing, working on a book all by
(09:45):
themselves in a silo because that's also a misperception that
we have. You know, we often look at all
these pretty things on our shelves and we're like, wow, I
don't know how to get to there. That feels really intimidating.
And often our perception of writers, especially like fiction
writers and whatnot, is that they're off by themselves and
their little chateaus or whatever.
(10:05):
But we forget that the great writers were like down at the
pub hanging out, talking to eachother, spitballing ideas, all
this kind of stuff. So writing is actually a really
communal act. We need to have kind of this
back and forth with people. So a lot of people come to us.
I've been working on my book formonths, even years, and then
they get with us, get some support.
(10:26):
I think of one of our authors, Brangardner, who was an art
professor and an artist, and she'd been writing her book for
years, and then within like fourmonths we had it out in the
world kind of a thing. So people start in different
places from idea to been drafting forever and ever and
written their book three times over by the time they come to us
and wherever they are beneath them, right where they are.
(10:47):
And it really is a matter of people hate the idea of like,
just write. Just start putting words down.
The people who work with us tendto not be outlined first.
People not dogging outlines. You will see plenty of things
about why you cannot write a book without an outline.
(11:07):
And I'm sitting here looking at all these books from my clients
and from myself, and not when outline, you know, from them
maybe later on, because we don'tknow what we're necessarily
writing. Now, if you're doing fiction,
that's a whole different thing. And, and I should caveat that
fiction's a little bit differentin that you're weaving together
the plot line and characters andthings like that.
(11:30):
Most of the people who are coming to us, we do have some
fiction writers, we have poetry writers, but a lot of them are
non fiction. Personal growth, self help,
business strategy, this beautiful collage of kind of
their own personal stories and the lessons from MAD and how
that supported different elements of either recovery or
starting a business or relationships or whatever it may
(11:51):
be. And outlines often keep us
stuck. I've talked to many people who
are like, yeah, when I get my outline, I'll come to you.
Cool. How long have you been working
on that? 03 years or so.
Like, Oh my God. It's like you can't figure out
where you're going until you getthere and you're one step away.
It's like take one step at a time and let the path unfold.
So the first is just flexing thewriting muscle, just starting to
(12:14):
put words down, and then somebody needs to look at it.
And that's the biggest thing toofor us is we don't know how our
words are landing if nobody is reading it.
And it's very scary. Writing is very vulnerable.
And there are your precious words.
So I get it. But the biggest thing that we
provide is like feedback. And we read stuff and we share
stuff on our writing days. Writing days are happening right
(12:36):
now with one of my other writingcoaches.
And I guarantee you somebody just wrote a line that they
shared in between their writing sprints that everybody went,
what? You just wrote that.
Holy cow. Like amazing.
And then the writer goes, what? That was good, OK, cool.
And then you're off to the races.
And that's what it's all about. We just don't know how powerful
(12:56):
and awesome we are most of the time.
I want to get into a little bit of the impact you see when
people are let's say like halfway 80% to actually
publishing and, and what comes next and really more the impact
on the author and maybe the community as well.
Yeah, I always tell people when they're considering should I
(13:18):
shouldn't Eyes is a book for me.I mean, kind of like most
anything, if you're feeling thattug, it's there for a reason.
And whether it's with us or on your own, usually when I talk to
people, I always say, let me just affirm this needs to be out
in the world. No matter where you go next.
Please get this out in the worldbecause we don't realize that
that there is someone many people who are like sitting
(13:41):
there hoping, wishing, praying for exactly like, does anybody
else feel this way? Has anybody else gone through
this? And so I can never guarantee
exactly what the impact of theirwords will be.
But as people start to get to that, oh, wow, this book is like
actually going to be in my handspretty soon.
Many things show up. 1 is they'll start to share some
(14:02):
things and they're like, Oh my gosh, I let my sister read it
and she cried. Or if they're, you know, have a
business business, they shared afew pages with their clients and
they were so excited. We just don't know the impact
that it's going to have. But I can always say I can't
guarantee what it's going to be,but it is going to be big and
strong and something you could never think of the way that your
words are going to impact. I don't want to say my latest
(14:23):
book is writing is not that hard.
And it's not because it's oh, easy peasy.
You know, everybody can do this.I do think we are all writers
and we are capable, but the act of writing is just so innate
that when we get out of our way,that's the easy part.
