July 25, 2025 • 38 mins
This week, I want to offer some straightforward writing and publishing advice that might hurt your feelings; but I’m willing to hurt your feelings since it is in service of awakening your inner artist (see: last week’s episode).
Even if you’re “not a writer” or don’t have any aspirations for publishing, this advice is for you. It’s for any creative person who questions the validity of their art because they don’t make much (or any) money from their creative pursuits, because they don’t have a big following, or because their art doesn’t look like the art of those who have had commercial success.
Before you give up, or if you already have, check out today’s episode. What I have to say might just change the way you approach your art altogether. I hope it helps you and I can’t wait to see what you make.
Sign up for class for free on the MindBody app.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hello and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and I'm excited about today's episode. I have
something really great that I want to share with you.
It's been a while since I've recorded a more publishing
focused or book writing focused episode, but I realized that
(00:45):
I have some things I want to say on the topic,
and I was trying to create a post on Instagram
that would kind of cover everything I want to say
on this topic, and there just wasn't enough space. So
I thought, you know, I'll still post this Instagram post,
but I also want to take this to the podcast
so that I can really unpack it and say absolutely
everything that I want to say, because I think this
(01:05):
is going to be a powerful message for you, not
only if you are an aspiring author or you want
to write a book, or you're in the middle of
writing a book, you're struggling with book writing, but also
if you are involved in any kind of creative practice.
So if you are a teacher of some kinds, like
I'm a yoga teacher, I'll talk a little bit about
my experience stepping into this new creative role for me
(01:27):
of crafting a yoga class and sharing that with a
group of students. There are so many parallels that I'm
seeing between the creative practice of book writing and creative
practice of you know, crafting a yoga flow for a
group of students. So I want to talk about that.
If you are a pilates teacher, if you're a musician,
if you're a visual artist, if you are a mother,
(01:49):
if you are a teacher, like in a classroom, whatever
it is that you're putting your hands to, that you're
crafting and creating, if you're a gardener, whatever kind of
creative practice you have that you're putting your hands to
right now in your life. These tips, these pieces of
advice that I want to leave you with today. Actually
I think of them more like a benediction than like
(02:11):
pieces of advice. You'll see what I mean when I
get into this, But they apply across the spectrum. So
this is not just about writing. It's not just about
writing a book or publishing a book. It does apply
directly to that, but it also applies beyond that. So
listen through whatever lens you are looking through right now
in your life, take from it what you need, leave
(02:34):
what doesn't fit for you, or what doesn't suit you.
But I had some things that came to me this
week that I really wanted to share, and I'm excited
to get to share them with you in today's episode.
So here's how this all got started. There's this trend
on Instagram right now where people say, you know, as
a dietitian, or as a teacher, or as a child
behavioral psychologist, or as a dentist or whatever, if I
(02:54):
could say anything to you without being worried about hurting
your feelings, here is what I would say. So I
started to think about what I might say if I
was speaking directly to an aspiring author, as an author,
as a writing coach, as a publishing coach, as a
book coach, as someone who's been in this industry for
fifteen years, who's taught hundreds of people how to write books,
who's edited I don't know how many books who's written.
(03:17):
I've written four of my own, I've ghost written ten books.
I've had a lot of experience in this industry, and
I feel that I have a lot of wisdom to
offer to someone who's at the beginning of this journey
and just for the first time trying to put their
words on the page. And even though I have all
that wisdom that I bring to the table, even though
I have all this experience, I've been in this industry
for nearly fifteen years now, I also, just like with
(03:39):
any creative practice, come to this practice as a beginner
as well. I have thought so many times over the
last year of my life, since last May so a
little more than a year last, may write your Story,
which is my most recent book, came out, released the
book into the world. And what most authors are doing
at the time that their book comes out is they're
marketing that book and they're working on their next book,
(04:00):
because the idea is you should have a book come
out kind of once every calendar year. Well, when Write
Your Story came out, for a variety of reasons which
I won't get into, I was thinking to myself, I
think this might be the last book that I write.
I don't think I'm going to write another book, and
it's only been really recently that I've thought, Okay, I
do think that there's another book in there, and so
I've started to imagine what it might be like to
(04:21):
begin to put pen to paper and start to write
that book. The idea for the book is still extremely
cloudy at this point in the process, and so, just
like every aspiring author who's sitting down to write a book,
I'm being reminded that this part of the process never changes.
This part of the process is exactly the same, whether
(04:42):
you've written fourteen books, forty books, or zero books. There
is no outgrowing evolving outside of growing past this feeling
like I'm going to invest all this energy, I'm going
to put all this attention into it. No one's going
to read it, no one's going to care. It's going
to fall on deaf ear. I'm going to waste all
this time. You know what if no one reads it?
(05:03):
What if it's this total waste? What if I don't
have anything important to say? Like the insecurities, the imposter
syndrome of being an artist never goes away. The only
thing that changes over time is that you begin to
recognize this as just an expected part of the process.
So I think of it like your initiation. This is
your initiation to writing a book. Is you're going to
(05:25):
have to move through this feeling of Oh no, I
have no idea what I'm going to say. Oh no,
I don't even think I have anything interesting to say.
Oh no, I'm going to put all this energy into
this project and nobody's ever going to read it. So
I was thinking about that. I was thinking about this
trend on Instagram about what would I say to a
new author. And I've also been thinking a lot about
(05:46):
putting together yoga classes, this creative act that we do
of putting together a yoga vinyasa flow. Because I'm a
brand new yoga teacher. If you missed it, if you're
new here, I'm a brand new yoga teacher. I just
completed my two hundred hour teacher training. I'm like a
tiny baby yoga teacher, just getting my feet underneath of me.
I've taught I don't know a handful of classes that
(06:06):
are free classes. As I was getting my hours and
getting my practicum finished, and then I just this morning
a couple hours ago, taught my very first real paid
yoga class in the heated room at how Yoga Vasnashville,
and it was a massive feat. By that, I mean
it wasn't really that massive of a feet because people
(06:26):
do this every day, but it felt like it to
me because it was my first time doing something. And
you know that feeling you've done this, Think of the
last time you did something that meant a lot to you,
and you did it for the first time, and you
put yourself out there, you put your heart out there,
and it just feels really vulnerable and it feels really scary.
And so I'm in that process of getting my feet
(06:48):
underneath of me, designing these yoga flows, hoping the students
like them. And I'm doing this along with a group
of friends who all came through the training with me.
And so my friend Alyssa and I were talking the
other day because she was teaching last night and then
I taught this morning, and she texted me saying, why
do you think so many people keep canceling out of
my class? Because we can log on to the Mind
(07:08):
Body app where people register for our classes, and you
can see who's registered for your class, and then you
can see when people drop out, and so she was like,
why do you think so many people keep dropping out
of my classes? And then I instantly went to my
class to see how many people were registered for my class,
and she and I were back and forth in this exchange,
like why do you think more people sign up for
this class than that class? Is it the teacher? Is
it the room? Is it the time of day? What
(07:31):
are the factors? Is it the heat outside? It's July
in Nashville, it's ninety five degrees in humid outside. Maybe
that's the reason why people are canceling out of a
hot yoga class. Maybe they just don't want to go
into the hot room. So there's so many reasons why
a student could cancel a class, But that feeling of
being new at this of putting your heart on the line,
of creating something and putting it in front of people,
(07:52):
of wanting to share from a really genuine and honest
place and going, oh my god, only seven people are coming,
Only four people are coming. I had twelve, and then
you know, six dropped out. Those feelings, those honest, vulnerable
feelings of being in the creative process are unexpected, almost
like I want to say necessary, and just like par
(08:17):
for the course part of this process of being a
human being, of creating something of meaning, of sharing our
creative gifts with the world. And I started thinking about
how there is this parallel between what I'm experiencing with
this yoga class, what I'm experiencing with the idea that
maybe I might write another book again. And as I
was thinking about what I would share with an aspiring
(08:38):
new author, this list of pieces of advice or really
like benedictions for you. So think of this benediction more
as like words that I'm speaking over you, encouragement that
I'm giving to you, an invitation that I'm offering into
the circle of trust, like the circle of those of
(08:59):
a yes who are putting our hearts on the line,
who are doing something vulnerable, who are showing ourselves to
the world through our creativity, whatever your creativity might look
like for you. So my first benediction slash invitation to
you is this, end your obsession with the numbers. This
is what I would tell you if I could speak
(09:20):
very clearly and directly to you, if I was not
worried about hurting your feelings, which is that Instagram trend.
