Write Your Story and Inspire Others

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at BlogTalkRadio.com/sheddingthebitch. Shedding the Bitch, or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back.

818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone! How are you on this glorious, glorious November Tuesday. I certainly am enjoying it. It is absolutely stunning outside. Coco right now, you know, my little 15-pound Chiweenie, she's sitting here on the armrest of the couch in the studio looking outside going, why can't I be out there? And I say, because you chirp. She has one of those, "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" And she'd be barking. She just looked up at me. Yes, I'm talking about you. But that's how glorious it is. I hope it is for you. There's a nice chill in the air, so it's kind of bringing on the holiday spirit. Mine is building up. I've been mentioning to you over the last several weeks that, you know, people have been putting up their Christmas decorations already and playing Christmas music already and The stores are packed already, and I just wasn't quite there, but I must admit since this past weekend, and I guess because it's getting closer to Thanksgiving, I'm definitely feeling the spirit. So let's all kind of work our way into this period of time where we kind of want to give thanks and appreciate, you know, what we have in our lives and let go of what we don't want in our lives. And next week we will have a program focused on giving thanks and being grateful, and just how, how those elements of gratitude and thanksgiving actually really fuels your energy, fuels your abundance, fuels your ability to attract whatever it is that you want into your into your world. So as we go into the Thanksgiving season, at least here in the States, and you can look at it as the holiday, New Year's, Christmas season, we want to just spend some time considering what that looks like. So that'll be what we talk about next week. Of course, in the last handful of weeks, we've talked about everything from shedding the intimidation bitch. We've talked about shedding the mental health stigma bitch. We've talked about confronting the difficult topics or difficult life events, whether that's dying, depression, abuse, and bullying, and how you can effectively address those difficult topics amongst your family, your friends, maybe even within yourself, coming to terms with it. We've had a conversation about mortal moments with Sharon Williams. She was our last guest that we had on back several weeks ago. But you can always go to ShadingtheBitch.com to find all of our past episodes, as well as Apple Podcasts. You can certainly download all of our episodes on Apple Podcasts. But today what we want to talk about is how you can go about writing your story. And now this was a question that was brought in to me by a Christina who I actually met up with once. She, she asked me about writing a book. She also— I realized that she was here in Atlanta, and I always like to meet our listeners and our community members, so I suggested that we meet up for coffee and that I'd be happy to share some of my experience and advice and almost hindsight on the writing process. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, how you can go about writing and even publishing. You may choose not to publish, but write your story. And this could be in various forms, and we'll talk about all of that. And we're going to talk about why you should, and it was a great lesson that I learned as I was writing my book and feeling somewhat insecure about— and literally I said the words, "Who would want to read this crap?" So, you know, it took a really hard reality check to realize that that type of statement is very selfish, and I'll share that with you. We'll talk about the types of writing because it does, like I said, take all kinds of forms, and then how to go about doing it. Now, I'm not here to teach you how to write specifically. I'm here to walk you through steps in the process for how you can go about, you know, putting it down on paper or whatever form that you choose to. So, we— if you're listening to the program for the first time, we give you a rich question to ground yourself into the topic of conversation for the day. Today's rich question is really simple. It's, what story or expertise do you have that could inspire, it could educate, it could move other people, someone else? So what story or expertise do you have that others could be inspired by, be educated by, or just simply be moved by? Think about that. We all have a story. Story, whether it's a personal story, whether it's a professional story, whether it's someone else's story that we have a particular slant on. We all have a story to tell, and like I said, I'll share more in-depth in regards to the lesson I learned, but we are only being selfish if we do not share it. I'll leave that with you for now. If you want to comment, ask questions, provide feedback, basically on Facebook or Twitter, you can use our rich tags as we call them, being #WriteYourStory, #Writing, or #ShedTheBitch, which is our regular hashtag that you can always be using to communicate with us. Now when we get back, We are going to dive into this, and I'm going to suggest if you are in a place where you can take notes, I'm going to suggest you get your journal and your pen while we're— while we are taking commercial break. If you happen to use your phone, just pull up your notes app, and it would be really good for you to be able to capture the actual steps in the process and the tips that we're going to be providing. I will share kind of a summary of the episode out on ShadingtheBitch.com by the end of the day, so you can always go there. But then we'll have you access the full episode, of which you can download and take with you at any time. All right, is that a deal? So let's take a commercial break. When we get back, we're going to dive into writing your story. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and SheddingTheBitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to NGTaxSolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. We are talking about writing your story, and what we want kind of to talk about today, and what I want to share with you, is why that's so important and why I truly, truly believe— and actually I can go about saying that I know— from my own experience that we do each have a story to tell. Now, it may be a personal story like mine, or it could even be a professional, very business-oriented expertise type of story that we have to share. It could be very academic. It could be very historical. There's something in our world, in our universe, that defines who we are, and therefore in sharing that with other people, we can be inspiring them, we could be educating them, we could be just helping them kind of move forward, and therefore that is why I said at the top of the hour as we introduced the subject, I was even educated on the fact that it's selfish for us to not share our story. But let me back up a little bit and explain that advice that I was given. So as many of you know, back in 2011 I published my first book, Shagging the Corporate Bitch, and it's my personal story of kind of my transformation from being the ultimate corporate tyrant to into really finding myself, finding my true voice, finding my authentic and pure person. And I felt that it was really important, you know, in order to share it. But as I got started in writing it, and I was not a writer at the time— yes, I journaled, diaried if you want to call it, since I was like 8, 9, or 10, but I never really formed those things into stories. They were more just streams of thought that I never even paid attention to. I just simply scribbled whatever I was feeling, whatever was coming up within me that I needed to get out— good, bad, or indifferent. It could have been about work, could have been about home, it could have been about a relationship, it could have been about abuse, it could have been about you know, my drinking too much. It could have been about any num— you know, any part of my universe at the time or throughout the years. And so when I went and set off to write the book, I knew I needed to write this book. I knew I needed to write the story, which is a great place to be. It's a great place to be when you are certain about something. And we'll talk more about that in a minute. Yet, if you're not someone who you would consider yourself to be a professional writer, all of a sudden as you start to write and as you start to form this story, you do start to question kind of like, who am I to think anybody can learn from this story? Who am I to think— that I can even tell a story that would be enticing and intriguing and would hold a reader's attention. All these insecurities, all these doubts, all these negativities, you know, all these bitches as we call them, start creeping up. And I certainly was having them even at the start. As determined and as knowing as I was about needing to write the story, Whether or not anyone else would benefit from it was certainly something that just lingered and it was like a black cloud that hung over me. And I thought to myself, well, maybe I'm just writing this for myself as a cathartic process as opposed to writing it to teach or help or inspire or move or educate other people. And then I landed up going to a writing conference— and I won't go into all of that. But there was someone, you know, someone that was presenting their approach to storytelling and writing and why it is that they felt it was important to write their book. And they basically said, we each have a story to tell. We each have a purpose and a reason for being on this earth. And there's a part of our, you know, there's a part of our souls, a part of ourselves that would inspire, educate, and move other people. Even though we might dismiss it or minimize it, we have, each one of our lives has something to give to someone else. And the words that really struck me was, You are selfish if you keep it to yourself and you don't share it, especially if you've learned something and grown from something. Then, then who are you to say that someone else wouldn't benefit from, you know, those, uh, you know, wisdoms, from those lessons, from those blessings? And therefore, you should be writing it and sharing it, or speak speaking it and sharing it or whatever means or forms, you know, that you can take. And, you know, I sat there in this big ballroom of a conference and I thought to myself, I'm being selfish? Really? For wanting to do this for myself and not for other people at this point, at the very early stages? And I came to learn very quickly as I even started sharing my story with other people that yes, there were things in my story that could help someone else struggling with something similar, not even exact, but something similar. That there was some experience, expertise, some lessons, some failures, some successes that someone else is also dealing with and looking for kind of an aha moment that, oh wow, that person's been through it, I'm dealing with it, they've succeeded, maybe I'll succeed too. There's a lot of need for us to relate to one another. There's a need for each one of us to know that we're not alone, to know that whatever struggles as well as whatever triumphs that we're going through, someone else is going through them as well. And I learned very profoundly that as I started looking at other people very differently about what can their stories teach me, what can their lives, their experiences, their expertise, their climb up the ladder, their struggle, you know, to overcome, what