The thing that I always focus onis I coach the writer because
while we get excited that our book is about to come out, we
(14:43):
also are like, yeah, my book's about to come out.
I'm about to be seen in a very big way.
This is going to be in this space and this online bookstore
and I want to put it in my localbookstore.
And that's kind of tear excitingall at the same time.
So this is where really getting people reminding them of their
(15:06):
why, which we get really clear on, and connecting them with how
this is supporting their big picture values and goals in life
and how their words are not justthis trivial trite thing.
Yeah, go slam out a book in a weekend, but genuinely a part of
the path and the trajectory and the purpose that they're on.
(15:28):
And it's not that the book is the end all be all.
It's a part of this ecosystem that they're building.
Their words are going to supportthe other things they want to
do, will support the words. It's this nice reciprocal back
and forth. I'm really clear in that we are
not the write your book in a weekend people.
I'm glad that exists in the world.
I'm glad that AI makes things more accessible to many people
(15:50):
who want that kind of help and all of that.
I have no shade, no problem. It's just not who we tend to
work with. Our people are like the ooey
gooey healer, feeler, empaths, purpose makers and super
heartfelt, super mission driven.And so writing is just as much
for themselves as it is for whomever is going to wind up
(16:13):
reading it and the impact that it's going to have, which is
always fun to see. You talked about your high
school English teachers and thatkind of led you into wanting to
be an English teacher or professor, but where did that
merge with authorship and where did your journey with books and
being an author? Where did that start?
(16:34):
Well, I was published in 4th grade, no?
So for those English teachers that I had the side eye with, I
do want to shout out Miss Parkerand Miss Perkins, which were 4th
and 5th grade Magic teachers in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Shout out Hunter Elementary School.
And we put. Together, this like book of
writings about different businesses and organizations and
(16:55):
stuff in our community and we all got to have our own little
like part in that. And I do remember getting my
first kind of journal diary situation at a young age and
always having been an overthinker and feeler and
almost only child, I have much younger siblings, brother and
sister. I needed a place and a space,
and writing was that for me. I always knew I wanted to teach,
(17:20):
and I wanted to teach English and I wanted to teach at the
university level because I hit acollege campus and I thought the
schedule is pretty nice. I like this.
Yeah. There's a lot of freedom here.
I kind of want to never leave. How do I make that happen?
Oh, OK. You just got to get 3°.
No big deal. So my first forays after my
little childhood foray into publishing was in academia and
(17:41):
academic publishing and writing about writing.
And my dissertation was studyinghigh school English teachers and
how their beliefs about writing manifested kind of into their
classroom teachings about writing.
And that got really interesting and just always been fascinated
about like how we do take thingsfrom the inside and put them on
the outside and words and just always believed in the power and
(18:04):
magic of writing. And we've all felt that gut
punch when we read something andare like, Dang, do they know?
How do they know? I needed to hear that right now.
So that's always been and the underpinning and academic
writing obviously very differentand it can be very published or
perish and moving forward becamea tenured professor and all of
that. And slowly my soul was being
(18:26):
sucked out of me because it justwas another kind of institution
that was not as freeing as I thought it would be.
So I started to look for a way out of that and discovered
coaching essentially and life coaching, personal growth, all
that kind of stuff. And things just clicked into
place and I was like, this is the way out.
(18:48):
This is the pathway. Fun little sidebar, I had
actually gone back to school because I apparently needed more
to get licensed as a massage therapist.
And it was just this purely you talk about like just for the joy
of it. I always side eye people who
don't like massages, but I'm like, what are you doing with
your life? Yeah, you're like, why don't you
like joy and pleasure? But OK.
(19:08):
And rest. And yeah, so I always thought
like in retirement would be coolto be like, you know, something
to do, make a little money, all that kind of stuff became this
opportunity in a time that looking back, I really needed
something that was just for me. I had a young child, My didn't
know it at the time, but my marriage was slowly but surely
deteriorating. I don't practice massage any
(19:30):
longer, but I found that and because of that is when I first
saw Laura Wick, the CEO and founder of Body Mind Coaching,
who's also written book with us,the Body Mind Method, which is
awesome. So then started to play an
explore while I was still teaching the coaching and the
massage. And then there were clients who
didn't live near me, you know, who were kind of acquaintances.