This is what I'd say if I wasn't worried about
hurting your feelings, if I could speak as clearly and
directly as possible, I would say, end your obsession with
the numbers, and please hear me that. I'm speaking to
myself too, because my friend the Listen and I were
texting back and forth about like, why are these people
(09:40):
dropping out of the classes? Why do you think so
and so comes to this class and not to this class?
Is it the teacher, is it the time of day.
There's something about when you put yourself out there checking
the numbers that is so human. I've watched my husband
do this too, because my husband is he has just
made an industry change and is kind of back in
his old inn history of experiential marketing, and so he's
(10:02):
on LinkedIn and he's trying to make connections on LinkedIn,
and he's posting regularly on LinkedIn and writing these really
beautiful reflections on his journey in his career and projects
that he's worked on and posting them on LinkedIn and
then going like weird, only three people liked this one,
or ten people liked this one, or I got a
hundred likes on this one. This one really got some attention.
(10:24):
And then Alyssa and I are texting back and forth, going,
I have twelve people in my class. I have eleven.
I have twenty people in my class. There's twenty seven
people coming to this class. Can you believe it? This
obsession with the numbers. The number of people who are
paying attention, the number of people who like, the number
of people who comment, the number of people who come
is so human, it's so normal, it's so expected, so
(10:46):
to be expected. And yet I'm inviting you. I'm encouraging
you to end your obsession with the numbers, because the
numbers are mostly meaningless. And this is what I was
saying to Alyssa, really saying it to myself. And the
benediction that I'm giving to you is to know that
the numbers have nothing to do with you. And Julia
(11:08):
Cameron would say, the numbers as in how many books
you sell is none of your business. The numbers in
terms of how many people like this or how many
people buy it, or how many people pass it along,
or how many people share it or how many people
re tweet it or whatever, is none of your business.
Your only business is to write what is coming through you,
to write the transmission that is coming through your body
(11:31):
at this time in space. That is your only job
and your only business and the only thing that is
up to you, and the rest of it is really
out of your hands. There are practical things that you
can do to market your book, to get your book
out there, to share your creativity with the world, to
tell more people about what you're doing, to help people
(11:52):
understand how you can help them. All of that is
applicable and useful, and I can talk about that in
another context, but for the sake of this context, want
to say, end your obsession with the numbers. Stop focusing
so much on who's coming to your class, on who's
buying your book, on who's following you on Instagram, who's
liking your posts, who's commenting what they're saying, Stop your
(12:13):
obsession with the how many, how many, how many, and
start focusing on one person who you're writing your book to.
I always tell my clients, write your book like a
love letter to one person. There's this beautiful book called
(12:34):
Journal of a Novel by John Steinbeck, which is the
journal that Steinbeck kept while he was writing East of Eden,
and it's really letters between him and his editor. It's
such a beautiful piece of work that is out of
print or it's not being printed anymore, you can still
get copies, I think on Amazon, if you search for
(12:55):
journal of a novel, you can find this. And it's
so fascinating to get into his head as far as
what was going on inside of him while he was
working on this brilliant, brilliant piece of work called East
of Eden. But you hear him writing these letters back
and forth to his editor, and a lot of what
he talks about is pretty mundane. But because of the intimacy.
(13:18):
By mundane, I mean like he's talking about, like who's
going to prepare dinner tonight, and you know, going on
walks with his wife, and he's talking about his children,
and he's talking about like the sort of mundane stuff
of day to day life. But because he's writing it
in this intimate capacity of a letter, it suddenly becomes
so gripping and so interesting. There's a phrase in publishing
(13:41):
that is useful to you, and the phrase goes like this,
The universals are found in the specifics. So think about
how when you hear a song and there's a specific
detail in the song, like the color of the car,
or the type of the car, or some sort of
visual image that's so specific. Something about that specific image
(14:03):
helps it make the song universal to you. And the
same is true in publishing. The more specific that you
get in your writing, the more universal the writing becomes.
This is counterintuitive, but it's absolutely true. And when you
choose a destination for your piece of writing, your writing
becomes more specific. It jumps off the page, It becomes
more energetic, it becomes more vibrant. It has more you
(14:23):
in it has more of your heart in it. And
so this is my benediction, my invitation, my encouragement to
you is to end the obsession with the numbers and
instead focus on one person whose life you want to
have an impact on. Who you want to speak to,
who you want to share this message with, one person
who you want to tell this story to. One person
(14:45):
who you want to share this tip with, or this
benediction with, or this encouragement with. End your obsession with
the numbers. Write it like a love letter. Invitation number two.
Stop trying to figure out what people want, what the
market wants. This is something that I hear from authors
a lot, and this is something that I have found
(15:06):
myself doing as I'm crafting a yoga flow for a
group of students, because I'm anticipating I'm going to go
to the studio. It's a little different when you're writing
a book. You're writing a book and you're kind of like,
I don't know if anyone will ever read this. But
I talk to a lot of authors who are trying
to figure out, like, what does the market want right now?
What would sell really well? What could I sell on Amazon.
There's a place for that conversation, but the creative process
(15:29):
is not that place. And I'll talk about a few
reasons for that. There's a few really big reasons for that.
One of the reasons is that you will lose motivation
if the person you're writing this book for is not you.
If you're writing it to sell a bunch of copies
on Amazon. I'm just telling you, it will not matter
to you nearly as much as if this book is
an obsession. It's something for you that is a deep
(15:52):
obsession that you have to do. I've worked with so
many people and people who are just working on a
book to comple lead a product, to sell it, to
sell as many copies as possible, or to maybe sell
coaching packages or something like that. They these are the
people who would rather hire someone to write their book
for them. Which there's nothing wrong with hiring someone to
(16:12):
write your book for you, but there's a difference between
hiring someone to help you with a skill set you
don't have and hiring someone to do the hard work
of creativity for you. So there's an element of like,
I'm just going to hire this out. I'm just going
to spend the money. I'm just going to sell as
many copies as possible. This thing doesn't really matter to me.
They don't have the energetic investment that is necessary to
(16:32):
carry the project to completion. Now, they might be able
to hire a ghostwriter and an editor and have someone else,
you know, carry it to a completion, but in terms
of their energy to carry it to completion, they don't
have it because they're not obsessed with the topic, obsessed
with the idea, obsessed with the book, obsessed with getting
this out to their one perfect reader. And so instead
(16:55):
of thinking about what the market wants, what the people want,
you know, what the market needs right now, instead get
obsessive over the thing that you want to share. Get
obsessive with this idea, the story. One of the reasons
why it doesn't work to think through what people want
or what the market wants is because people don't have
any idea what they want. That's one reason this doesn't work.
(17:17):
People don't even know what they want. Most people, the
majority of our culture of people around us, are just
walking around. We're just kind of you know, we're consumers
by nature. We've been trained by our culture to be consumers.
So we're just kind of eyes open, just waiting for
someone else to tell us what we want. Most people
in the world, this is sad but true, that most
(17:37):
people in the world simply do not know what they want,
and so trying to figure out what the people want
is an incredibly fickle thing to focus on. It is
a moving target. People don't have any clue what they want.
They're waiting for someone else to tell them what they want,
or they're waiting for you to speak to a deep,
deep want that they have disowned or forgotten about that
(17:59):
you can wake up and you can tap into. That
is the hook that is going to make your book
absolutely indispensable to them. You've probably had this experience where
you were like feeling a little lost in your life,
or feeling a little depressed, or feeling a little down
in the dumps, or feeling kind of beaten down by life,
or just feeling kind of numbed out. And you're walking along,
walking along, and something, a piece of art, a piece
(18:22):
of music, a book, something just kind of jumps out
at you and grabs you and speaks to that deep,
deep part of you, that the part of you that
isn't stuck, the part of you that isn't lost, the
part of you that isn't depressed, and just wakes you
up again and gets to that primal human desire to
be alive, to be awake, to be online. And when
(18:42):
you can do that, when you can speak from the
heart and speak directly to that part of people, then
you connect with them instantly and you won't have to
worry about whether the market has room for this. Or
you know, there's thousands of books out there on the
same topic. You know, thousands of books on money, of
books on marriage. So why do we keep writing more
(19:03):
books on marriage, keep writing more books on money. It's
because we want to hear about these topics through a
different lens, through your vantage point, which is different than
anyone else in the entire universe. Nobody else can replicate
your vantage point. Nobody else has your unique blueprint, nobody
else has your unique voice, nobody else has your unique heart.