can I learn from that? And it changed my whole approach to everything that I did, whether it was, you know, in writing my book or then sharing that that story on a stage or in my coaching or here even on the radio with all of you. So there's a good reason why you really need to go back to the rich question that we asked and really think about what story or expertise do I have that others can be inspired by, can be educated from, or can be moved by because we all have it. I don't even care if you're, say you're a housewife, a stay-at-home mom or dad, excuse me, and you know, you're just going about your life as a stay-at-home mom and dad. I mean, there is so much to learn from those individuals, from that experience, from that expertise from, from what it is that they do, from the skill set that they have. Let alone if you're a CEO of a small or large size company and there's a great many lessons and processes and practices that you could be sharing, as well as if there is struggle, if there is abuse or assault, and yet there's, you know, overcoming and survival out of that. There is something to be shared from all those different types of stories. So I'm just asking you to consider and think about what is it that you have. Now, I don't want you to get overwhelmed by thinking, okay, well, I do feel I have something to say, but it's not in a, you know, 250-page, 300-page book. Or even a 500-page book. It's maybe in a couple-page ebook or maybe it's a blog post. So the writing can take many, many forms. It could be blogs. It can be ebooks. It can be books. It can be scripts. If you had told me 6 years ago that not only would I have had a published book, but now I'm going to start scriptwriting and turning it into a film, I would have just laughed in your face. And yet, when I really sat back and thought about, okay, am I being selfish by not trying to get this story and the lessons that come from this story out to as many people as I can? And, and it's being suggested that that form that it could take is in a film. Well, you know, who am I to say no other than fear? So that brings me to kind of like what do I want you to not allow to start seeping into this process yet.

It will.

It will. That's just the ebb and flows of life, but right now I just want you to not allow fear to even keep you from considering it, so considering that question, committing to it, saying, oh, you know, yeah, you know what, I do have something to say. Defining it, which we're going to get into, and then actually doing it. I don't want you to have that fear because all you have to do when you consider trying something new is just do it for you. You don't need to share it. You don't need to tell anybody you're doing it. You don't need to broadcast it like I did, which I'll share as we get into these steps. But just do it for you. If there is even an inkling, even like a little belly knot that comes up as we're having this conversation about, you know, thinking about writing your book, your stories, your blog, your script, if even if there's a little kernel of kind of anxiety or even, you know, excitement, then just go with it. Don't let it stop you. Don't let it keep you from saying, hmm, this could be something I should be considering. Now, before we get into the actual steps that I suggested to Christina and I would suggest to you, I would also have you thinking about the fact that the type of books, what I'll call the genres of books, can be all over the place. Just as easily as if someone were to say to you, what type of movies do you like? Well, I like rom-com, I like horror, I like sci-fi, I like historical, I like documentary. Books and/or scripts can take the same form. So you have memoirs. And memoirs could be yours, your own story like mine is, or it could be someone else's. So you run across somebody historically or maybe in current world and you say, wow, they have a really intriguing, fascinating story. I'd be very interested in capturing that. And again, capturing it might just mean getting to know them and kind of putting it down and not yet forming it into any type of book or script or whatever the case might be. But even just get familiar with the fact that that, you know, you could— a memoir could be about yourself or it could be about other people. Of course, there's fiction, which is, you know, stories that aren't true that you create, and they can take, gosh, any number of genres, children's books, art, horror, you know, mystical, sci-fi. And then, of course, there's nonfiction, which is using your expertise in, you know, any field imaginable, health, fitness, medical. Science, leadership, entrepreneurship. But then it goes beyond, you know, your traditional what people would think about when writing a book, and that could be academic or scientific if you're in those fields centered around research. But it could take, you know, a lot of forms and a lot of genres or areas that you could be focused on. And of course, like I said, if you're thinking of Script writing, obviously, that takes as many genres as was mentioned also. Now, again, nowadays with podcasts, for instance, podcasts, depending upon the type of podcast that you have or radio show that you do, is also a form of writing. Even though you're verbalizing it, there's a lot of writing and work and prep up upfront that you would go about doing. And that's why I mentioned the blogs, because people then take those writings and kind of translate them over into a blog. So we don't have to be talking about, and you don't have to be considering 300 pages, 500 pages, 1,000 pages. You could also even be considering much smaller versions of telling your story. All right, so just let that kind of sit. And as you think about our rich question, what story or expertise do you have that could inspire, educate, or move someone else? What