(19:51):
And I would coach them. And it was often moms who were
struggling with similar things. I was struggling with being all
the things to everyone and not to yourself at all and losing
yourself. And then Laura Wick wound up
asking me. She was putting together a
digital magazine, and she asked if I would be the managing
editor and support the writers who were writing in this
magazine. And it was the biggest, you
(20:12):
know, duh. Honk on the head.
Oh, I became a teacher because Ilove writing and I love talking
about writing and I love helpingpeople find their boys and share
it in ways that feel really aligned.
And I love coaching. And.
Here we go so that was 2021 and 30 plus whatever books later
that have come out yeah. Synergy Publishing Group has
grown and evolved. And the fun thing is is to watch
(20:34):
myself too because my publishingand sharing slowed down because
I was helping other people first.
So I had to get myself right with that.
And luckily if few books have come out since then for me, But
yeah, that's kind of been the journey.
And we're just continuing to grow and evolve and be really
committed to not hustle and grind, but alignment and making
(20:56):
a difference and supporting people and like being permission
ones for their community. And yeah, just super exciting,
big honor. And always just a joy to hold
people's books in my hand that they often never thought could
come to fruition. Well, and I know that you
mentioned you have your next collaborative book, that you're
(21:19):
kind of gathering authors for the Unveiling the Secrets
series. I wanna know more about this.
I don't really know too much about it.
And I was like, oh, this sounds really cool.
Yeah, well, the first book I ever published, I was a
co-author with it was a group ofus teachers thinking out loud on
paper. We talked about this tool that
we used in the classroom called day Books.
(21:40):
And I can see that like it's allthe same ideas of like writing
to write, letting your true selfcome forward and letting it be
messy by using these colored notebooks, those Mead
composition notebooks that are like for elementary school.
My college and graduate studentslove those because it just
switched their brain into like, oh, I don't have to be perfect.
(22:00):
I just get to play and explore and draw and glue things in and
make a mess and something comes out of that that is shareable
and worthy of putting it out there.
And so a lot of my work in academia, whether it's
conferences or whatever, there'salways been a collaborative
element to it. When I started to kind of
develop the idea of Synergy Publishing group and helping
(22:20):
people essentially hybrid self publish their books, the sense
of some people, the idea of their own book to go from not
sure if I can write a book or I have an idea to write into their
own book felt like a little bit of a big leap, a little too
much. And so we're always in our
writing days in communities likewe're just having conversations
(22:42):
about life and coaching things that are coming up.
And so let's see, I think it wasin 2023, we put together our
first collaborative book called Capturing the In Between because
we were all just like in this liminal space of in.
Between a little messy middle. Yeah.
And then it's like, oh, well, we're always in that.
And so we kind of, we're all having these conversations and
we were like, what if we just put some pieces together around
(23:05):
this and put it between 2 covers?
And that's, you know, a book. And so that was sort of the
birth of how. And that helped a lot of people
who wanted to write their own book have a place to start,
realize they could do it, gain alittle confidence and oh, by the
way, be published, you know, andsell that book and do you know
with it what they want? And then the next one was
(23:25):
Unveiling the secrets. We had an idea from a friend.
It's called the encyclopedia of life or something like that.
So we played upon the idea of like everybody took a letter and
unveiling the secrets. And it was an encyclopedia by
women for women and those who love them was the subtitle.
And so we were all that one was all about like, why don't people
tell us this as female identifying humans?
(23:46):
Like why do we have to find thisin like secret whispers by our
cool aunt? And you know, why aren't we
talking about these things more?And then unveiling the secrets
we realized was like this catch all, unveiling the secrets of
filling the blank, you know, taking up space, relationships,
business, all of this stuff has started to come up.
And so now it's a series and we are exploring how that wants to
(24:09):
grow. The clients who started in those
books now have their own books out and they want to lead
unveiling the secrets books. So that's kind of the gathering
that we're doing right now and building a little writing
community around that. So again, like just really love
the name of your podcast becauseit's, yeah, I'm super obsessed
(24:31):
with how does it get to show up with ease?
And then I don't have to be at the helm and I get to stay
grounded, stay committed, be open and see how things want to
show up versus that pressure, especially in entrepreneurship
where it's I have to come up with everything and has to be
all of me. And so that's how the Unveiling
the Secrets book has kind of come forward, and we're really
(24:55):
excited because it's just a little more accessible way for
people to get started. Well, and I have a handful of
bugs that are a collection of authors.