We want to hear about this topic from somebody else
(19:25):
through somebody else's vantage point. Also, we need to hear
about these topics six, seven, eight, ten times before they
start to make sense to us. So it's another reason
why if you want to learn about a topic like money,
you'll pick up ten books on the topic of money,
not because they're all addressing different ideas, but because they're
addressing them in different ways, through different voices, from a
(19:47):
different standpoint. So put your unique stamp on it. But
don't worry about what people want. People don't know what
they want, and even if they do what they want,
what they want is changing all the time. And if
you're trying to chase down what people want, it's a
moving target. It's going to drive you crazy, it's going
to make you feel chaotic inside. It's not going to
satisfy the desire that you're trying to satisfy. When you
sit down to write a book. Invitation number three, bring
(20:12):
your heart into it. This is something I've had to
remind myself a handful of times as I've been in
the process to become a yoga instructor, Because as a
student of yoga, I have gotten to the place where
I understand yoga as a practice, I don't expect perfection
from myself. Yoga for me is about being present in
the moment, really staying with myself, staying with my breath.
As a teacher of yoga, I started to catch myself
(20:35):
getting caught in this trap of perfectionism, which is, you know,
a friend that's been in my back pocket since the
time I was very young, this need to get it perfect,
this need to get it right, this need to get
the Sanskrit right, to get the cues right, to make
sure the in house and excels are perfect, to never
mess up a right side or a left side. And
(20:55):
when we focus on perfection, when we focus on getting
it right, getting the details right, on memorization, we move
away from the thing that draws people into our creativity
in the first place, the thing that helps people connect
with it. So, if you're writing a book and you're
focused on perfection, you can't bring your full heart to
(21:17):
the table. You can't bring your full vulnerability to the table.
So just a really practical way to do this is
to tell the story that you least want to tell.
And this is the thing I would tell you if
I wasn't worried about hurting your feelings or ruffling your feathers,
I would tell you that story that you swore to
yourself you would never tell in a book. Tell it.
That's the story we want to hear, the story that
you're like, I'll tell any story, but that story, that's
(21:41):
always the story. Ninety nine point nine nine percent of
the time when I'm working with an author, will be
working along together throughout the day, we're kind of mapping
out their book together. Halfway through the day, the author
will turn to me and say, I don't want to
put this in the book, but this will be helpful
context for you. And they'll tell me a story and
I'll say to them, why don't you want to put
that in the book? Say, well, I could never because
(22:02):
of X, Y or Z. And sometimes there's legitimate reasons
for not being able to put these stories in a book.
So I'm not saying share someone else's story if it's
not your story to share, But I'm saying ninety nine
point nine to nine percent of the time. That story
that the author says to me, I'm not going to
put this in the book, but it's helpful context for you.
Is the story that your reader wants to hear. So
it may be complicated to share it. There may be
(22:23):
reasons why you feel you can't share it. This is
something that you can work through. But I'm telling you,
this is the story that your reader wants to hear.
This is what it looks like, what it feels like
to put your whole heart into the book, to put
your whole heart into this project, and to really show
up there without the perfectionism, but with the wholeness of you,
(22:44):
the wholeness of who you are. So whether or not
you're writing a content driven book or a story driven book,
that story that you're so afraid to share is maybe
probably the story that you need to share in order
to unlock the beauty, the depth, the realness, the humanity
of this book that nobody else could replicate and AI
(23:05):
can't replicate it. This is another way that you set
yourself apart from books that maybe are being written or
could be written by AI. You set yourself apart by
bringing your whole freaking humanity to the table and by
telling the stories that you're most afraid to tell. Invitation
(23:30):
number four is to make it a story. I believe
that as a culture, we're craving good stories. And I
don't think I'm alone in this belief. But I will
go so far as to say that I've gotten to
the point, and this is personal preference, this part of it,
but I've gotten to the point where I almost don't
want to read content driven books anymore. Some content driven
(23:53):
books I will still pick up and read. But there's
so much chaos happening in our world. There's so much unrest,
there's so much despair, there's so much heartbreak. I've had
so much heartbreak happen in my own life in the
last calendar year that there's just something so helpful and
refreshing and healing about entering into someone else's story. It
(24:15):
helps me to leave my own personal problems for a
few minutes and be captivated, be enraptured by someone else's story,
to connect with other human beings. It helps to combat loneliness,
to connect with someone on that level through the telling
and retelling of their story. That I'm almost to the
(24:37):
point where, like I will read anyone's personal story. I
don't even care if it's well written. I will read
your story. I want it to be well written, but
if it's not well written, I will still read it.
Whereas I've become extremely critical of self help books because
it's so cheap and easy to give someone advice. There's
a place for advice. There's a place for self help books.
(24:58):
There's a place for business books. We need cookbooks, cookbooks
or advice books. They give us a recipe to follow.
There's a place for a recipe. I'm not saying recipes
don't matter, or that those books shouldn't be written. I'm saying,
in this time that we're living in, in this period
of time, there is a hunger, a deep hunger, a need,
a craving for stories. So consider maybe writing a story
(25:23):
driven book, writing a memoir, writing a fiction book, writing
something that's going to help people escape into your story.
If you're writing a content driven book, great, make sure
that the advice that you're giving, the tips that you're giving,
the formula that you're offering, the recipe, make sure that
it is undergirded, that it is fully supported by human stories, stories, stories, stories, stories,
(25:49):
It's so cheap. It's so easy to sit here and
give someone advice. But when you can tell someone a
story to back up the advice, then suddenly I can connect.
Then suddenly I see you on the page, Then suddenly
I feel your heart. And I've just gotten to the
point where I have basically no patience for someone who's
just going to bark advice at me, or just give
(26:09):
me a formula or a recipe or tell me that
it works, but not tell me what this helped them overcome.
You know, like, what pain point in your life did
this formula, this recipe help you overcome. Tell me about
the pain, tell me about the struggle, tell me about
when you thought it wasn't going to work, tell me
all of it. Go as deep as you possibly can.
And then yes, give me your advice, give me your tips,
(26:30):
give me your encouragement, give me your invitation, your benediction.
There is a place for that. But the advice without
the story is just empty. And finally, the last piece
of advice that I would give to you, if I
was just shooting you straight and not worried about hurting
your feelings, is to stay open to all publishing paths.
(26:51):
I talk to a lot of authors, And I don't
know if this resonates with you, but I talk to
a lot of aspiring authors who are, like I, am
only interested in traditional publishing. You know, self publishing is
the B level way to do it. I only want
to traditionally publish. I want to hit the New York
Times list. I want to be in airport bookstores. I
want to sell millions of copies. I'm telling you right now,
(27:13):
the trouble with this way of seeing things is that
it will shut down your creativity. It is not that
you can't traditionally publish. It's not that you can't be
in airport bookstores. It's not that you can't sell hundreds
of thousands of copies or millions of copies. It's not
that you can't make the New York Times list. It's
that if that is your focus, it will shut down
your creativity. So I'll take you back to the invitation
(27:37):
about avoiding focusing on what the market wants and instead
writing what's in your heart. Same thing with focusing on
New York Times list or traditional publisher or getting an
agent or writing a book proposal document. There's a reason
why in my programs I shifted away from helping people
write book proposal documents to helping people write complete manuscripts.
Because here's why. There's nothing wrong with a book proposal document.