is it that you would come up with? Now, I'll give you an absolute, for instance, in regards to that smaller form of storytelling. And that would be even my having this conversation with you around writing a book because of the fact that Christina came to me because she knew I wrote my books and that I have kind of almost personal, if not professional experience in that writing encounter, adventure, headache, whatever you want to call it. You know, she definitely wanted to, as opposed to going to someone who is deemed a professional writer, she wanted to really understand the experience of writing and even the publishing and the marketing of it. And so I actually have a lot of content around the process that I went through and of which I'm going to share part of it with you today. But, you know, I could be even taking all of that, putting it on paper, and turning that into some form of a book. So don't dismiss, you know, any aspect of your life where you have some degree of adventure, encounter, engagement, or experience or expertise, because any of those things— think about the other person. Will they be inspired by it? Could they be educated from it? Could they be moved by it? And that's what you really want to think about as you consider even what your story or what your writing might focus on. We're going to take a quick break, and I typically wouldn't do it this early, but I'm going to get some water. And when we get back, we're just going to stay and we're going to focus on getting through these steps that you could be taking, for you to start your own writing journey. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch Shedding the Bitch Radio and follow the program for all the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. We are talking about writing your story. Have you ever considered writing a book? Have you ever considered even starting a blog? Or writing ebooks, much smaller. Maybe you even want to write poetry. I should have mentioned that earlier. And you just want to write a poetry book. Maybe you want to write a script, taking an existing book and turning it into a script or just starting a script from scratch because you have something to say. That's what we're talking about today. And we— excuse me.. And we will walk through steps, and these are based on both my own experience, my experience via getting my own, you know, degree of coaching and advisement from professionals, as well as research and querying that I've done over the years as it pertains to my own writing. And that's the first thing I wanted to mention. As we get into this kind of series of steps that you could be taking. Just like anything, if you have an inkling, if you have an itch, if you have butterflies in your stomach about wanting to do something, the first place I would start, and I would suggest you start, is start researching it. Get online and start Googling that topic. Start Googling all angles of that topic. How do I do it?— you know, what are the lessons about the topic? You know, what are the challenges? What are the dos and don'ts? What are the top 10? Whatever the case might be. And that is always the first place I send my clients to when it is— when they're struggling with something or when they're starting to consider taking on something. And I would certainly do it when it comes to writing. You'll find— that writing is one of the most personal kind of techniques. I want to, you know, skill you could call it. But it's one of the most personal and it's one that, you know, can differ from how I do it to how you do it to how the next person does it to how, you know, every person in the room handles it differently. And it's one that you can certainly prescribe. And suggest and recommend a process or an approach one takes, but this is one place I will tell you that keep yourself from getting into trouble. Make sure you do it based on who you are. And what do I mean by that? Well, everybody has their own way of going about things. They have their own way of, you know, keeping their house in order, how they organize their desk, how they approach their calendar, how they manage their to-do list. And writing is the same way. So if your writing approach is very freehand, is very loosey-goosey, doesn't follow an outline, doesn't follow a structure or a process, then so be it. If your approach is you're very structured, you're very process-oriented, you're very, you know, dot your i's, cross your t's before moving on, then recognize that and work with it. I ran into this situation with my own coach. She was actually, you know, kind of my business marketing coach, but she was a 9-time bestselling author. And so, of course, through my writing process, I would ask her for her advice and her guidance.— and she's a fast writer and she's a writer that doesn't edit as she goes. So she can write a book like in 2 months, 3 months, like a full fiction 325-page book. For me, even my script, which is 110 pages, has taken me the last 3 years. And that's a story in itself. But the point is, she said to me, she said, why don't you try not editing as you go? Why don't you try just writing it down like you do your journals, you kind of scribble scribble and don't think about it, don't, you know, go back and read it. And why don't you do it that way first and then see how much, you know, how much work there is to then clean it up and put it in a place that you want it to be. And I did. I wanted to be open-minded and I suggest you are too. Stay open-minded to these suggestions. Yet the moment I realized that was just too overwhelming for me, I needed to know where I was in my storytelling. I needed to know that it was all clean, that it wasn't all messy as I was writing. It didn't work for me. So I basically went back to where and what made me feel most comfortable, because then my creative