And sometimes you just want the little tidbit.
Like sometimes I don't have, I mean, with my attention span
nowadays, you know, collectivelyit's like a great chapter is
(25:17):
what I need. And then I can come back and
read another one and not feel like, OK, what was going on, But
something else that I love aboutjust the way you show up.
And this kind of approach is almost taking pressure off the
first book. I think a lot of us, this is
something I've been playing withthis year.
And I think part of this comes from Rick Rubin's book, but he
(25:39):
talks so much about, and this iswhat I've been exploring is more
of a legacy of work and not so much I'm going to write one
book. This has to be the book.
This has to do a certain thing. And it's like, well, if I wrote
a book right now, that's my book.
Like I'm 29, that's my book for now.
When I'm 60, I will have much different things to say.
(26:01):
And what if that first book or that first Co authorship is not
meant to be? And I hate to say, I'm not
saying your books aren't good guys, but what if it's not meant
to be quote UN quote good? What if you take the pressure
off that and it's just a piece of your work?
This weekend I was in Chicago and I went to the Art Institute
and there was like a few dozen Monets, some Van Gogh, a lot of
(26:27):
contemporary artists. And I was looking at in this
room of Monets and there is somewhere between 5:00 and 8:00
paintings. It was the exact same scene and
it was just haystackin, no haystackin sun Haystackin this
season 2 haystacks and it's in amuseum now and we see it and
(26:48):
we're like, that is a Monet thatis such a great piece of work.
And he's like, dude, I was practicing.
I was just seeing like what it looks like in different light.
And what if we embody that more?And like you've done to take the
pressure off and live the life that feels aligned and feels
good to you so that you want to keep being obsessed, you want to
keep showing up. And then how do we OK, sometimes
(27:10):
a full book is a lot. So let's start a little, you
know, more manageable. And I just love that.
I love everything you're saying.And I was just gifted listening
to a conversation on Instagram, you know, just the way we
randomly find things. And it was, you've got to
actually do it wrong in order todo it right.
Yes, using wrong, right, you know, in very loose terms.
(27:31):
But it was the idea of like, we can really paralyze ourselves
with doing anything that we feela tug towards because our
beautiful cranial brain is very linear and it can only think of
the past. Oh, well, we've never written a
book before. OK, We can project into the
future, right? But what you're talking about is
what if I just sit here in the present and just let things show
(27:54):
up and maybe get some help with someone who can go uh huh, yeah,
that I want to hear more about that.
And then over here. That's great.
Let that be. And then what about down here?
What do you want? You know, what's the So what
like where do you want to end this?
And then you've got a piece, you've got a contribution like
sitting right there. I don't know anyone who can put
together 3 to 5 pages to contribute towards a something a
(28:18):
common theme or curiosity or question.
But really what you're speaking to is that books do have St.
cred and I love that. And I think we we are done with
books being definitive answers for things and the I'm going to
go find it in a book and that's it.
And I'm done. It's actually how are books
invitations? And I'm just elbowing my way and
(28:41):
sitting among the table of otherhumans who are having these
conversations. And what a great kind of forever
beyond you living legacy that will go on forever.
That's the cool thing about books is they're not going
anywhere. They may change the shape.
You know, we've seen them go digital, all that kind of stuff.
Audio books, awesome, making them more accessible.
They're not going anywhere. Like we're always going to have
(29:02):
books in some way, shape or formand they're going to live beyond
you and how cool that you can bea part of whatever that
continued conversation or shift to go.
Yeah, I used to say it this way.Now I say it this way to refer
to your own self and your earlier self and all of that.
So one thing that does paralyze people is, is that this has got
(29:23):
to be. And I'm like, what if you don't
save the world with this or thiscontribution to this book or
this paragraph or this social media post or this anything that
you're putting out there? What if it doesn't save the
world? That's OK.
What if you're just curious and let the way you're thinking
about it show up and invite other people to do the same?
(29:45):
Well, and another piece of this kind of creation conversation
that really hit me in the gut too is that, you know, you talk
about people who have been working on an outline for three
years or working on, I know people work on books for decades
and just never get it published.There's something beautiful
about it being a representation of you in that moment in time.
(30:08):
And something that Rick Rubin talks about in his book about
creation and creativity and all of that is that if you wait too
long till finish it, good, bad, whatever, you have now changed
enough as a person that that work no longer represents you,
and trying to keep that work to represent who you now are.
