“I’m too busy right now.”

The voices reverberate in your brain.

“If I could just find more mental space.”

“If I could find more blocks of free time.”

“Then… I’d be able to write my book.”

You can visualize it.

A smooth empty highway stretches out in front of you. You sit down to write. Applying fingers to the keyboard, you race easily down the road.

You can see the goal glistening in the distance. It’s a Kindle eBook with an eye-catching cover and an irresistible title. Along with a stylishly-designed paperback edition of your book. On your Amazon page, you count 119 four and five-star reader reviews.

If I weren’t too busy… I’d be done! Finished! A published author!

What’s wrong with this picture?

First of all, there are some good things about this visualization.

Visualizing your goal is important. By all means, scribble your goal (“finish book”) on a stickie. Put it up by your computer, on the mirror, on the fridge. Be sure to add the date. By June 1st. By September 1st.

But there is a problem with the image of a smooth sailing highway: it’s a mirage. It doesn’t exist.

There is no clear, obstacle-free road to writing a book. It doesn’t work that way.

Anyone who tells you that writing a book is an easy process is either lying or doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

That may sound harsh. But I know it to be true.

Writing a book is the hardest thing I’ve ever done

I’ve written a 200-page business book (published by Penguin Portfolio) and it is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Much harder, by far, than giving birth three times.

Don’t get me wrong. Going through labor is no picnic. I found it excruciating. But labor only lasts for a matter of hours. And then a newborn baby pops out (the most wondrous thing imaginable).

Writing a book takes weeks and months, not hours.

Along the way are twists and turns and detours that you never imagined at the outset. It can be crushingly frustrating. It is lonely. Writing can make you crazy, or depressed. You will doubt yourself. You might hate yourself. You will want to howl at the moon. I guarantee it.

So what’s the RIGHT excuse for not writing your book?

Let’s look again at what it means to say you’re “too busy right now.”

What it really means is that you want to delay the pain. Writing a book, to borrow from Jim Collins, is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). 

You want to Procrastinate with a capital “P.”

And that’s OK. Who doesn’t want to avoid pain? Put me at the top of the list.

But there’s another way to look at this.

The RIGHT excuse isn’t to focus on pain or avoidance or feeling too busy.

The right excuse is that you haven’t clarified the WHY of your book

Writing a book is a slow, messy process, not a smooth highway. There is no black box that you crack open to reveal exactly how it’s done.

It’s not about feeling too busy vs. wallowing in loads of free time.

There is no right time to start writing a book. There is no perfect roadmap.

But there is an obstacle that will stop you cold and make you feel “too busy” to start.

That’s not knowing the “why” of your book.

Writing a book is part of something bigger

Think of it like this. A book is one vessel for a message that you’re burning to share with your audience.

Another vessel for your message and expertise is a workshop, or a new area of consulting. Or keynote talks that you get paid for. Or a product or service or program that you sell online.

Becoming a published author can change you and the world around you – and beyond you. What change do you want? It’s worth thinking about.

Before you put a word on paper, clarify what the something bigger is. Reframe yourself as an author entrepreneur. Step out of a writer role and into a change maker role.

Ask yourself two questions:

1. How will your book change your reader?

2. How will you make the world a better place with your book – or at least make a difference?

Seth Godin, as you probably know, is all about “shipping” and “stepping up” and “not making excuses.” You know this if you’re a regular reader of his blog or his books.

But in order to operate like Seth, you have to understand the “why” of your book.

Put the “why” on a stickie. Not just the “when.” And stop worrying about whether you are “too busy.”

(Note: the “why” should answer the two questions above.)

So are you “too busy right now”?

I’d love to hear from you. If writing a book is on your bucket list, what is holding you back? Do you feel too busy?

Send me an email at debbie@voxiemedia.com. I promise to write back.

       

Scott Berkun is one of my favorite business authors. He’s honest, insightful and – the ultimate yardstick – a beautiful writer. He has written on the topics of leadership, creativity and public speaking. Now he has published his first memoir, The Ghost of My Father, a revealing exploration of his difficult and painful relationship with his father.

I’ve just started reading it and so far, it’s terrific. I am waiting for my paperback copy to arrive in the mail. He tackles the unmentionable issues around parental relationships that so many of us, myself included, manage to avoid for a lifetime.

Below is a quick Q. & A. with Scott about the process of writing the book. Although most of Scott’s previous books are traditionally published, this is his second book to be self-published, by Berkun Media, LLC. The book is a consummate example of what a professional author can do as an author entrepreneur.