juices went flowing. When I was doing something that wasn't natural to me, it blocked me. So just recognize that from the beginning. But here are some steps that you can be taking in order for you to be able to get your story down on paper. First off, you want to define your why. Why do you feel it's important to write whatever it is you're going to be writing? Now, why takes two forms. If you're actually going to go and publish it, then, then publishers and agents and professionals are going to want to understand your why as far as, are you looking to become a bestseller? Are you looking just to purely inspire or educate other people? Are you using it as a business card, meaning you want to use it so you can get you know, new business from it. You want to get speaking engagements from it. You want to be radio guests. You want to be TV guests. Is it because you want to make money? And that in itself is a huge question because you can do the research on the percentage of authors that actually make money, you know, from their one book, let's say. Now, it doesn't mean that if you continue to write and build an audience, so forth and so on, that you won't make money. But just do your research when it comes to that. So that's kind of one silo of how people are going to talk to you about your why. Why are you doing this book? And it's more from a business perspective. They want to know if you, you know, want to be a bestseller, or you're using it as a business card, are you using it to make money or just to inspire? The other why is why is it important for you to write this book? This story, this subject of expertise. What's in it for the reader? And that's really what you want to get to is what's in it for the reader? How are they going to be moved? How are they going to be inspired? How are they going to be educated? How are they going to be changed? How are they going to be shifted? And again, it could be purely from an educational perspective because of your expertise, or it could be fascinated because of your storytelling and your your creative, your creation that you've come up with. But why is it you're going to spend all this time and this energy in writing this book? You need to ground yourself in this why, because in that why, of why you're doing it— so for instance, when I started writing it, I knew for a fact that I had to write this book in order to help other women not do what I did. So that was my why. That's what kept me motivated. That's what kept me focused. That's what kept me kind of persistent and determined to write this, because I wanted to be sure that I called out all the other bitches in the world and informed them that they weren't going to succeed, and they were only making their own lives and everyone else's lives miserable, and it would sooner or later catch up to them. And kick them in the butt. That was my why, and that's what kept me focused. It's not only focus, but it's going to help you overcome the down— the downtime, the ebbs and flows, the highs and lows. It's going to keep you moving forward, though there will be times where you could just sit there for days, weeks, or months. In my case, it was like 3 months where I just sat. And I really wasn't getting a lot of writing done because I was very, very scared about sharing parts of my story that were just hard for me to deal with at the time, let alone wanting to expose it to the world. So you will have those, you know, those highs and those lows. But determine your why so then that you can keep that, you know, yourself focused on that. I even write it out and post it in different places or Write it at the top of the journal you're writing in or on your laptop as your screensaver. In whatever form you can put it in order for you to just be able to keep moving forward. That why is key. Now after that, you really want to ask yourself, what kind of writer am I? Now the moment you decide to write a book, you are now a writer. You might not have even put words on paper. But if you're all of a sudden in this mindset that yes, you have a story or expertise to share and you're going to share it in writing, and I don't even care if it's a blog post versus a published book. You need to put in your head that you are now a writer and you need to believe in it. You need to live in it. You need to let others be aware of it. I'm not saying you have to tell them that you're writing a book. I'm just saying that you have to let them know that the writer in you is coming out. But you also have to determine what type of writer you are. And that will help you also determine, are you going to do this alone or are you going to go get a group of people and collaborate? Are you going to write it yourself or are you going to have a ghostwriter do it? And this happens to be the discussion Christina and I were having. She was going back and forth as to whether or not she was going to write it herself or she was going to hire a ghostwriter. She thought she was going to be going and hiring a ghostwriter, and I shared with her some ideas and thoughts to consider that actually she might want to do it herself. Now, that doesn't mean that then she doesn't— she doesn't recognize that her writing style and approach needs to have an editor with her up front. Editor/writer up front. This is the approach that I took. When I write, like I said, in my journal, I don't even think about what I'm writing. And therefore, from a grammar and a punctuation perspective, it's nasty because I don't worry about it. But I do spend too much time going back line by line, line by line, page by page, even before I move forward, trying to clean it up. Fortunately, when I started to write my book, I recognized that in me and I said, well then, I need to get an editor with me so that as I'm writing, I'm sending it to her and she's cleaning it up and I'm not