Doesn't. Necessarily work and this is
something that really hits home for me because of the way my
(30:32):
brain is wired. Like with this podcast.
My solo episodes are me literally with my phone like
this one hand on the wheel driving.
Don't recommend don't try this at home guys.
But it really is because if I don't get it out in that moment,
I'm not a person who writes it down and then can revisit it and
feel as inspired about the thing.
(30:53):
And so this whole idea of just right, even just talk it out,
I'm always like, talk it out andtranscribe it.
Now it's literally free to transcribe whatever you want.
We have so many authors who write out loud like that's how
they write their book, and we love that.
And it's like, don't wait for this moment to pass, even if
it's an unfinished work, even ifin, you know, 5 minutes, you
(31:14):
wouldn't say it that way again, you know, not everything has to
get full set into the world, butdon't wait so long that you miss
a moment to kind of capture thatversion of you and your work.
Yeah, it's showing up for a reason.
So to not honor it kind of tellsthose parts of you like, yeah,
that's great, but we're not going to handle.
And that's just sad. And for probably most people
(31:36):
listening to this, that's not why you're here.
Like you are meant to get it outagain.
Or people are writing about all kinds of things, and some of
them are really, really heavy and personal and vulnerable.
So we get really clear, too, that just because you've written
it down doesn't mean it needs tobe shared.
We don't even have to read it. But for you yourself, that
enactment of embodying it through words is going to be
(31:57):
powerful. It's going to be supportive in
some way, shape or form, even ifyou don't know what it is or
can't understand it now. So yeah, write something.
Write it often. Don't worry about what it is.
Don't worry about what it soundslike.
The way you say things, the way you write them are beautiful.
All the rules are BS anyway. They don't even make sense.
They come from different languages that aren't even
(32:17):
English. Just what if we took a breath,
put it all down and just said what needed to be said, wrote
what needed to be written in thein the moment and trust that
that's it. That's my job, yeah.
Yeah, that is the next right step.
That is enough. And then there'll be another
moment, and you'll take that onetoo.
Absolutely. I level that.
I mean, you know, there's some statistic out there.
You just see different numbers that like 80% of the population
(32:40):
desire to write a book and then only actually 2% do it.
You hear a lot about discipline and you got to write every day
and all this kind of stuff. And Cindy Urbanski, who's my
partner in crime and our main writing coach talks about
writing around the edges. And, you know, you're doing
laundry and something shows up, Grab that phone, do a little OK.
You know, we use Boxer with our clients.
(33:03):
And so just like you're talking about, they'll hit, they're on a
drive and they're like, I don't know what this is, but you know,
amazingness comes out and we're like, OK, we will be
transcribing that. Now I'm putting it in your
Google Doc. Like we're there to be your
writing partners to help you getit down and get it captured
Writing around the edges. I mean, there's a few people.
That's the other misconception, is I've got to stop life and go
(33:23):
off and be this writer or do this thing, and it's just not
true. Yeah, there's cool things.
We have retreats and all that kind of stuff, and those are
amazing and people get a lot of writing done at them.
And it's in the little nooks andcrannies of life that these
things get written and get completed and get out in the
world. So I feel like I've got part of
that like down. I don't always do it, but often
(33:47):
I'll make the know I'll record the thing.
And so when you were saying it, I was like, OK, what I'm really
curious about is I have so much random shit that I'm like, this
is great, but I have almost 100 podcasts recorded.
Where do you start to actually process and put it into a form?
(34:11):
Put it into the unwritten outline.
How does that look? Yeah, totally.
You're making me think about Juliette Kuhn, who's a therapist
here in the Charlotte area. And she read the book Who You
Calling Crazy? And she's all about
destigmatizing therapy. And it started as let's take all
your podcasts because she has podcasts.
Who you going crazy? Let's get them all.
They were already transcribed. We dumped them all in.
(34:31):
She thought that was going to bethe book because she thought she
couldn't just have her words. It needed to be these interviews
and other people and all this kind of stuff.
So we nodded along to that and we started there.
Cool, cool, cool. And many of us have so many word
assets. That's the other thing too, is
when people are like, I don't know, it's all right.
I'm like, give me your computer,give me your phone, let me see
(34:52):
your social media. And I could literally just like
copy and paste, copy and paste. So gathering those, what I call
word assets is a great place to start.
