Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors that help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode 41 of The Writing Coach, I speak with Chandler Bolt.

Chandler is the best selling author of six books, including Book Launch and Published, as well as the creator of Self-Publishing School. In the two years since Chandler was last on the show, he’s built Self-Publishing School up into a company with a dozen employees and 7-figure revenue. 

During our conversation, Chandler describes:

* What he’s learned from working with thousands of authors;

* How his parents influenced his decision to pursue a unique career path;

* The challenges he’s faced and how he overcame them;

* Whether he would ever consider a traditional publishing contract;

* And much more!

Listen to the episode now:

The Writing Coach #41 Show Notes

Watch Chandler’s BRAND NEW FREE video training series here. 

Get a free paperback copy of Chandler’s new book Published here.

Check out “How to Self-Publish a Book in 2017” on the Self-Publishing School blog.

 

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors that help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode 40 of The Writing Coach, I speak with author Ron Vitale.

Ron is the author of Cinderella’s Secret Witch Diaries and A Witch’s Coven Novels series, a web technology director, lover of all things fantasy and sci-fi, marathon runner and dad. Ron loves to tell stories about the hero’s journey using creativity and fantasy.

During our conversation, Ron describes:

* How storytelling helped him escape a challenging childhood without a father;

* The years he wasted waiting for someone to validate him as a writer;

* The long game approach he takes to his publishing career;

* How he uses writing as a form of self-healing;

* Why he decided to be completely transparent in his year-end wrap up article, despite having lost money in 2016;

* And much more!

Listen to the episode now:

 

Show Notes

Read Ron’s article, What I Learned About Publishing inn 2016: Full Sales and Figures.

Visit Ron’s website.

Check out Ron’s books on Amazon!

 

 

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors that help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode 38 of The Writing Coach, I speak with Joan Dempsey.

Joan Dempsey, author of the forthcoming novel This Is How It Begins (She Writes Press, Oct 3, 2017), helps serious creative writers master the craft of revision through online courses and free resources.

During our conversation, Joan describes:

* Why she embraces the title teacher

* How she avoids the “bank vault” approach of instruction in favour of a more learning centered approach;

* The role formal education has played in her development as an author and a teacher of writers;

* Why she decided to focus in on revisions as her specific area of expertise;

* Her top revision tips

* And much more!

Listen to the episode now:

Show Notes

Visit Joan’s website joandempsey.com to check out all of her courses, and grab her free video training series at revisewithconfidence.com.

 

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors that help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode 37 of The Writing Coach, I speak with Rachel Smets.

Rachel is an author, speaker, and personal confidence coach dedicated to empowering people to awaken their confidence and become the inspired individual they want to be. She speaks 6 languages (Dutch, French, English, Spanish, German and Italian), has lived in many different countries over the last 15 years, and is the author of the book Awaken Your Confidence: 15 People Share their Journey to Success. 

During our conversation, Rachel describes:

* Her life-long passion for learning languages and the role local experts played in accelerating her learning process;

* How living abroad has helped her grow her own confidence, flexibility and adaptability;

* The role confidence plays in learning to feel at home while living abroad;

* Her process for contacting 15 influencers for inclusion in her book;

* What she learned from people who overcame stuttering, dislexia, shyness, and more;

* Her favourite confidence hacks;

* And much more!

Listen to the episode now:

Show Notes

Visit Rachel’s website here.

Grab your copy of Rachel’s book today.

Check out Rachel’s Youtube channel. 

Find Rachel on Facebook here.

 

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors that help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode 36 of The Writing Coach, I speak with Shaunta Grimes.

Shaunta has worked as a substitute teacher, a newspaper reporter, a drug court counselor, and a vintage clothing seller. No matter which direction she strays, however, she always comes back to storytelling. She lives in Reno with her family, where she writes, teaches, and perpetually studies at the University of Nevada. She is the author of two young adult distopian novels, and helps authors to excell via her Ninja Writers community.