worrying about it. And then she brings it back to me and I go, oh, look how pretty that is, and I keep moving forward. So you might determine that your writing style and approach requires you to have an editor or a writer at your side. You might have an accountability coach, you know, someone that is making sure that you're kind of keeping track to your goals and your deliverables and your milestones. And, of course, you know, that— I will always tout that for people because, especially when it comes to something so personal as writing, there is easy tendency to just kind of push it aside, get kind of nervous. Oh, who's going to read this crap? You know, start and stop, start and stop, start and stop. But if you have somebody there holding you accountable to your plan, not to their agenda, to your plan, it helps tremendously. I would even suggest as part of considering what your writing style and approach is to identify the friends and colleagues that you could have around you almost like a mastermind. So maybe they're the initial people that read the first few pages. Maybe they read your summary. Or your query letter to a publisher even before you start writing the book. And then as you're writing, you're exposing friends and colleagues to it so they can help you with whatever parts of it you want help with. That is also a very valuable tip., and a very valuable approach to take in your writing process. Because again, they almost are like an accountability coach. So for instance, I did have an accountability coach. I also started talking about writing this book the moment I decided to write the book, and I kind of put it out on Facebook and Twitter that I was doing this, and it was, it was a way of holding me accountable without somebody holding me accountable. It was like the whole universe would hold me accountable because I was telling them. I'm writing this book, it's called Shedding the Corporate Bitch. You know, I had planned to have this done by August of 2011, and then the next thing you know, people are asking me questions about it, you know, asking me when it's coming, asking me how I'm doing. It's a great way also of just exposing your agenda and your plan, should you want to, to other people. But like I said, you don't need to. You can do it for yourself. And then choose when you want to bring other people into the process. As a part of that, you definitely need to have a clear set deadline and goals or milestones along the way. So you might say, okay, I'm going to write a book. If you don't define that end date, it's not a goal. It's just a dream that's hanging out there, a what if, oh yes, I want to do this, but who knows. You need to say, by this date I want to have my manuscript done. By this date I want to have it published. And by this date I want it on the bookshelf. You need to hold yourself to deadlines and milestones so you're having those stages to work towards and those targets to aim at in order for you to keep yourself motivated, determined, persistent, and moving forward. Now, those deadlines and goals would be the breakdown of the book. It doesn't have to be the whole book. You can say, okay, so by this time next year I want the whole book done, but I can't worry about that right now. Right now, by December 1st— so for instance, Christina and I are going to meet up again on December 2nd. She always needs some things about her book that she wants to write. I'm actually going to have the outline done of the next book I want to be writing. And I'll share that with you another time. So you want to set even smaller deadlines. When you would have an outline done. When you would have a summary done. When you would have your query letter for publishing done. When you would have the manuscript done. And there's a number of things that you could be following along, or a number of things you could be tracking along in regards to that. Now, like I had mentioned at the very beginning, there are various forms of writing, small and large. So there's, you know, everything from a blog, which is a certain number of 250 words, for instance, to a very extensive, maybe historical biography that could be up to 100,000 words. What you want to determine is based on the type of book you want to write. Nonfiction is about 325, maybe 250. Fiction is roughly around 325 pages. And there's typically 250 words to a page, so you can kind of do the math to figure out how many words you're talking about. But you want to get an idea of what type of book are you writing. Are you doing an art book or a children's book or an illustration book, which is only maybe 20 pages? Or are you doing a novel? Or are you doing a business book? That will determine the number of pages and the word count, which you want to then build into your goal. So if I'm doing a novel of 325 pages, 250 words, how many words per day or how many pages per day do you want to work on? So you could take that— 40,000 to 60,000 words is a typical novel. So if you take that 40,000 to 60,000 words, divide it by 250, get the number of pages, and say, well, I can work on a page a day, or I can work on 5 pages a day, or I want to do 10 pages a week. I wouldn't go farther than a week. I wouldn't look at like a month. You know, then you use that goal to kind of establish, you know, how much time are you going to devote to writing each day. And, and, or you could be like me. I only wrote my book on Saturdays and Sundays because I was consulting heavily and coaching heavily during those years. So I only wrote my book Saturdays and Sundays. So I had to calculate based on that, uh, how much time was I going to spend on Saturday or Sunday in order to finish that book in the time frame that I determined. And it turned out that I needed like 6 or 8 hours a day because I wanted it to be in an aggressive timeline. And so I worked my