(28:01):
There's nothing wrong with wanting to sign a contract with
a traditional publisher. But you could wait for years and years,
and I've watched people do this. You could wait for
years and years to get the approval of an agent
or of a publisher, when all along you had a
beautiful idea that ought to have been written, that could
have been healing you, that you could have been playing with,
(28:24):
tinkering with growing, tending to, you know, nurturing into existence,
and you didn't do that because instead you were waiting
for an agent to tell you, yeah, I think that's
a good idea, or a publisher to tell you, yeah,
we'd love to write you a contract. Very few people
get agents that say that to them. Very few people
(28:44):
get a publisher that says I want to write you
a contract. And far more people than ever have that experience,
have an absolutely necessary, beautiful, important, incredible piece of work
that needs to be developed, that needs to be written,
that needs to be shared, And so why should we
sit around waiting for someone else to validate our idea
(29:05):
when all along, deep down, you know that this idea
is a good idea. You know that there's something here
worth being explored. Do not wait for an agent or
for a publisher to tell you that your idea is
worth being explored. Explore your freakin idea. When I started
thinking about maybe doing a yoga teacher training, it wasn't
because someone said to me, you know what, You're really
(29:26):
great at yoga. You should be a yoga teacher. The
reason that I registered for the yoga teacher training is
because I had a deep inner knowing that this was
the next step for me. In fact, I didn't even
know at the time if I wanted to teach yoga.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to teach. I just
knew that this was the next step for me in
my practice. It was something I needed to nurture myself,
(29:48):
and I would encourage you. I would invite you to
take this same approach with whatever your creative practice is.
Whether it's writing a book, whether it's making music, whether
it's posting on LinkedIn like my husband is doing, whether
it's great a business, whether it's growing your family, whether
it's gardening, making sourdough bread, you know, cooking, I don't know,
whatever your creative practice is to follow those deep inner
(30:09):
impulses because they are taking you somewhere important, and you
won't always get the external validation. Sometimes you do. Sometimes
you have someone go great class, Thanks for that, and
that's nice, But you don't always get that external validation,
and so you have to learn as an artist to
trust and to follow that inner knowing that this is
(30:31):
the next right step for me, And I don't know
what it will mean for other people. I don't know
if I'm going to teach. I don't know if anyone
will like what I teach. I don't know if I'll
be a good yoga teacher. I don't know if I'll
open a studio someday. I don't know what I'm going
to do with this. Maybe it's a quote unquote waste
of time because I don't make any money from it,
which is honestly another piece of advice I could add
(30:53):
to this list that this idea that the only things
that are worth our time are things that are going
to make us money in return, is crushing us as
a culture. It's crushing your creativity. It's absolutely crushing you.
Disown this idea that the only reason that something is
worth your time is because it's going to make you
(31:15):
money is a capitalistic idea that's been imposed upon you.
That is crushing your creativity. Allow yourself to try something,
to do something, To invest in something because it's good
for you, not because it's going to make you money,
Because it feels good, because it brings you pleasure, because
it helps you grow, because of a thousand other reasons
(31:37):
other than that it's going to make you money. I'll
tell you another hard truth. My list is growing apparently
as I'm talking. Another hard truth about writing books is
that you're probably not going to make money doing it.
That's just the bottom line. You're probably not going to
make money writing books unless you're selling millions of copies.
You're just simply not making money by writing books. You're
probably selling, you know, between one thousand and five thousand
(31:58):
copies of a book is actually that's a for a
first time author. Five thousand copies is a great goal
to set for yourself. It would be an incredible accomplishment
to sell five thousand copies of your book. And if
you do that, depending on how you publish, whether you
self publish or traditionally publish or hybrid publish. You may
make your money back, you'll probably be somewhere in that ballpark,
(32:19):
but you're not going to make money on top of that.
So I always tell authors to think about your book
as a loss leader. Your book is the thing that
tells people more about you, tells people where else they
can purchase products or services. If we're thinking about monetizing this,
but even beyond monetizing it, beyond monetizing your life. Maybe
you're an accountant, maybe you're a lawyer, Maybe you're a teacher,
(32:39):
maybe you're a mom, maybe you're whatever else you're doing
to support yourself financially, or if you have someone else
in your partnership who's supporting you financially so that you
can stay home with your kids or whatever that your
financial life looks like. In that way, maybe for now
you don't tie your creativity to your financial well being.
Maybe you can disc connects those two things for just
(33:02):
the time being. Wouldn't that be healing? Wouldn't that be
healing if you could just allow yourself to have this
creative practice and it didn't need to pay your bills.
This for me was my approach with yoga. I was like,
I'm not looking to use yoga to pay my bills.
I have other ways that I can pay my bills.
For me, yoga was about nourishing the self. It was
about stepping into a new kind of level for me,
(33:24):
like a next level of growth. It was about using
my voice, it was about being more embodied, so many
different things. But it was not about making money. And
because I disconnected the making money from the creativity, I
was able to really fully invest in the teacher training
and now in my teaching in a different way, in
a fuller way, in a better way, in a deeper way.
(33:47):
It's not that you can't make money from your creativity.
It's not that you shouldn't hope or aspire to make
money from creativity. But sometimes when the two are tied
so closely together, you get stuck focusing on the numbers.
You get stuck focusing on what people want. You get
stuck focusing on doing it perfect, getting it right, really
making the publisher proud, really making the agent proud. You know,
(34:08):
working so hard to get validation from someone outside of you,
when the whole point of this creative practice, in my opinion,
at least, and especially now with the rise of AI,
the entire point of writing your book because you could
just put your idea into chat GBT and chat GBT
can write it for you. So why don't do that.
The only reason not to do that is because writing
is extremely healing, because writing the story will change your
(34:29):
life from the inside out. Because writing this book will
make you a different person. Imagine if I could have
chat GBT get my yoga certification for me. If that
were possible, would I take that shortcut? I wouldn't because
the two hundred hours that I spent training and studying
(34:51):
and becoming a teacher are two hundred hours that changed
me from the inside out. So think of your book
writing just like that. There are no shortcuts here. There are,
in this case technically shortcuts because AI exist in this
day and age where you could have a I write
your book for you, So there is technically a shortcut.
(35:12):
But I'm here to tell you you don't want to
take the shortcut that the long road to the top
of the mountain. I talked about this a couple episodes ago.
But the road to the top of Machu Picchu. The hikers,
the ones who hike from the bottom. I hiked from
the bottom of this mountain and I climbed to like
fourteen thousand feet or whatever it is, to the top
(35:33):
of Machu Pichu. And I'm telling you, this was a
life changing experience for me and my friend who was like, oh,
I took the bus to the top. I didn't think
it was that great. It was pretty commercialized. It was
pretty boring, saw the ruins, you know, moved on to
the next thing. It was pretty commercialized. But you know
what's funny, I didn't notice that I had to like
wait in line to buy a ticket. You have to
get to the top of the mountain extra early in
(35:55):
the morning if you're a hiker, because they only let
so many people in the park for the day, and
so you have to be first in line if you're
a hiker, And the buses get there at like eight
in the morning or seven thirty or something like that,
so you have to start hiking at four thirty if
you want to make it to the top. So we're
up at four thirty in the morning, four fifteen in
the morning with our headlamps on, just hoofing it up
the mountain, and by the time I made it to
(36:17):
the top of the mountain. I was like, this is
the most spectacular thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
And my friend who wasn't with me, she was at
a different time, but she was like, yeah, we took
the buses to the top. I thought it was kind
of like, you know, blown out of proportion and commercialized,
and I feel like they've kind of ruined it. She
and I had two completely different experiences because we went
up the mountain two completely different ways. There's no wrong
(36:40):
way to go up to the mountain, but the invitation
is there, which way do you want to go up
the mountain. I will say this to my dying breath,
and this is a hill that I will die on,
but it is one hundred percent worth every ounce of
energy that you will invest to write your book, even
if nobody ever reads it, even if nobody but you
ever reads that book. And as you're writing, maybe think
(37:02):
about one person your therapist, your spouse, your sister, a sibling,
a best friend, someone who's trustworthy, someone who you know
you could tell every detail of a story too. Maybe
you hold that person in mind while you write, and
you tell yourself, this is just about getting the thing
done and sharing it with this one person. If you
can do that, I promise you you will. You'll hit
(37:26):
many road bumps along the way, you speed bumps, roadblocks,
You'll get stuck, You'll feel frustrated, you'll think you've given up,
but you will come back to the practice. You will
obsess over this. You will spend hours and hours and hours.
