#015: How to Manage Large Writing Projects Without Losing Your Sanity

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Hey everyone, thanks for joining me for episode 15 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or, or the part time equivalent. You can find detailed show notes of this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 15, the number 15. These are detailed show notes that you can reference later at your convenience, you know. So most of us business writers are used to writing and managing projects such as blog posts, articles, white papers, case studies, marketing, collateral, that type of thing. These are the bread and butterflies of the commercial writing business. But occasionally you may come across a project that's so massive that it requires a different set of skills to execute. Your writing chops alone are not going to save you. My friend and colleague, Denise Kiernan knows this firsthand. Not only has she written dozens of books in large format pieces, but she's recently finished the largest and most complex writing project of her career. It's a book called the Girls of Atomic the Untold Story of the Women who Helped win World War II. And it's now a New York Times bestseller. And by the way, as a side note, this week marks the 68th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So to tell the true story of the women who helped build the first atomic bomb, Denise spent years conducting intense research on all over the US Doing live interviews, writing, rewriting. This was the kind of assignment that required flawless project management, excellent organization skills, great self motivation, and unshakable faith in a story that had to be told. And I recently sat down with Denise to learn more about how she approached this massive project. And she shared some excellent tips, great insights and advice that apply to any writer facing a large scale project. Whether it's fiction, nonfiction, commercial, it doesn't matter. So, hope you enjoy this episode. Talk to you at the end. Hey Denise, welcome to the show.

Hi, how are you? Good to be here.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for coming on. And you know, before we get into the specifics and all the material we're going to cover, I have to congratulate you on the success, the huge success of your book, Girls of Atomic City.

Thank you. Thank you very much. It's been a pretty crazy and wonderful, wonderful experience the past several months. You're never quite sure how to be Prepared for getting what you want sometimes.

Oh, I bet. Well, just for folks who don't know. So Denise and I known each other and her husband Joe. Well, you've known Joe for longer.

I've known Joe for longer.

I've known the two of you for close. Yeah, yeah, we're very close. We're very close. We have known each other for, gosh, a little over three years. Denise and Joe wrote. Actually, the book came out the same day the Wealthy Freelancer came out, the Money book for Freelancer. So we connected that way.

Right. We met through Twitter.

We met through Twitter.

I often tell people this story when they say, well, I don't know if I want to use Twitter. I always say it's a great way to meet people who have shared interests that you might not meet otherwise.

Well, in talk about shared interests. Right. It doesn't get any more shared than publishing a book for freelancers on the same day. March 2, 2010. But Denise's new book, Girls of Atomic City, just came out this past March, right?

Yeah, March 5th.

March 5th. It's become a New York Times bestseller several times over. She's been on national TV since then and has been on a book tour across the U.S. i mean, I'm, like, just so honored that you're even talking to me.

My God, you left out the Daily Show. That was the best part.

That's right. She was on the Daily Show.

Yeah. No, it's funny, when you talk to people, it's like, oh, yeah, New York Times bestseller, Los Angeles Times bestseller, whatever. You were on the Daily Show. People get so much more excited about Jon Stewart, as do I. Yeah.

That was so cool. It was surreal to see you up there with Jon Stewart.

It was surreal to be up there with Jon Stewart.

You look very cool, calm, and collected. I gotta give you that. It was great interview. And so today we're gonna be talking about managing large writing projects. Because after writing this book, I mean, I think Denise is someone that I would turn to any day if I ever face something even remotely like what she faced. So just to add some context here, Denise, tell us a little bit about the book and how you came across the idea to write it.

Sure. So I was actually working on another project. I'm sure we all know what it's like to work on more than one project at once. And I came across photo that really caught my eye. And it was a beautiful old black and white photo of a bunch of young women sitting on stools in front of these gigantic panels covered in all these Knobs and dials and gauges. And I was just kind of captured by the picture at first. And then I read the text next to it, and it said something along the lines of, these young women, many of whom were recent high school graduates from rural Tennessee, are helping enrich uranium for the world's first atomic bomb. Only they didn't know that at the time. And I thought, oh, my God, I have no idea what this is about. And I thought it was my own personal little knowledge gap. At first I thought, oh, I bet everybody knows all about these high school girls in Tennessee who were working on the atomic bomb. Well, it turns out a lot of people don't unless you're from that area. And so the next thing I realized was that this town, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, could be reached by car in about two hours from my home here in Asheville, North Carolina. So I got in the car and drove over there to see what I could see, and then started stalking octogenarians and tracking people down and asking them if they had lived and worked there during World War II. And, you know, once it became clear that, you know, and I'm running this idea, you know, past my agent and pass to other writers and journalists that I trust, and once it became clear that there was a story there, I stuck with it and just kept interviewing people and then started doing the paper research and all of that. So that's how it got started.

And when was this, roughly?

Oh, I saw that picture seven years ago.

Wow. Okay. So you've been on this for a while.

I have. And there have been other projects along the way. I always. I always kind of think of, there's usually a project that's sort of in pole position. I don't drive a race car, but I think I'm using that correctly. And so there's always a project that's sort of the number one project at the moment. And, you know, those positions shift every once in a while. And in the beginning, the early stages of this, I was definitely, you know, working on other projects as well. But, you know, then as. As we got closer to the manuscript being due, the revisions being due, things of that nature, it really was the dominant force in my life for a few years.