And even if you feel like you don't have words, like what are
the questions that people are always coming to you with?
Or what are the things when you're starting to work with a
new client or get to know someone, what are the things you
like? I like to ask.
And those can be great little places to start to find what I
(35:15):
call like these are your sort ofconstants, the things you're
always saying over and over and over.
And again, if we went and listened back to this podcast,
you've probably done it a coupleof times and then we could start
to sort. So sometimes it's a matter of,
yeah, those word assets do need to stay and we can start to sort
them into where they might want to go.
(35:36):
So maybe episode 1 and episode 25 have some common thread that
we want to put together so we can start there.
Then when you're kind of smashing and mashing stuff
around, you'll read back throughit.
We'll read back through it together and you'll feel the
disconnect when there's a jump, when there's you just, you know,
(35:58):
because you're talking. We often just stop into a
thought, carry on with another. And when we're talking, we can
do that when we're having conversation because we've got a
live human connection. When someone is reading our
words, I always say like, you'vegot to hold the reader by the
hand and you want to walk them down or up the stairs side by
side. So anytime there's that jump,
(36:20):
either you've jumped ahead a couple of steps or you're behind
and they're like, wait, what? Where are we?
What's going on? So then we start to find those
little places and make decisionsabout, OK, does this actually
stay? Does this actually fit?
And that's the beautiful messy revision part where we're seeing
what threads need to be pulled through to make this come
(36:40):
together in a way that a reader will be able to follow along
with you. And readers can handle a lot.
I am all about. It doesn't have to be bang over
the head to the reader. This is what you're supposed to
be getting from these words thatI just told you about.
I use Glenn Doyle's Untamed. It's just pieces, it's essays,
and they're not tied together inwhat we might consider
(37:03):
traditional with transition sentences and all of this kind
of stuff. Here's this one now here's this
one, now here's this. There's common things.
There's things that you're pulling from it.
So gathering your word assets, dumping them all together,
really looking at them. Does any of this make sense?
What am I noticing are kind of the common things?
What are the things that I'm saying all the time over and
over when people are curious about what their book should be,
(37:25):
It's often the thing. What are the thing you're so
sick of saying that you want to put in a book and pretend you
never have to say I'm ever again.
Now I can move on to the next day.
Now I've got this beautiful thing this, you know, talk about
passive income, a book, technically it can become
passive income. You create it once and then
boom, it's out there forever. And then the So what?
Who cares about any of these things?
What is the overall? So what that is made that I want
(37:47):
to make sure the reader knows orunderstands or is able to do or
feels or experiences by the timethey finish this chapter, this
section and then this entire book.
And that helps us feel into how it all gets to come together.
Now, there'll be people listening there go.
Well, yeah. But if you could just create an
outline from the start and have all that clear, then you can
(38:08):
write through the outline and like, uh huh.
How's that working? Yeah.
Like so you've done it and you have a book now, right?
Because that works so well. Yeah, because usually you look
at the outline and you're like, yes, I've got a plan.
And and then you go to start sorting your words into that and
something just, again, for the people that we tend to connect
with, just doesn't quite work, but that we need a little more
what for some feels like mess. The actual sharing of the
(38:31):
journey and letting it evolve instead of, again, being so
rigid in what you think it should be.
And that's what I was saying with this podcast even is, you
know, maybe I should do a littlemore of those guys.
Don't hold me to never doing this.
But if I have more of a plan andan outline, then I'll sit there
and be like, well, in this moment, I don't really have
(38:52):
thoughts on that. But if I get off this podcast
and then I'm like, OK, now I'm thinking of things and I can't
direct what I'm going to be inspired by, but I can capture
that. And like you're saying,
different people do it in different ways.
But especially for me, I relate to that because I'm like, yeah,
if you give me an outline, like I can do it when I've said it so
(39:13):
many times, like when I do a workshop, it's like, great,
here's the very simple, like what you need to know.
But yeah, sometimes there's magic in the edges of life that
you don't expect. Well, and it also takes if, if
we're. So I need to plan it and then I
need to execute the plan, make the plan.
(39:34):
You know, it actually eliminatesthe beautiful creation part,
which is once the words start tocome out, it develops its own
life and it's reciprocal. And so it's this recursive back
and forth. You're breathing into it.
I mean, we're doing it right now, live.