You will put your whole heart into this thing, and
you will never regret a single second of it. Your blood, sweat,
and tears will go on to the page. You will
(37:47):
feel so proud of yourself when it's over, and you
will become a different person in the process. It is
one hundred percent worth it. I invite you, I implore you,
I encourage you to please, please please write that book
you've always wanted to write. I'm with you, I see you,
I'm on your team, and I can't wait to see
what you create. I'll see you next week on the
(38:08):
Write Your Story Podcast.
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hello and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and I'm excited about today's episode. I have
something really great that I want to share with you.
It's been a while since I've recorded a more publishing
focused or book writing focused episode, but I realized that
(00:45):
I have some things I want to say on the topic,
and I was trying to create a post on Instagram
that would kind of cover everything I want to say
on this topic, and there just wasn't enough space. So
I thought, you know, I'll still post this Instagram post,
but I also want to take this to the podcast
so that I can really unpack it and say absolutely
everything that I want to say, because I think this
(01:05):
is going to be a powerful message for you, not
only if you are an aspiring author or you want
to write a book, or you're in the middle of
writing a book, you're struggling with book writing, but also
if you are involved in any kind of creative practice.
So if you are a teacher of some kinds, like
I'm a yoga teacher, I'll talk a little bit about
my experience stepping into this new creative role for me
(01:27):
of crafting a yoga class and sharing that with a
group of students. There are so many parallels that I'm
seeing between the creative practice of book writing and creative
practice of you know, crafting a yoga flow for a
group of students. So I want to talk about that.
If you are a pilates teacher, if you're a musician,
if you're a visual artist, if you are a mother,
(01:49):
if you are a teacher, like in a classroom, whatever
it is that you're putting your hands to, that you're
crafting and creating, if you're a gardener, whatever kind of
creative practice you have that you're putting your hands to
right now in your life. These tips, these pieces of
advice that I want to leave you with today. Actually
I think of them more like a benediction than like
(02:11):
pieces of advice. You'll see what I mean when I
get into this, But they apply across the spectrum. So
this is not just about writing. It's not just about
writing a book or publishing a book. It does apply
directly to that, but it also applies beyond that. So
listen through whatever lens you are looking through right now
in your life, take from it what you need, leave
(02:34):
what doesn't fit for you, or what doesn't suit you.
But I had some things that came to me this
week that I really wanted to share, and I'm excited
to get to share them with you in today's episode.
So here's how this all got started. There's this trend
on Instagram right now where people say, you know, as
a dietitian, or as a teacher, or as a child
behavioral psychologist, or as a dentist or whatever, if I
(02:54):
could say anything to you without being worried about hurting
your feelings, here is what I would say. So I
started to think about what I might say if I
was speaking directly to an aspiring author, as an author,
as a writing coach, as a publishing coach, as a
book coach, as someone who's been in this industry for
fifteen years, who's taught hundreds of people how to write books,
who's edited I don't know how many books who's written.
(03:17):
I've written four of my own, I've ghost written ten books.
I've had a lot of experience in this industry, and
I feel that I have a lot of wisdom to
offer to someone who's at the beginning of this journey
and just for the first time trying to put their
words on the page. And even though I have all
that wisdom that I bring to the table, even though
I have all this experience, I've been in this industry
for nearly fifteen years now, I also, just like with
(03:39):
any creative practice, come to this practice as a beginner
as well. I have thought so many times over the
last year of my life, since last May so a
little more than a year last, may write your Story,
which is my most recent book, came out, released the
book into the world. And what most authors are doing
at the time that their book comes out is they're
marketing that book and they're working on their next book,
(04:00):
because the idea is you should have a book come
out kind of once every calendar year. Well, when Write
Your Story came out, for a variety of reasons which
I won't get into, I was thinking to myself, I
think this might be the last book that I write.
I don't think I'm going to write another book, and
it's only been really recently that I've thought, Okay, I
do think that there's another book in there, and so
I've started to imagine what it might be like to
(04:21):
begin to put pen to paper and start to write
that book. The idea for the book is still extremely
cloudy at this point in the process, and so, just
like every aspiring author who's sitting down to write a book,
I'm being reminded that this part of the process never changes.
This part of the process is exactly the same, whether
(04:42):
you've written fourteen books, forty books, or zero books. There
is no outgrowing evolving outside of growing past this feeling
like I'm going to invest all this energy, I'm going
to put all this attention into it. No one's going
to read it, no one's going to care. It's going
to fall on deaf ear. I'm going to waste all
this time. You know what if no one reads it?
(05:03):
What if it's this total waste? What if I don't
have anything important to say? Like the insecurities, the imposter
syndrome of being an artist never goes away. The only
thing that changes over time is that you begin to
recognize this as just an expected part of the process.
So I think of it like your initiation. This is
your initiation to writing a book. Is you're going to
(05:25):
have to move through this feeling of Oh no, I
have no idea what I'm going to say. Oh no,
I don't even think I have anything interesting to say.
Oh no, I'm going to put all this energy into
this project and nobody's ever going to read it. So
I was thinking about that. I was thinking about this
trend on Instagram about what would I say to a
new author. And I've also been thinking a lot about
(05:46):
putting together yoga classes, this creative act that we do
of putting together a yoga vinyasa flow. Because I'm a
brand new yoga teacher. If you missed it, if you're
new here, I'm a brand new yoga teacher. I just
completed my two hundred hour teacher training. I'm like a
tiny baby yoga teacher, just getting my feet underneath of me.
I've taught I don't know a handful of classes that
(06:06):
are free classes. As I was getting my hours and
getting my practicum finished, and then I just this morning
a couple hours ago, taught my very first real paid
yoga class in the heated room at how Yoga Vasnashville,
and it was a massive feat. By that, I mean
it wasn't really that massive of a feet because people
(06:26):
do this every day, but it felt like it to
me because it was my first time doing something. And
you know that feeling you've done this, Think of the
last time you did something that meant a lot to you,
and you did it for the first time, and you
put yourself out there, you put your heart out there,
and it just feels really vulnerable and it feels really scary.
And so I'm in that process of getting my feet
(06:48):
underneath of me, designing these yoga flows, hoping the students
like them. And I'm doing this along with a group
of friends who all came through the training with me.
And so my friend Alyssa and I were talking the
other day because she was teaching last night and then
I taught this morning, and she texted me saying, why
do you think so many people keep canceling out of
my class? Because we can log on to the Mind
(07:08):
Body app where people register for our classes, and you
can see who's registered for your class, and then you
can see when people drop out, and so she was like,
why do you think so many people keep dropping out
of my classes? And then I instantly went to my
class to see how many people were registered for my class,
and she and I were back and forth in this exchange,
like why do you think more people sign up for
this class than that class? Is it the teacher? Is
it the room? Is it the time of day? What
(07:31):
are the factors? Is it the heat outside? It's July
in Nashville, it's ninety five degrees in humid outside. Maybe
that's the reason why people are canceling out of a
hot yoga class. Maybe they just don't want to go
into the hot room. So there's so many reasons why
a student could cancel a class, But that feeling of
being new at this of putting your heart on the line,
of creating something and putting it in front of people,
(07:52):
of wanting to share from a really genuine and honest
place and going, oh my god, only seven people are coming,
Only four people are coming. I had twelve, and then
you know, six dropped out. Those feelings, those honest, vulnerable
feelings of being in the creative process are unexpected, almost
like I want to say necessary, and just like par
(08:17):
for the course part of this process of being a
human being, of creating something of meaning, of sharing our
creative gifts with the world. And I started thinking about
how there is this parallel between what I'm experiencing with
this yoga class, what I'm experiencing with the idea that
maybe I might write another book again. And as I
was thinking about what I would share with an aspiring
(08:38):
new author, this list of pieces of advice or really
like benedictions for you. So think of this benediction more
as like words that I'm speaking over you, encouragement that
I'm giving to you, an invitation that I'm offering into
the circle of trust, like the circle of those of
(08:59):
a yes who are putting our hearts on the line,
who are doing something vulnerable, who are showing ourselves to
the world through our creativity, whatever your creativity might look
like for you. So my first benediction slash invitation to
you is this, end your obsession with the numbers. This
is what I would tell you if I could speak
(09:20):
very clearly and directly to you, if I was not
worried about hurting your feelings, which is that Instagram trend.