DW: How hard was it to write this book? I love the Hemingway quote at the beginning: “Write hard and clear about what hurts.”
– Ernest Hemingway

SB: The hardest book to write is always the one you’re working on. The process for all of my books is similar: It’s simply a matter of how much work you’re willing to put in.

The Ghost of My Father is about a mystery, a deep mystery of one of my parents. To convey that feeling effectively is tricky since it’d be easy for the mystery of the man to come across as a failing of the book, rather than an accurate telling of a strange story. Nuance like this is hard – and to get it right demanded many revisions. That was the hardest part of writing this book.

I found that reading many memoirs (I read more than 15 of them) helped me sort out what I wanted to do with the book, and how to deal with some of the challenges memoirs have. The Art of Time In Memoir by Sven Berkets was by far the most useful book about memoir writing I found and he calls out many of the traps, citing many good examples writers should read.

DW: How long did the writing take? How many drafts did you do? What was your process? Did you use readers or editors for feedback as you went along??

SB: I’ve always kept a journal and around 2012 kept a separate one for this project. I wrote, I believe, seven drafts. However, the last three drafts were primarily for copyediting and proofreading with few structural changes if any. I always have early readers. In this case four people read early drafts (they’re enthusiastically thanked in the Acknowledgements).

I hired two copyeditors to review the last drafts, a proofreader, and had many volunteer proofreaders too. Most of my books demanded fewer drafts, but otherwise this arrangement of editors/readers is standard for my book projects.

DW: What are your tips and lessons for writing about a painful topic, one that you are exploring as you write?

SB: The best advice, and it’s advice I follow religiously, is to read many books in the form you want to write in. When you read as a writer you read differently. You’ll discover how many different ways there are to handle the core challenges (is the narrator reliable? believable? whiny? charming? annoying? How did the writer achieve or fail at this?) and inform yourself about what they are.

You’ll also discover many different styles of narrative and structure, which will also help you make those choices. Joan Didion is a very different kind of memoir writer than Mary Morris or Maya Angelou, and each of their books expresses painful stories in different ways.

It is useful to invite people who were there into the project early on. David Carr, in his memoir, The Night of The Gun, used his family to help him remember events, and even had them read drafts. For me, I interviewed both my parents, and my brother read nearly all of the drafts and gave feedback on them.

The challenge for memoir is that it is highly subjective and personal, even more so than novels. The reasons why someone likes a memoir – or not – are very personal. Only in reading many of them can you recognize there is no right answer, and that no matter what you do not everyone will be interested in your story, or like the way you tell it.

DW: Scott, thank you for taking time for a Q. & A. on a busy launch day.

What to do next

If you support author entrepreneurs and appreciate good writing, buy Scott Berkun‘s The Ghost of My Father on Amazon. Available both for Kindle and in paperback.

       

It kicks off annually on Nov. 1st. Last year over 170,000 people from around the world took part. They wrote over 3 billion words in 30 days.

Beyond the catchy name, this crazy sprint to write the draft of a novel in one month has lots of lessons you can steal from. Here are three NaNoWriMo rules you can adapt to your own ends if writing a short book on a nonfiction topic is on your bucket list.

Write Every Day

This is the number one rule.

You have to sit down every day and write something. If it’s not the draft of your book, per se, it can be free writing around the topic of your book or, equally important, the goal for your book.

I’ve talked about this before. I call it creating a Daily Writing Practice. There are different ways you can do this.

Mine is simple-minded:

• Commit to writing in the morning before email and other online distractions
• Make it a ritual (light a candle; lay out your writing totems)
• Set a word count goal that you can reach

The NaNoWriMo goal is 50,000 words in 30 days. Make yours smaller.

If you’re aiming to write a 50-page short book, make your goal 20,000 words. That way you can cut a bunch of them and still end up with 12,500 words (or 50 pages).

And in case you’re wondering, 20,000 words means churning out 666 words a day. That is doable!

Write Crap

You have to etch this concept into your forehead as well as scrawl it on a stickie with a fat magic marker.

Make two copies of the stickie. Put one next to your computer. Put the other on the refrigerator door.

It’s easy to for me to tell you this. But it is far more difficult to put this rule into practice.

I confess that I have a lot of trouble writing the shitty first draft, as writing teacher and author Anne Lamott famously calls it.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a perfectionist and a maximizer. Perhaps it’s because I am also an editor. And the editor’s job is to spot imperfections and inconsistencies and (gently) point them out.

Whatever the reason, writing “crap” is very, very hard for me and for many others. You might be one of them.

Fill the Canvas

Which brings me to the third rule of NaNoWriMo. Your goal is to “fill the canvas” as author Steven Pressfield puts it in his terrific book about writing, The Authentic Swing.