During our conversation, Shaunta describes:

* How a NaNoWriMo win in 2004 launched her novel writing career;

* Her “tiny goal” writing techinque that has allowed her to write every day for years;

* Her special productivity tool known as F.R.E.D.;

* The heartbreaking experience she went through with traditional publishing;

* How helping writers to tell their story lights her up;

* And much more!

Listen to the episode now:

Show Notes

Get Shaunta’s free Ninja Writers Secret Weapon Tool here.

Check out Shaunta’s membership community The Ninja Writers Club here. Use the coupon could ANITRY and get your first month of membership for only $7!

Finally, Shaunta’s year long novel writing course, A Novel Idea, is open for enrollment this week only!

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors that help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode 35 of The Writing Coach, I speak with Karen Dimmick.

Karen is a writer, reader, world-traveller, eternal student and passionate observer of behavior. She is a certified NLP and hypnosis master practitioner and trainer and has 4 degrees (so far). For the past 9 years she has been helping authors, from first time writers to an established, 5 times, New York Times bestselling author. Her mission is to break down what works for authors and put it into practical steps to help them build a profitable, engaging business they and their fans love.

Her new book is called 47 Mind Hacks for Writers: Master the Writing Habit in 10 Minutes Or Less and End Writer’s Block and Procrastination for Good.

During our conversation, Karen describes:

* Why she ended up ditching the first book she attempted to write;

* How she’s been helping authors on the technology side of things;

* The challenges she faced when she first started blogging and how she turned around her blogging mindset;

* What it’s like co-writing books with her husband;

* Some of her favourite mind hacks for writers;

* And much more!

Listen to the episode now:

Visit Karen’s Bookthority website.

Learn about Karen’s upcoming Book Marketing Summit.

Grab a copy of Karen’s new book:

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors that help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode 34 of The Writing Coach, I speak with Susan Friedmann.

Susan is a Certified Speaking Professional and a veteran business and niche marketing expert who has carved her niche by helping companies worldwide get the most out of attending trade shows and industry events. She offers programs to increase results and focus on building better relationships with customers, prospects and advocates in the marketplace.

A prolific author, Susan has written fourteen books including, Meeting and Event Planning for Dummies, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Target Marketing, and Riches in Niches: How to Make it BIG in a small Market, which made it to #1 in hot business books on Amazon.com.

During our conversation, Susan describes:

* How the publishing industry has changed over the last three decades;

* Her nuts and bolts approach to writing and teaching;

* The benefits of self-publishing for authors;

* How the September 11 terrorist attacks nearly prevented one of her books from being published;

* The way the National Speakers Association has connected her with many important mentors;

* What she has learned from a year of podcasting;

* The importance of niche marketing for authors;

* And much more!

Listen to the episode now:

To get Susan’s 111 point checklist of how to monetize your book or a complementary 15 minute book marketing consultation, send her an email at susan (at) avivapubs (dot) com.

Listen to Kevin’s appearance on Susan’s podcast Book Marketing Mentors here.

Visit Susan’s author page on Amazon.

Grab a copy of Susan’s bestselling book, Riches in Niches:

To listen to this blog post in audio format, click the play button below:

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has come to a close for another year.

A fraction of the writers (around 14%) who participated reached their goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. The vast majority of writers (the other 86%) failed to achieve what they set out to do.

If you’re reading this, you probably ended up on the wrong side of that 14/86 split.

While I may not know you, I have worked with hundreds of writers just like you over the last several years, and I’m confident I can tell you exactly why you failed to reach the 50K mark. It was almost certainly a combination of the following five reasons.

By “a plan”, I mean a specific writing schedule that identified when, where, and how many words you were going to write each day. This Writing Plan should also have identified where you were going to be recording your daily word count, and how you would get back on track for days when you fell behind your word count goals.

You should also have developed a Life Plan that identified mitigation strategies for all those life issues (work, family, chores, other responsibilities) that end up getting in the way of writing.