We're breathing into this conversation and each other in
this space, in this context, this time period, all of that
(39:54):
stuff. And then as we're doing that,
new things are showing up that we could not have anticipated
that we were going to say talk about etcetera, etcetera.
So that's where like the over planning, the outlining.
And this does not mean that we don't have structure or
organization or anything like that.
That's where sometimes people get confused.
(40:15):
It's like, no, no, no, these books are organized, they're
structured, they've got a pathway in a direction and
clarity and all of that kind of stuff.
It's just how we get there. And what feels most aligned for
me, it's not the process that I teach anybody to do.
I'm trying to help you find yourprocess to get things out and
create so that you can go rinse and repeat and do that over and
over again. And by the way, it changes.
(40:36):
It's going to change what workedfor you last book.
You might need to do something different next time.
So that piece of letting what wants to show up, show up.
We've got to make space for thatand be open to that because
that's where the unexpected getsto happen.
And we go, I don't know. That's what this book wanted to
be, and here we are. And that's really cool.
Well, and if we know anything about humans, it's that we don't
(40:58):
really know ourselves very much.And then it's exciting to let
those things kind of show up, too.
It can be uncomfortable but veryexciting all at the same time.
Well, I have a few last questions, and it's funny
because I want to. I'm like, oh, the perfect
question is, what books are you obsessed with?
(41:19):
But then I come back and I'm like, do you read outside of
working hours? You spend so much time in
authorship and books and publishing.
Do you do that in your free timetoo?
Or how do you like to spend yourfree time?
Yeah. So I will say what I want to
read has shifted since a lot of what I read up until this kind
of starting Synergy Publishing Group, a lot of what I was drawn
(41:40):
to was non fiction, personal growth, self help, all that kind
of stuff. Now, because most of our clients
write that I love to go into fantasy, not here, you know,
snotty fairiness, all the good things.
So I just am in. I started the Throne of Glass
series, so a little obsessed with that and I think I've
(42:02):
caught it in my local libraries where like people are kind of
like behind that series. So I'm now getting things
because I'm like, Oh yes, this is perfect timing because it's
the worst when you get into a series and then you got to wait
a bajillion years for the next whatever.
And I'm also someone what I'm obsessed with is I'll toggle
easily. I'm a person that can have free
books for books going at the same time.
(42:25):
One or two might be an audiobook, 1 might be on my
Kindle, 1 might be paperback, you know, print in my hand.
And I'm pretty obsessed in general right now with doing
what I want to do when I want todo it.
Yes, I'm here for all of that. Books are a part of that, yes.
Are there other things that you kind of are doing when it comes
(42:46):
to play and rest and taking careof yourself as you are also an
entrepreneur and running a company?
Yeah, so I dance. I do ballroom and Latin dancing.
If you go and follow my social media, you will, for better or
worse, see me cheering about that.
Yeah. That was a gift to myself post
(43:08):
divorce about two years ago. I'd always wanted to do it.
I'm like the first person on thedance floor, all that kind of
stuff. Music's going, I'm shaking my
butt. But I'd never done ballroom or
anything like that. And then the little girl did
like, ballet, jazz, that sort ofstuff.
I was the easiest sell. Luckily, my partner that I got
paired with initially shout out to Jake Davies Midtown Ballroom
(43:28):
in Charlotte. He's amazing and also I'm pretty
tall human. He's one of the only and
ballroom people tend to be tiny humans in general, especially
Latin and rhythm dancers. So he was taller to me and I was
like, this is amazing. And it's just been so fun.
I get to learn all kinds of new things and I've even done dance
competitions and locally and wasin Italy last year doing 1.
(43:52):
So that is the Super playful, super joyful just because and
lots of fun things. Of course, when we do those
things, like lots of fun things emerge because of that, which is
great. Well now I have to ask, what are
you were you most obsessed with in Italy when you went?
I'm going to Italy for a month in the fall.
(44:13):
I would like to be in your suitcase please.
OK, I was obsessed with the juxtaposition, the constant
juxtaposition. I don't think I fully understood
the geographical landscape of the country until there where
you can be in a city and feel city, but then the ocean is
(44:34):
there and then mountains are there, and then there's a
volcano. And just the constant and
relative ease of going back and forth.