schedule and worked my year out to be that I was sitting in a Caribou Coffee on Saturday— or I'm sorry, library on Saturdays for those hours, and then I was in a Caribou Coffee on Sundays for those hours in order to meet my deadlines. Once you've gotten all your goals and you've gotten your your timeline and your deadlines and your milestones laid out, then you need to go about actually writing. And my suggestion, and again this goes to your style, your approach, the way you work, my suggestion is always to write the summary. What is the summary of the story or the expertise that you're sharing? So I wrote a summary of my story when it came to shedding the corporate bitch. And if I was writing this, a book around how to write a book, I would write a summary of the talking points or the outline of what it is that I wanted to write about. So that summary then could be turned into an outline. And you could take that summary and say, okay, so this is— you call it an outline, you call it a table of contents. Whatever you want to call it. And these are the topics. These are the things I want to talk about. They don't have to be in the proper order. And most likely, even if you think they are at the beginning, you are going to have changed them by the time you are done the writing. So you just lay it out in an outline or a table of contents that these are all the things that I want to ensure that I have talked about. Now you might also say, well, this is the format I want it to be in. So for instance, there's novels, there's fictional books that have kind of a structure to them, but more so nonfiction books, whether it's, for instance, my book is a memoir/business book. I have a lot of the story told first, and then at the end of the story I have rich tips. Then at the back of the book I have to-dos. I have advice and I have a bitch test and I have some educational things toward the back. So again, you don't need to have that fully defined up front. But if you know that you want this thing to be purely a novel, well then that's what it is. If you want it to be educational in any way, shape, or form, or maybe— so for instance, I'm looking at Jesus Calling in front of me. Jesus Calling is that devotional book that I've mentioned on the program before. She obviously laid out, you know, what her outline is, but she also determined she wanted to have the top part of each page of the daily devotion to be her writing through the voice of Jesus, and then underneath it is actual scripture taken out from the Bible. And placed, you know, with her interpretation, her writing of Jesus's voice. So that's a format that she chose, and every page is structured in that way. So you can determine that for yourself as far as what you want to do there. Now, along the way, you might know a title for the book, and that's fine. It was funny because I came up with a title and even the subtitle title of my book, and I sent it off to the publisher, and I was expecting them to change it because I got a lot of, you know, a lot of wows for the title. But I also got a lot of, you know, backlash in regards to the title. Even though I was very headstrong about it, I was going to take my publisher expert's opinion. And they came back to me and basically said, after reading the manuscript multiple times, we can't come up with a better subtitle. We can't, because what they didn't like is it was called Shedding the Corporate Bitch, and then the subtitle is Shifting from Bitch to Rich. They didn't want bitch used multiple times. But after reading it, they determined that that subtitle was actually the best subtitle that could support the book. So, you know, you may have a title in mind, use it along the way, feel it, live in it, but don't be surprised if as you move forward you change it or someone else changes it on you. So carry that with you from the beginning, from, you know, from the start. You have your outline. You have that summary. Everything about what you're about to write lives within those 3 things: your title, your outline, and your summary. Not to say they can't change or you expand or you add something to it, but that is That is what, you know, that is what you're kind of taking with you as you're writing. And go back to your goal that you set and the approach that you're going to take in regards to your schedule, your, you know, number of words or pages you're going to do each day, or maybe you allotted certain hours each day that you were going to write. I'd even think about where are you going to write. So like I said, I wrote my book at the library and at Caribou Coffee. My script, my initial script, was definitely written at Caribou Coffee, and that was more like 4 or 5 days a week. And now over the past year and a half, I've been writing it at home, which actually has been a mistake, so I'm going to be changing that. But so, you know, even determine a place that you're going to be effective in regards to writing and making sure that you're getting it done. Let's see. And then once you've written it and you're writing it and you're writing it and people are reviewing it and you're obviously getting it edited and edited and edited, you're going to go, like I said, through those highs and lows. And as you do, live in them. Don't dismiss them. Don't give up because of them. Live in those highs and those lows. When you're feeling really good and you're getting a lot of stuff done and you're talking about it with people and you're getting great feedback, live with it. Use it as energy for moving forward. As you're going and you're getting people to go, "Who the hell do you think you are to say that you're going to write a book?" or maybe your query letters are getting sent back, rejected, or maybe your editor is like, "Eh, you know, this is really, you know." rough. Take all of that. Take all of that and