This is what I'd say if I wasn't worried about
hurting your feelings, if I could speak as clearly and
directly as possible, I would say, end your obsession with
the numbers, and please hear me that. I'm speaking to
myself too, because my friend the Listen and I were
texting back and forth about like, why are these people
(09:40):
dropping out of the classes? Why do you think so
and so comes to this class and not to this class?
Is it the teacher, is it the time of day.
There's something about when you put yourself out there checking
the numbers that is so human. I've watched my husband
do this too, because my husband is he has just
made an industry change and is kind of back in
his old inn history of experiential marketing, and so he's
(10:02):
on LinkedIn and he's trying to make connections on LinkedIn,
and he's posting regularly on LinkedIn and writing these really
beautiful reflections on his journey in his career and projects
that he's worked on and posting them on LinkedIn and
then going like weird, only three people liked this one,
or ten people liked this one, or I got a
hundred likes on this one. This one really got some attention.
(10:24):
And then Alyssa and I are texting back and forth, going,
I have twelve people in my class. I have eleven.
I have twenty people in my class. There's twenty seven
people coming to this class. Can you believe it? This
obsession with the numbers. The number of people who are
paying attention, the number of people who like, the number
of people who comment, the number of people who come
is so human, it's so normal, it's so expected, so
(10:46):
to be expected. And yet I'm inviting you. I'm encouraging
you to end your obsession with the numbers, because the
numbers are mostly meaningless. And this is what I was
saying to Alyssa, really saying it to myself. And the
benediction that I'm giving to you is to know that
the numbers have nothing to do with you. And Julia
(11:08):
Cameron would say, the numbers as in how many books
you sell is none of your business. The numbers in
terms of how many people like this or how many
people buy it, or how many people pass it along,
or how many people share it or how many people
re tweet it or whatever, is none of your business.
Your only business is to write what is coming through you,
to write the transmission that is coming through your body
(11:31):
at this time in space. That is your only job
and your only business and the only thing that is
up to you, and the rest of it is really
out of your hands. There are practical things that you
can do to market your book, to get your book
out there, to share your creativity with the world, to
tell more people about what you're doing, to help people
(11:52):
understand how you can help them. All of that is
applicable and useful, and I can talk about that in
another context, but for the sake of this context, want
to say, end your obsession with the numbers. Stop focusing
so much on who's coming to your class, on who's
buying your book, on who's following you on Instagram, who's
liking your posts, who's commenting what they're saying, Stop your
(12:13):
obsession with the how many, how many, how many, and
start focusing on one person who you're writing your book to.
I always tell my clients, write your book like a
love letter to one person. There's this beautiful book called
(12:34):
Journal of a Novel by John Steinbeck, which is the
journal that Steinbeck kept while he was writing East of Eden,
and it's really letters between him and his editor. It's
such a beautiful piece of work that is out of
print or it's not being printed anymore, you can still
get copies, I think on Amazon, if you search for
(12:55):
journal of a novel, you can find this. And it's
so fascinating to get into his head as far as
what was going on inside of him while he was
working on this brilliant, brilliant piece of work called East
of Eden. But you hear him writing these letters back
and forth to his editor, and a lot of what
he talks about is pretty mundane. But because of the intimacy.
(13:18):
By mundane, I mean like he's talking about, like who's
going to prepare dinner tonight, and you know, going on
walks with his wife, and he's talking about his children,
and he's talking about like the sort of mundane stuff
of day to day life. But because he's writing it
in this intimate capacity of a letter, it suddenly becomes
so gripping and so interesting. There's a phrase in publishing
(13:41):
that is useful to you, and the phrase goes like this,
The universals are found in the specifics. So think about
how when you hear a song and there's a specific
detail in the song, like the color of the car,
or the type of the car, or some sort of
visual image that's so specific. Something about that specific image
(14:03):
helps it make the song universal to you. And the
same is true in publishing. The more specific that you
get in your writing, the more universal the writing becomes.
This is counterintuitive, but it's absolutely true. And when you
choose a destination for your piece of writing, your writing
becomes more specific. It jumps off the page, It becomes
more energetic, it becomes more vibrant. It has more you
(14:23):
in it has more of your heart in it. And
so this is my benediction, my invitation, my encouragement to
you is to end the obsession with the numbers and
instead focus on one person whose life you want to
have an impact on. Who you want to speak to,
who you want to share this message with, one person
who you want to tell this story to. One person
(14:45):
who you want to share this tip with, or this
benediction with, or this encouragement with. End your obsession with
the numbers. Write it like a love letter. Invitation number two.
Stop trying to figure out what people want, what the
market wants. This is something that I hear from authors
a lot, and this is something that I have found
(15:06):
myself doing as I'm crafting a yoga flow for a
group of students, because I'm anticipating I'm going to go
to the studio. It's a little different when you're writing
a book. You're writing a book and you're kind of like,
I don't know if anyone will ever read this. But
I talk to a lot of authors who are trying
to figure out, like, what does the market want right now?
What would sell really well? What could I sell on Amazon.
There's a place for that conversation, but the creative process
(15:29):
is not that place. And I'll talk about a few
reasons for that. There's a few really big reasons for that.
One of the reasons is that you will lose motivation
if the person you're writing this book for is not you.
If you're writing it to sell a bunch of copies
on Amazon. I'm just telling you, it will not matter
to you nearly as much as if this book is
an obsession. It's something for you that is a deep
(15:52):
obsession that you have to do. I've worked with so
many people and people who are just working on a
book to comple lead a product, to sell it, to
sell as many copies as possible, or to maybe sell
coaching packages or something like that. They these are the
people who would rather hire someone to write their book
for them. Which there's nothing wrong with hiring someone to
(16:12):
write your book for you, but there's a difference between
hiring someone to help you with a skill set you
don't have and hiring someone to do the hard work
of creativity for you. So there's an element of like,
I'm just going to hire this out. I'm just going
to spend the money. I'm just going to sell as
many copies as possible. This thing doesn't really matter to me.
They don't have the energetic investment that is necessary to
(16:32):
carry the project to completion. Now, they might be able
to hire a ghostwriter and an editor and have someone else,
you know, carry it to a completion, but in terms
of their energy to carry it to completion, they don't
have it because they're not obsessed with the topic, obsessed
with the idea, obsessed with the book, obsessed with getting
this out to their one perfect reader. And so instead
(16:55):
of thinking about what the market wants, what the people want,
you know, what the market needs right now, instead get
obsessive over the thing that you want to share. Get
obsessive with this idea, the story. One of the reasons
why it doesn't work to think through what people want
or what the market wants is because people don't have
any idea what they want. That's one reason this doesn't work.
(17:17):
People don't even know what they want. Most people, the
majority of our culture of people around us, are just
walking around. We're just kind of you know, we're consumers
by nature. We've been trained by our culture to be consumers.
So we're just kind of eyes open, just waiting for
someone else to tell us what we want. Most people
in the world, this is sad but true, that most
(17:37):
people in the world simply do not know what they want,
and so trying to figure out what the people want
is an incredibly fickle thing to focus on. It is
a moving target. People don't have any clue what they want.
They're waiting for someone else to tell them what they want,
or they're waiting for you to speak to a deep,
deep want that they have disowned or forgotten about that
(17:59):
you can wake up and you can tap into. That
is the hook that is going to make your book
absolutely indispensable to them. You've probably had this experience where
you were like feeling a little lost in your life,
or feeling a little depressed, or feeling a little down
in the dumps, or feeling kind of beaten down by life,
or just feeling kind of numbed out. And you're walking along,
walking along, and something, a piece of art, a piece
(18:22):
of music, a book, something just kind of jumps out
at you and grabs you and speaks to that deep,
deep part of you, that the part of you that
isn't stuck, the part of you that isn't lost, the
part of you that isn't depressed, and just wakes you
up again and gets to that primal human desire to
be alive, to be awake, to be online. And when
(18:42):
you can do that, when you can speak from the
heart and speak directly to that part of people, then
you connect with them instantly and you won't have to
worry about whether the market has room for this. Or
you know, there's thousands of books out there on the
same topic. You know, thousands of books on money, of
books on marriage. So why do we keep writing more
(19:03):
books on marriage, keep writing more books on money. It's
because we want to hear about these topics through a
different lens, through your vantage point, which is different than
anyone else in the entire universe. Nobody else can replicate
your vantage point. Nobody else has your unique blueprint, nobody
else has your unique voice, nobody else has your unique heart.