And then you can go into the, you know, winery, rolling hills,
countryside kind of thing. That paired with the history
that I will be. So you'll have to let me know
how that feels because I was notprepared for how that was going
(44:57):
to land like in my body to be ontile and structures from like
8th century BCEI still can't like I couldn't wrap my brain
around it. Or to be in a a Duomo, a church,
knowing when it was constructed and just thinking of I had
(45:17):
moments of like, So what if the people who are like looking for
bread think about this showing up because the opulence game is
strong. Like the Vatican City and you're
just like, OK, so this is where everybody's tithe money is gone
for centuries. Yes, like you want to talk about
dudes making sure their dudenesswas prominent and it displayed
(45:43):
and like. Talk about the patriarchy.
Yes, yes, yes. And you know, the Colosseum, all
of it. And then everyone is gorgeous.
I just, I want to marry everyone.
I want to eat everything. And you can't eat everything
because it's fresh and it's realand so you're going to have fun.
(46:03):
And I was looking at real estatethe whole time.
So tell us what you buying and we'll buy something.
Oh, my partner, he is literally,while I'm on Instagram, he's on
Zillow all over the world. And so we definitely have seen
some properties that we would not be super mad at.
But I have done Rome, but I'm really excited.
(46:26):
We're going to do Sicily and we're going to get up to the
Dolomites and then we're going to do something in the middle.
But what you're saying really iswhere you're like, oh, this has
just been here forever. And how many people have, you
know, celebrated here? And how many people have, I'll
just say died here going to the Coliseum?
(46:51):
This is actually going to make me sound really dumb, but it's
one of those things that you just kind of in your head
picture and then you get there and you're like, oh, wait, I was
like, there's no blood on the floor.
Like, where's all the blood frompeople dying for hundreds of
years? And it was just like, not there
is no blood. I hear myself say it.
I know how it sounds. But it was one of those things
(47:12):
where you just picture these bigbattles and and then you get
there and you're like, OK, so I can just walk here and take a
photo. And that's what this is now,
Yes. And then to understand why the
battles and the day of debaucheries were happening and
what that was, do it just the historical context of how this
(47:33):
kept people entertained and tamed by showing these fights to
the dev. And they had great tools.
And I mean, the technology in all of Italy, the historical
stuff, I mean, you're just like,Oh my God, they were just
brilliant. And you understand why we
structure like everybody wanted to be.
They wanted to be the Egyptians,and then everybody wanted to be
(47:53):
the Romans, you know? But yeah, they had stuff on the
floor to get rid of the blood sothat we didn't have it piling up
over. Yeah, you're like, they also can
use sand that you can like take in and out or whatever they did.
I don't really. Know yeah wrapping your head
around it yeah it's gonna be awesome it was like a 10/12 day
trip so obviously didn't get to do all the things so I want to
(48:16):
come back for sure you're gonna have so much fun yeah.
I am so excited and it's funny because I have no outline.
I'm going to get there and let the next step lead me into the
next step for a month. Yes, it's funny you say a month,
I need a month to come back. Actually I was like I need a
month and about each place so. Well this is been amazing.
(48:38):
I feel even more inspired. One day I will write a book.
You've got many probably. I mean, that's also the other
thing I didn't say. Most of the people we come in
contact with, it's they've got the one and that feels like a
big hurdle and that's great and amazing.
And then it's like just there's many more to come for sure.
So our signature program is called Legacy Author for a
reason, because they are writingall the things forever.
(49:00):
I love that. How can people work with you and
just connect with you and stay in your world?
Yeah, so easy, simple, just to get connected and say hello and
see my silly dance videos, amongother things, just on Instagram
at the Shayna under score B, I'msure we'll have it in the show
notes and stuff. And then one fun thing I just
(49:20):
have a fun kind of workshop thatI love to share with people and
also allow them to get access toin a different way to my book is
just heading over to shaynahartman.com.
Writing is not that hard. We'll make sure that everything
is linked and ready to go. Thank you for coming on,
(49:42):
becoming obsessed and just sharing your whole self with us.
Super fun, thank you so much. If you're still listening, let
us know. We want to know if you have a
book because we think you do. Send either one of us Adm on
Instagram. Send me a voice note.
I love voice notes and if this helped you, entertained you,
(50:04):
share it with a friend, post it on your story, send a text, give
us a five star review. It really helps get the show in
front of more people so they canlive a life they love too.
All right y'all, let's go get obsessed.
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