live in it. Feel it. Experience it. But don't let it stop you. Again, bad writing can always be enriched. Naysayers are always going to be naysayers and you just as a part of life have to get past that and just recognize that they're just jealous and intimidated by the fact that you're doing something they're not willing to do or they're scared scared to do. So you have to kind of push your way through that. If you are getting rejected on your query letters, good, because obviously that's not the right publisher for you. So you just continue looking for the publisher should you be wanting to have it formally published. You just continue looking for a publisher and kissing as many frogs as you need to before you find your princess or your prince or your king or your queen. Because there will be a lot of rejection. Unless you have the number one ultimate bestsellers of all time, you're going to get rejected. Be okay with that. Live in it. Experience it. Now, of course, once you're writing it and you're writing it, many people within the writing process— I mentioned the query letter a few times. This is kind of the summary, the synopsis that we mentioned. That you could be sending off to publishers in order to get agreement to find a publisher, publishing agent, even a publishing house. So you could be doing that along the way. You could also, as I mentioned, I started talking about it and posting it to Facebook and Twitter. You can also start promoting it as you're writing it. Oh, coming soon. Coming out, being published on August "Stay tuned for the launch party," whatever the case might be. You could be doing it all along the way. I started my radio program, this program, I started about a full year before I even— well, no, it was a few months before I put pen to paper, a full year before I actually got it published, because I wanted to start building attention to it. So there's a whole slew of things that you could be doing from a marketing perspective. But the number one thing you just need to be focused on is making sure that if it is going to be a published book or even a self-published book, you just want that baby to be as pretty as possible without holding onto it until you are 9,000th edit because you always will be— find an opportunity to improve it. Well, you need to at some point let that baby go. Because it's most likely in the best shape, you know, you need it to be, and therefore you need to get it out and not have that fear of, you know, rejection, or feel a fear of failure, or fear of just, you know, even success of what that, that publishing of that book might bring into your world. But you need to kind of make that end date that end date and get it out there. Because again, if you're not putting it out there, it's not a book. It's just a bunch of pages with writing on it. And you're being selfish and not sharing and inspiring, educating, and moving other people. All right? And then of course there's a lot of things that can be done around launching it. There's a lot of different approaches you can take. I mentioned self-publishing and formal publishing. There's even something in the middle, what I call hybrid publishing. There are small publishing houses that will get you distribution, that will put you into the bookstores without having to find a formal publisher. But again, you have to go back to why are you doing this. Are you doing it to make money? Are you doing it to be a business card? Are you doing it to be a bestseller? Seller, or are you doing it just to inspire or educate? So always go back to your whys as you're working through formulating, now that I have this writing, what am I going to do with it? Go back to those whys. There's nothing wrong with, you know, you just wanting to use it as a business card and not heavily, heavily therefore marketing it or going to a formal publisher. Because you're not looking to be a bestseller. You're not looking to really make money from it. Now, making money is very skewed. Making money through people buying the book off the bookshelf is one thing. Making money because now people are buying your services, they're buying your public speaking, they're buying your coaching, they're buying your, you know, expertise— that's a whole different, um, different thing. So through your why You've defined why it is that you're doing this project. So stick with it and hold on to that why for yourself. And then, you know, like I said, just always keep in mind you have a story to share. You have expertise. You have skills. You have experiences. You have encounters and adventures., and it— you would be selfish not to share those with other people, not to leave that legacy of what you have been through, through the means of a book. And that does create a beautiful, beautiful legacy, even if it's a one-time published book or a one-time self-published book or one-time eBook or in my case even the script. If it's the one script, I'm okay with that. So determine for yourself, what is it? What story do I have? What expertise do I have that can inspire, educate, or move other people? And then decide, especially as we go into the new year 2020, decide to go and do it because you deserve it and we deserve to learn from it. All right? If you have any questions or you want any advice or want to talk about your writing opportunity, don't hesitate to reach out to me in any form, Facebook, Twitter, BernadetteBoas@sheddingtheveach.com, even through LinkedIn, which is where most of you talk with me, and I'd be happy, happy, happy to help you tell your story. So for everybody here in the Shedding the Bitch community, thank you very much. And remember, next week we'll be talking about giving thanks and creating riches in your career, business, and life. We'll talk to you then. Bye everyone.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.