We want to hear about this topic from somebody else
(19:25):
through somebody else's vantage point. Also, we need to hear
about these topics six, seven, eight, ten times before they
start to make sense to us. So it's another reason
why if you want to learn about a topic like money,
you'll pick up ten books on the topic of money,
not because they're all addressing different ideas, but because they're
addressing them in different ways, through different voices, from a
(19:47):
different standpoint. So put your unique stamp on it. But
don't worry about what people want. People don't know what
they want, and even if they do what they want,
what they want is changing all the time. And if
you're trying to chase down what people want, it's a
moving target. It's going to drive you crazy, it's going
to make you feel chaotic inside. It's not going to
satisfy the desire that you're trying to satisfy. When you
sit down to write a book. Invitation number three, bring
(20:12):
your heart into it. This is something I've had to
remind myself a handful of times as I've been in
the process to become a yoga instructor, Because as a
student of yoga, I have gotten to the place where
I understand yoga as a practice, I don't expect perfection
from myself. Yoga for me is about being present in
the moment, really staying with myself, staying with my breath.
As a teacher of yoga, I started to catch myself
(20:35):
getting caught in this trap of perfectionism, which is, you know,
a friend that's been in my back pocket since the
time I was very young, this need to get it perfect,
this need to get it right, this need to get
the Sanskrit right, to get the cues right, to make
sure the in house and excels are perfect, to never
mess up a right side or a left side. And
(20:55):
when we focus on perfection, when we focus on getting
it right, getting the details right, on memorization, we move
away from the thing that draws people into our creativity
in the first place, the thing that helps people connect
with it. So, if you're writing a book and you're
focused on perfection, you can't bring your full heart to
(21:17):
the table. You can't bring your full vulnerability to the table.
So just a really practical way to do this is
to tell the story that you least want to tell.
And this is the thing I would tell you if
I wasn't worried about hurting your feelings or ruffling your feathers,
I would tell you that story that you swore to
yourself you would never tell in a book. Tell it.
That's the story we want to hear, the story that
you're like, I'll tell any story, but that story, that's
(21:41):
always the story. Ninety nine point nine nine percent of
the time when I'm working with an author, will be
working along together throughout the day, we're kind of mapping
out their book together. Halfway through the day, the author
will turn to me and say, I don't want to
put this in the book, but this will be helpful
context for you. And they'll tell me a story and
I'll say to them, why don't you want to put
that in the book? Say, well, I could never because
(22:02):
of X, Y or Z. And sometimes there's legitimate reasons
for not being able to put these stories in a book.
So I'm not saying share someone else's story if it's
not your story to share, But I'm saying ninety nine
point nine to nine percent of the time. That story
that the author says to me, I'm not going to
put this in the book, but it's helpful context for you.
Is the story that your reader wants to hear. So
it may be complicated to share it. There may be
(22:23):
reasons why you feel you can't share it. This is
something that you can work through. But I'm telling you,
this is the story that your reader wants to hear.
This is what it looks like, what it feels like
to put your whole heart into the book, to put
your whole heart into this project, and to really show
up there without the perfectionism, but with the wholeness of you,
(22:44):
the wholeness of who you are. So whether or not
you're writing a content driven book or a story driven book,
that story that you're so afraid to share is maybe
probably the story that you need to share in order
to unlock the beauty, the depth, the realness, the humanity
of this book that nobody else could replicate and AI
(23:05):
can't replicate it. This is another way that you set
yourself apart from books that maybe are being written or
could be written by AI. You set yourself apart by
bringing your whole freaking humanity to the table and by
telling the stories that you're most afraid to tell. Invitation
(23:30):
number four is to make it a story. I believe
that as a culture, we're craving good stories. And I
don't think I'm alone in this belief. But I will
go so far as to say that I've gotten to
the point, and this is personal preference, this part of it,
but I've gotten to the point where I almost don't
want to read content driven books anymore. Some content driven
(23:53):
books I will still pick up and read. But there's
so much chaos happening in our world. There's so much unrest,
there's so much despair, there's so much heartbreak. I've had
so much heartbreak happen in my own life in the
last calendar year that there's just something so helpful and
refreshing and healing about entering into someone else's story. It
(24:15):
helps me to leave my own personal problems for a
few minutes and be captivated, be enraptured by someone else's story,
to connect with other human beings. It helps to combat loneliness,
to connect with someone on that level through the telling
and retelling of their story. That I'm almost to the
(24:37):
point where, like I will read anyone's personal story. I
don't even care if it's well written. I will read
your story. I want it to be well written, but
if it's not well written, I will still read it.
Whereas I've become extremely critical of self help books because
it's so cheap and easy to give someone advice. There's
a place for advice. There's a place for self help books.
(24:58):
There's a place for business books. We need cookbooks, cookbooks
or advice books. They give us a recipe to follow.
There's a place for a recipe. I'm not saying recipes
don't matter, or that those books shouldn't be written. I'm saying,
in this time that we're living in, in this period
of time, there is a hunger, a deep hunger, a need,
a craving for stories. So consider maybe writing a story
(25:23):
driven book, writing a memoir, writing a fiction book, writing
something that's going to help people escape into your story.
If you're writing a content driven book, great, make sure
that the advice that you're giving, the tips that you're giving,
the formula that you're offering, the recipe, make sure that
it is undergirded, that it is fully supported by human stories, stories, stories, stories, stories,
(25:49):
It's so cheap. It's so easy to sit here and
give someone advice. But when you can tell someone a
story to back up the advice, then suddenly I can connect.
Then suddenly I see you on the page, Then suddenly
I feel your heart. And I've just gotten to the
point where I have basically no patience for someone who's
just going to bark advice at me, or just give
(26:09):
me a formula or a recipe or tell me that
it works, but not tell me what this helped them overcome.
You know, like, what pain point in your life did
this formula, this recipe help you overcome. Tell me about
the pain, tell me about the struggle, tell me about
when you thought it wasn't going to work, tell me
all of it. Go as deep as you possibly can.
And then yes, give me your advice, give me your tips,
(26:30):
give me your encouragement, give me your invitation, your benediction.
There is a place for that. But the advice without
the story is just empty. And finally, the last piece
of advice that I would give to you, if I
was just shooting you straight and not worried about hurting
your feelings, is to stay open to all publishing paths.
(26:51):
I talk to a lot of authors, And I don't
know if this resonates with you, but I talk to
a lot of aspiring authors who are, like I, am
only interested in traditional publishing. You know, self publishing is
the B level way to do it. I only want
to traditionally publish. I want to hit the New York
Times list. I want to be in airport bookstores. I
want to sell millions of copies. I'm telling you right now,
(27:13):
the trouble with this way of seeing things is that
it will shut down your creativity. It is not that
you can't traditionally publish. It's not that you can't be
in airport bookstores. It's not that you can't sell hundreds
of thousands of copies or millions of copies. It's not
that you can't make the New York Times list. It's
that if that is your focus, it will shut down
your creativity. So I'll take you back to the invitation
(27:37):
about avoiding focusing on what the market wants and instead
writing what's in your heart. Same thing with focusing on
New York Times list or traditional publisher or getting an
agent or writing a book proposal document. There's a reason
why in my programs I shifted away from helping people
write book proposal documents to helping people write complete manuscripts.
Because here's why. There's nothing wrong with a book proposal document.