Did Thanksgiving and all the family, food, and relatives that go along with it distract you from your writing part-way through the month? Well, Thanksgiving happens every year, and you should have prepared for the holiday by working it into your Writing/Life Plans for November.

In the project management world, we call these plans a “critical path”. We use the word “critical” because when activities begin to stray from the planned path, it can result in total project failure. If you failed to reach the 50K mark, it means you probably didn’t plan adequately for what was to come.

Writing a novel involves a massive amount of work before the first page ever being written.

Long before you type the words “Chapter 1”, you need to have clearly identified what genre you’re going to be writing in, where it falls culturally in the genre cycle, and what its obligatory scenes, genre tropes, and key iconography entail.

You also need to have chosen a proven story structure to format your narrative around. I don’t care if it’s the Hero’s Journey, Freytag’s pyramid, the Elizabethan five act structure, the Hollywood three act structure, or the Brooks/Weiland four act novel structure. What I DO care about is that you chose one BEFORE you started writing.

In addition, you need to have done the character work necessary to ensure that on the first day of NaNo, you already knew who your protagonist was, what she wanted, and what she actually needed.  You should also have crafted a beat sheet identifying all the major plot points in your narrative, and maybe even expanded some of them out into longer paragraphs or partial scenes.

If you didn’t do this work before November 1, you were all but dooming yourself to failure before you even began. These activities are the mandatory grunt work of writer’s craft and they cannot be ignored.

One of the great things about NaNoWriMo is the way it gathers together a community of writers who can support one another throughout the challenge. This support comes in the form of online forums as well as IRL writing events.

If you failed to reach your goals in November, you either didn’t reach out to your local and/or online community of writers, or the community you did reach out to didn’t provide you with the amount of accountability you needed to be successful.

While fellow writers are an essential component of your growth and progress as a writer, you can’t expect them to support you the way a writing coach, like myself, would. For example, I recorded 30 motivation videos for my clients participating in NaNo (o...

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors that help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode 32 of The Writing Coach, I speak with Debbie Drum.

Debbie is an author and an expert in content creation, an internet marketer, and the creator of Book Review Targeter, a tool that allows authors to connect with potential reviewers of their book.

During our conversation, Debbie describes:

* How a simple Google search led to a career in internet marketing;

* The singular importance of taking action;

* Why partnerships have been essential to the growth of her business;

* What led to the creation of the Book Review Targeter tool;

* How Book Review Targeter can save authors dozens of hours of work;

* The importance of social proof in a world of online purchasing;

* And much more!

Listen to the episode now:

 

Learn more about Book Review Targeter here.

Visit Debbie’s website. 

Ready to get access to Book Review Targeter today?

Get access here:

 

 

Listen to the audio version of this article here:

Writing is hard.

DAMN hard.

As a writing coach, my job is to make it just a little bit easier by teaching you what I know. Every time I hit publish on a blog post or release a new podcast episode it’s with the intention of making you a better writer.

But here’s the thing about being a teacher… it’s always easier than actually doing the thing.

At the end of the day, I’m on the sidelines cheering you on, but it’s you out on the court with the ball in your hands risking everything.

The sidelines are a safe place to be.

Too safe.

I don’t want to just be the writing coach who shares advice with you while never risking anything myself.

I want you to see that I have just as much skin in the game as you do.

That’s why I just published my latest novel, M School.

I wrote and published this book because I want you to know that I walk my talk.

For better or worse, I’m a writer. I’m there, in the trenches, every day, just like you.

My number one goal with M School is to entertain my readers. (BTW – I think that should be every author’s goal with every book.)

But my secondary goal is to show you that it’s possible.

It can be done.

Writing a book and putting it out into the world is totally do-able. I just did it, and you can to.

I’d love it if you would purchase a copy of M School. You’ll get a fast-paced and thrilling tale from a writer who has been where you are now.

We all need support along the way. I’ll continue to be here to support you as best I can. I’ll continue to share what I know, what I’m learning, and what I think you’ll find helpful.

I’d love it if you would support me in return by purchasing a copy of M School.

You can get it here.