Get enough down on paper so that your paint (aka words) covers the whole canvas.

Yes, there will be holes. Yes, it may look awkward and misshapen. But if you get enough out of your head and complete that shitty first draft, then (and only then) can you go onto Steps 2, 3, 4, etc. and fix what you’ve got.

If you’re writing enough crap to finish your first draft, you’ve made it into the big leagues. You are a writer.

       

In fact, I proudly used the word triangulate in explaining to my husband why it was taking me weeks to purchase a plane ticket for our Gap Year After Sixty trip to Paris next month.

If you’ve ever used Kayak.com to look for the “best flight option” you know how overwhelming it can be: cost, airline, partner airlines, number of stops, available seats, upgrade possibilities, departure and return cities. And how do you use all those American Express points?

He looked at me with perplexity. Why don’t you just go with the first, most sensible option, he asked. Turns out Sam is a Satisficer and I’m a Maximizer. That explains a lot. And not just about purchasing airline tickets.

How Does Your Decision-Making Style Relate to Writing?

The terms maximizer and satisficer were popularized almost a decade ago when psychologist Barry Schwartz used them in his best-selling The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.

Simply put, a maximizer is a perfectionist who exhaustively explores every possible angle before making a choice. A satisficer (satisfy + suffice) makes an acceptable choice and does it quickly. In other words, very good is good enough most of the time.

Not surprisingly, the cost of being a maximizer is stress and anxiety. The extra effort plus the time consumed often outweighs any possible improvement in the final outcome.

I like to think that I only “maximize” when the decision is significant in terms of cost or impact on my business or life. But the fact is I probably spend a bit too much time scanning the toothpaste and orange juice displays at the grocery store.

Maximizers Make the Sh*tty First Draft Even More Difficult

And I know that I spend too much time worrying about how I will complete the first draft of something I’m writing, what Anne Lamott calls the shitty first draft. Will the draft be complete? Logical? Interesting? Persuasive? Brilliant?

Of course not.

That’s the whole point. It’s not supposed to be.

As a perfectionist, I set the bar too high and make the process more difficult than it needs to be. If you fall into the maximizing category for some or all of your decision-making, it can result in postponing a book project:

• For the perfect moment
• Until you have enough time to write
• Until you’ve figured out just the right angle
• Until you’ve completed the next round of business travel
• Until you’ve nailed a killer title
• And so on

Cut Through Your Decision Cycle

It’s hard to change your decision-making style as it relates to a Go or No-Go or When or How for writing a book. One way to slice through your thinking is to bounce your book idea off an experienced editor.

That’s why I open my schedule occasionally to offer a 30-minute Knock Down session to get clarity about your book project.

First come, first served. Use this link to sign up: https://www.timetrade.com/book/3MKL1 

We will identify obstacles and by the end of our conversation you will have a plan for moving forward. You can decide if we’re a fit to work together. Note: these sessions are not always available.

Write on!

       

If you’re not splayed out on your hammock or a beach chair, you’re probably chomping to leave work early.

Why not ignore your BIG WRITING PROJECT for the rest of the summer because you just don’t have time?

That’s one way to approach it.

I’d like to suggest another.

Write for 15 minutes a day

If you can spare 6 minutes to brush your teeth (includes flossing), you know you can find 15 minutes to write. But what can you accomplish by writing for 15 minutes a day?

– Writers write. If you write every day, you are a writer.

– You can chip away at a large writing project.

– Writing every day keeps the momentum going.

– You ward off writer’s block.

– Fool yourself. Get more creative because the stakes are low.

– Sometimes your 15 minutes turns into 30 minutes or an hour.

– Studies show that short bursts of writing can be very productive

What counts as writing?

Don’t get too precious about it. Perfection is not the goal. Anything you write counts as part of your 15 minutes.

That said, it helps if you establish a writing “practice,” much like a yoga practice.

When you take a yoga class, you get on your mat and move through a sequence of asanas or poses.

Some days it feels hard. You feel creaky and inflexible. Other days you’re in the flow.

But if you get on your mat, your muscle memory kicks in and you know what to do.

By setting up a writing practice every day at the same time, you create the same sort of reflexive approach to writing.

Maybe it’s at the kitchen counter first thing in the morning. (Like this blog post I’m writing.)

Maybe it’s at 11 PM right before you go to bed.

What you can write in 15 minutes

– Jot down an outline

– Brainstorm titles for your book (get crazy)

– Write a paragraph where you explain the motivation behind your book

– Tell your reader what your book will do for them

– Explain how you can be of service to your reader

Use writing prompts and do freewriting*

Also known as journaling, freewriting is a proven technique to unlock your ideas and dig deeper into what you are really thinking. Here are a few ideas for writing prompts from famed author and writing coach Natalie Goldberg:

– Write about the specific moment you are in. As Goldberg puts it: “Tell about the quality of the light coming in through your window.”
– What is your first memory?