(28:01):
There's nothing wrong with wanting to sign a contract with
a traditional publisher. But you could wait for years and years,
and I've watched people do this. You could wait for
years and years to get the approval of an agent
or of a publisher, when all along you had a
beautiful idea that ought to have been written, that could
have been healing you, that you could have been playing with,
(28:24):
tinkering with growing, tending to, you know, nurturing into existence,
and you didn't do that because instead you were waiting
for an agent to tell you, yeah, I think that's
a good idea, or a publisher to tell you, yeah,
we'd love to write you a contract. Very few people
get agents that say that to them. Very few people
(28:44):
get a publisher that says I want to write you
a contract. And far more people than ever have that experience,
have an absolutely necessary, beautiful, important, incredible piece of work
that needs to be developed, that needs to be written,
that needs to be shared, And so why should we
sit around waiting for someone else to validate our idea
(29:05):
when all along, deep down, you know that this idea
is a good idea. You know that there's something here
worth being explored. Do not wait for an agent or
for a publisher to tell you that your idea is
worth being explored. Explore your freakin idea. When I started
thinking about maybe doing a yoga teacher training, it wasn't
because someone said to me, you know what, You're really
(29:26):
great at yoga. You should be a yoga teacher. The
reason that I registered for the yoga teacher training is
because I had a deep inner knowing that this was
the next step for me. In fact, I didn't even
know at the time if I wanted to teach yoga.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to teach. I just
knew that this was the next step for me in
my practice. It was something I needed to nurture myself,
(29:48):
and I would encourage you. I would invite you to
take this same approach with whatever your creative practice is.
Whether it's writing a book, whether it's making music, whether
it's posting on LinkedIn like my husband is doing, whether
it's great a business, whether it's growing your family, whether
it's gardening, making sourdough bread, you know, cooking, I don't know,
whatever your creative practice is to follow those deep inner
(30:09):
impulses because they are taking you somewhere important, and you
won't always get the external validation. Sometimes you do. Sometimes
you have someone go great class, Thanks for that, and
that's nice, But you don't always get that external validation,
and so you have to learn as an artist to
trust and to follow that inner knowing that this is
(30:31):
the next right step for me, And I don't know
what it will mean for other people. I don't know
if I'm going to teach. I don't know if anyone
will like what I teach. I don't know if I'll
be a good yoga teacher. I don't know if I'll
open a studio someday. I don't know what I'm going
to do with this. Maybe it's a quote unquote waste
of time because I don't make any money from it,
which is honestly another piece of advice I could add
(30:53):
to this list that this idea that the only things
that are worth our time are things that are going
to make us money in return, is crushing us as
a culture. It's crushing your creativity. It's absolutely crushing you.
Disown this idea that the only reason that something is
worth your time is because it's going to make you
(31:15):
money is a capitalistic idea that's been imposed upon you.
That is crushing your creativity. Allow yourself to try something,
to do something, To invest in something because it's good
for you, not because it's going to make you money,
Because it feels good, because it brings you pleasure, because
it helps you grow, because of a thousand other reasons
(31:37):
other than that it's going to make you money. I'll
tell you another hard truth. My list is growing apparently
as I'm talking. Another hard truth about writing books is
that you're probably not going to make money doing it.
That's just the bottom line. You're probably not going to
make money writing books unless you're selling millions of copies.
You're just simply not making money by writing books. You're
probably selling, you know, between one thousand and five thousand
(31:58):
copies of a book is actually that's a for a
first time author. Five thousand copies is a great goal
to set for yourself. It would be an incredible accomplishment
to sell five thousand copies of your book. And if
you do that, depending on how you publish, whether you
self publish or traditionally publish or hybrid publish. You may
make your money back, you'll probably be somewhere in that ballpark,
(32:19):
but you're not going to make money on top of that.
So I always tell authors to think about your book
as a loss leader. Your book is the thing that
tells people more about you, tells people where else they
can purchase products or services. If we're thinking about monetizing this,
but even beyond monetizing it, beyond monetizing your life. Maybe
you're an accountant, maybe you're a lawyer, Maybe you're a teacher,
(32:39):
maybe you're a mom, maybe you're whatever else you're doing
to support yourself financially, or if you have someone else
in your partnership who's supporting you financially so that you
can stay home with your kids or whatever that your
financial life looks like. In that way, maybe for now
you don't tie your creativity to your financial well being.
Maybe you can disc connects those two things for just
(33:02):
the time being. Wouldn't that be healing? Wouldn't that be
healing if you could just allow yourself to have this
creative practice and it didn't need to pay your bills.
This for me was my approach with yoga. I was like,
I'm not looking to use yoga to pay my bills.
I have other ways that I can pay my bills.
For me, yoga was about nourishing the self. It was
about stepping into a new kind of level for me,
(33:24):
like a next level of growth. It was about using
my voice, it was about being more embodied, so many
different things. But it was not about making money. And
because I disconnected the making money from the creativity, I
was able to really fully invest in the teacher training
and now in my teaching in a different way, in
a fuller way, in a better way, in a deeper way.
(33:47):
It's not that you can't make money from your creativity.
It's not that you shouldn't hope or aspire to make
money from creativity. But sometimes when the two are tied
so closely together, you get stuck focusing on the numbers.
You get stuck focusing on what people want. You get
stuck focusing on doing it perfect, getting it right, really
making the publisher proud, really making the agent proud. You know,
(34:08):
working so hard to get validation from someone outside of you,
when the whole point of this creative practice, in my opinion,
at least, and especially now with the rise of AI,
the entire point of writing your book because you could
just put your idea into chat GBT and chat GBT
can write it for you. So why don't do that.
The only reason not to do that is because writing
is extremely healing, because writing the story will change your
(34:29):
life from the inside out. Because writing this book will
make you a different person. Imagine if I could have
chat GBT get my yoga certification for me. If that
were possible, would I take that shortcut? I wouldn't because
the two hundred hours that I spent training and studying
(34:51):
and becoming a teacher are two hundred hours that changed
me from the inside out. So think of your book
writing just like that. There are no shortcuts here. There are,
in this case technically shortcuts because AI exist in this
day and age where you could have a I write
your book for you, So there is technically a shortcut.
(35:12):
But I'm here to tell you you don't want to
take the shortcut that the long road to the top
of the mountain. I talked about this a couple episodes ago.
But the road to the top of Machu Picchu. The hikers,
the ones who hike from the bottom. I hiked from
the bottom of this mountain and I climbed to like
fourteen thousand feet or whatever it is, to the top
(35:33):
of Machu Pichu. And I'm telling you, this was a
life changing experience for me and my friend who was like, oh,
I took the bus to the top. I didn't think
it was that great. It was pretty commercialized. It was
pretty boring, saw the ruins, you know, moved on to
the next thing. It was pretty commercialized. But you know
what's funny, I didn't notice that I had to like
wait in line to buy a ticket. You have to
get to the top of the mountain extra early in
(35:55):
the morning if you're a hiker, because they only let
so many people in the park for the day, and
so you have to be first in line if you're
a hiker, And the buses get there at like eight
in the morning or seven thirty or something like that,
so you have to start hiking at four thirty if
you want to make it to the top. So we're
up at four thirty in the morning, four fifteen in
the morning with our headlamps on, just hoofing it up
the mountain, and by the time I made it to
(36:17):
the top of the mountain. I was like, this is
the most spectacular thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
And my friend who wasn't with me, she was at
a different time, but she was like, yeah, we took
the buses to the top. I thought it was kind
of like, you know, blown out of proportion and commercialized,
and I feel like they've kind of ruined it. She
and I had two completely different experiences because we went
up the mountain two completely different ways. There's no wrong
(36:40):
way to go up to the mountain, but the invitation
is there, which way do you want to go up
the mountain. I will say this to my dying breath,
and this is a hill that I will die on,
but it is one hundred percent worth every ounce of
energy that you will invest to write your book, even
if nobody ever reads it, even if nobody but you
ever reads that book. And as you're writing, maybe think
(37:02):
about one person your therapist, your spouse, your sister, a sibling,
a best friend, someone who's trustworthy, someone who you know
you could tell every detail of a story too. Maybe
you hold that person in mind while you write, and
you tell yourself, this is just about getting the thing
done and sharing it with this one person. If you
can do that, I promise you you will. You'll hit
(37:26):
many road bumps along the way, you speed bumps, roadblocks,
You'll get stuck, You'll feel frustrated, you'll think you've given up,
but you will come back to the practice. You will
obsess over this. You will spend hours and hours and hours.
You will put your whole heart into this thing, and
you will never regret a single second of it. Your blood, sweat,
and tears will go on to the page. You will
(37:47):
feel so proud of yourself when it's over, and you
will become a different person in the process. It is
one hundred percent worth it. I invite you, I implore you,
I encourage you to please, please please write that book
you've always wanted to write. I'm with you, I see you,
I'm on your team, and I can't wait to see
what you create. I'll see you next week on the
(38:08):
Write Your Story Podcast.
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com