– Write about “leaving.” (This could be divorce, leaving the house or a friend dying, Goldberg explains.)

– Grab a book of poems and open to any page. Choose one line and write it down. Then rewrite and explain it.

– Be specific. Slow down in your mind.

My Beta Author writing program launches next month

If you want company, structure and motivation to help you write a short book, mark your calendar for September and October. I will be offering a new and improved version of my Beta Author program.

*Freewriting and establishing a daily writing practice are key components of my approach to writing.

Spots to work with me 1:1 will be limited due to my Gap Year After 60.

More details soon.

       

If the 3,000 attendees have a common denominator, it’s that they are in thrall to the idea that you can live a remarkable life in a conventional world, as Chris puts it on his blog. That may sound overly aspirational. But it is a marvelously sustaining thought and my husband Sam and I are buying into it as we embark on our Gap Year After Sixty.

I want to tell you about my experience doing a short talk from the main stage (that’s me in the orange blouse) but first, a key observation…

Debbie Weil: WDS 2013 main stage talk

… WDS was *not* a sea of 30-somethings

From the write-ups of the World Domination Summit in 2011 [recap] and 2012 [recap], I expected a sea of 30-somethings. I was struck and pleasantly surprised to see many 40, 50 and even 60-somethings attending this year. WDS is definitely not just an event for Millennials.

I had been worried about the WDS demographic given the topic of my talk on taking a gap year… 40 years after you are supposed to. So I worked hard to prepare, rewriting my talk a dozen times and practicing at least 50 times.

I worked on it with my husband Sam, my gap year co-conspirator. And also got some very useful feedback from Ishita Gupta. As Ishita, who has worked with Seth Godin, puts it, “Seth says don’t go out on stage and address an audience unless you intend to change them.”

Hungering for change at the World Domination Summit

I only spoke for two minutes and thirty seconds but I think I succeeded. Let me amend that. I’ll snuff out my usual self-doubt and say it more clearly.

Yes, I changed the audience!

I’ve given many, many talks and keynotes over the past decade, but none that resonated more strongly than this one. I was astonished by the number of people who came up to me afterwards to say, “Were you the lady in orange? I loved your talk and here’s what it meant to me… “

That’s the part that was so gratifying. Not that the audience liked my talk but that they wanted to connect and share their own story about a gap year or time out or proposed radical change in their lives. Either they are planning a gap year now or they know someone who just left their job to explore other options for work or in several cases (Caroline and Josh of Traveling9to5; Brittany and Drew of Mr. and Mrs. Adventure) they are traveling around the world for a year.

I tapped into something that this group, and so many other people, are hungering for: CHANGE. One of the main stage speakers reminded us that, according to a recent Gallup poll, 70 percent of U.S. employees are unhappy or disengaged at work.

The three important questions to ask

As I said in my talk,

“You don’t need to live your entire adult life… you don’t need to get to the age of 60 or 50 or 40… before you ask three important questions:

– How do you break out of your familiar patterns?

– How do you redefine yourself – and explore a new purpose?

– How do you embrace the uncertainty of life?”

More stories from WDS 2013

But mine is only one story from this year’s World Domination Summit.

Rather than try to recap some of the best speakers (Nancy Duarte, Darren Rowse, Tess Vigeland, Donald Miller), here’s a round-up of posts that give you an inside look into #WDS2013.

WDS 2013 sketchnotes by Mike Rohde (Ed note: amazing!)

52 Unconventional Stories & Ideas for Moving From Idea to Impact (#WDS2013) by Scott Dinsmore

13 Lessons from WDS 2013 by Brian Shea

Backstage at World Domination Summit 2013 from J.D. Roth

I will add more links. If you’ve got a link to a great write-up of #WDS2013, please add in the comments below.

P.S. Huge thanks to Genevieve Santos, who was sitting in the front row, for her video of my talk.

Photo above by Armosa Studios. Top photo by some lovely attendee who emailed it to me.

       

First, I want to thank my readers and offer you a small gift for hanging in there with me: The Corporate Blogging Book [Updated Edition] will be $0.00 on Amazon Kindle from June 7 – 10, 2013 to celebrate. NOTE: if you are reading this blog post at a later date, the $0.00 promotion is no longer in effect.

It’s a 245-page eBook you can download instantly and read on almost any device. *See below for links to the other Amazon country sites.

The backstory on why I started blogging

In 2001 I began writing a regular ClickZ column on email marketing. When I heard about ClickZ’s Weblog Business Strategies event in June 2003, I knew I wanted to attend. Clearly I needed to be blogging myself if I was going to show up at one of the first conferences attracting the blogging glitterati.

Doc Searls and David Weinberger, co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, would be there. As a former journalist, writing came naturally. So I jumped in. That’s me, at left, in the orange scarf.

I can’t claim 5,000 posts as Seth Godin did recently. I haven’t counted my posts and I’m not going to. If there is cause for celebration it’s that I’ve kept at it. Slow and steady. Month after month, year after year.

A blog is a form of content marketing

It’s the drip, drip, drip approach to marketing with content. And yes, whether you consider a blog a personal endeavor or a business strategy, it is a form of marketing.

It’s a way of offering value… in exchange for your reader’s attention. Maybe someday a reader will buy something from you. But it takes years of persistence and of creating useful content… without expectation of anything in return.

As Seth puts it:
“While it’s tempting to swing for the fences and hit a grand slam, particularly on post 5,000, I’m going to resist, as I try to resist every day. Drip, drip, drip.”

– Seth Godin’s blog: June 5, 2013

 A blog needs a worldview

That said, a blog needs a worldview as fuel. My low points in blogging over the past 10 years were due to becoming bored with my message: blogging isn’t hard, CEOS should blog, email marketing works, etc. Those are tactics, not a worldview.

A worldview is a big idea that you believe in, that you feel compelled to share with your readers and that your readers care about in return. You can unpack a worldview for years. You can turn it this way and that like a crystal catching the light – but only if your readers share your passion and your belief.

As blogger and author Jeff Goins put it in a recent interview: “Your writing voice is… the intersection of what deeply satisfies you as a writer and what resonates with an audience.” My interview with Jeff is here.

In my case, it goes something like this: the Internet is a force for good. It empowers individuals to speak up and to spread their messages without intermediaries, whether it’s through a blog (bypassing mainstream media) or an eBook (bypassing traditional publishing).

The Internet has enabled a new way of doing business, one that humanizes the relationship between customers and companies and puts them on an equal footing. Corporate speak doesn’t work. Two-way conversations do.

Blogs are part of this new way of doing business

Blogs are emblematic of this new way of doing business and of course the Internet and the Web are the engine that connect us.

My worldview is not original, of course. The Cluetrain Manifesto declared well over a decade ago that markets are conversations.

But it doesn’t matter. Readers who like my “voice” and who share my beliefs keep reading. Thank you!

Neither is Seth’s worldview entirely original. Seth’s is about taking responsibility for yourself, speaking up, not waiting to be chosen, thinking differently and acting now to make the world a better place.

Sound familiar? As Ben Franklin said, “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”

As we know, Seth’s “voice” resonates with about a million readers.

Finally, anybody remember this joke from the early days?

Question: “How do you say blaa, blaa, blaa on the Web?”

Answer: “Blog, blog, blog.”

A few highlights from 10 years of blaa, blaa, blaa

So What’s a Blog? (June 10, 2003)

My First Article About Blogging (Aug. 22, 2001)

Lessons on Writing That Sucks

To Blog or Not to Blog

I Am Not Seth Godin (But You Knew That)

Why It’s OK to Take a Gap Year After Sixty

My blog archives start in June 2003. Note: the formatting is wacky on some of the earlier posts as it didn’t port over properly from previous blogging sites.

Download my ebook from the other Amazon country sites

Click here to buy from Amazon CA.

Click here to buy from Amazon DE.

Click here  to buy from  Amazon FR.

Click here to buy from Amazon UK.

       

A gap year, as you may know, is an intentional “time out” that students take at age 18 before enrolling in college. It started out as a British expression (Prince William took one in Chile) but it’s caught on in the U.S. in recent years.

As Wikipedia defines it:

“During this year, students engage in extra-academic and non-academic courses, language studies, volunteer work, travel, internships, sports and more, all for the purpose of improving themselves and their resumes before going to college.”

Ha! Neither Sam nor I has any intention of getting additional academic degrees. But we do want to:

• Learn to speak French fluently
• Travel to places we haven’t been
• Change the meaning of work

I’ve started a new blog with Sam, GapYearAfterSixty, to chronicle our adventures. I hope you’ll take a look and leave a comment, if you’re inspired to offer advice or suggestions.

We’re age 19 in the photo above.

Today’s post: Why it’s OK to have a (non)plan for a Gap Year

And a first blog post (ever) from Sam:

Stepping into the void after 31 years

He’s good, huh?!