And who was the publisher again?

It was Simon and Schuster, the Touchstone imprint at Simon and Schuster.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So you go out there, you starting to feel, okay, there's a real story here. If people are encouraging, your agent, you know, feels the same, and you get this book contract. Right. And first of all, I know they gave you some time, but I mean, not years and years. So when. When did you land the book deal?

Oh, that's a good. That's a very good question. I had already been working on the project on my own, trying to think about how I'd tell the story for a few years before I did the proposal for the book.

Aha. Okay. Which makes sense. This is not the kind of thing that you just throw out there without doing.

Right? Yes, exactly. Because I didn't want to go through. You know, book proposals can be an awful lot of work, and I especially one like this. I think my proposal was close to 75 pages long. Wow. So I knew it was going to be that kind of effort. So I wanted to really make sure there was a. I really wanted to make sure that there was not just a story there, but that I could tell it the way I wanted to tell it before I went into the whole proposal stage. Let's see, it came out 2013, 2009, 2010.

Okay, 2009, 2010, which is still not a lot of time considering what you had to go through. In fact, that was my next question. Can you give us an idea of what. What it entailed, the project entailed in terms of approximate number of interviews, the research hours you put into this, and everything that happened basically before you even wrote that first word in your draft.

Oh, well, so much goes on before you write the first word. Even though if you have. I'm one of those people where. If I get. If a snippet of conversation or an interesting juxtaposition of ideas occurs to me, I put it down somewhere. I work with. I work with Scrivener. I am. I am not paid by Scrivener. I almost feel like I have to say that because I talk about how much I love Scrivener all the time. And it is a. For anybody who doesn't use it or isn't familiar with it, you can go to the website literatureandlatte.com or you can just Google Scrivener and it will. It will come up. It's tremendously powerful and incredibly affordable.

What does it do?

Scrivener is a. You use it to write, but it's also ideal for organizing your thoughts and creating multiple versions of a unique idea. You can also. So you can manage text files in there. You can view things as text, as index cards on a. On a cork board, as an outline. You can drag in complete web pages that will live within a particular file. You can drag in audio Clips, video clips, large, you know, photographic documents. You know, for me, I was, you know, scanning an awful lot of documents. And you can keep everything in one project file. So in one project file, you could have your actual, you know, an outline of your draft and your research documents and your transcripts and the audio files, if you wanted them. The great thing is, is that you can move them all around very, very easily. And what made me think of this is there is an awful lot I do more outlining the older I get. Actually, when I first started writing and I started in journalism many years ago, I just. Maybe it was because of how outlining was presented to me in high school and in middle school, I hated outlining, and I avoided it whenever I could. But the older I got and the more experienced I became, the more I realized that there are all different kinds of outlining. It's not all. What was that? The MLA handbook that you always had to follow? It wasn't all, oh, my God. No. It makes you. It's horrible. It just gives you the shivers when you think about it. But it's not all Roman numerals. I mean, there are just, you know, if you don't. For me, it's like, well, maybe I shouldn't call it outlining. I should just call it something else so it doesn't have that sort of negative.

You know, what I call it. I have a different name for it, and I think it's because of that. Because I used to hate it so much. I call it storyboarding.

Yes, exactly. Call it storyboarding. I mean, that's. Yeah, that's what they call it in. That's what they call it in the movies. That's what they call it in advertising. That's what they call it in most. A lot of commercial writing call it storyboarding. And so I find Scrivener particularly powerful in that respect as well. And it's one of those programs that does a lot more than I actually use. You're using it, and it's incredibly helpful, and you think, oh, my goodness, I should really dig into this and use all of its little bells and whistles, because there's so many. You know, you can tag things and, you know, color code things and track character arcs, and there are all these different templates if you want to use them. Templates for novels, templates for nonfiction, templates for stage plays, screenplays, all sorts of stuff.

So anyway, how is it different from Evernote? Did you explore Evernote at all?

Oh, I use Evernote.

Okay.

Evernote is not a Evernote is not a writing. Is not a software for writing.

Yeah.

It just does not have the formatting or the outlining capability or. It just doesn't. But I use Evernote, for me is. I use Evernote every single day, and I use it to gather information. I use Evernote to cast a wide net. I mean, if you want to talk about sort of like going from casting wide nets to, you know, fishing for particular bits of information, I. Basically, my writing life is broken down into. There is information gap, general information gathering. There are tasks that need to be accomplished on my workday, which is different from needing to keep information. And then there's actual writing. And for me, Evernote is very, very good at organizing information that I come across. I mean, every day I come across something where I think, oh, that could be a good idea down the line. Now, that's not a task. Right. That's not something that has to be handled by a certain day. It is something that has struck me as interesting and I want to hold on to it. That, to me, is I clip it with my Evernote clipper. It goes in Evernote in, you know, one of my idea files, and I know exactly where to find it, and I always have it.

Okay, so you go ahead and put it not just in your main folder, but you have a folder for.

I have a folder for future ideas.

For future ideas. Okay.

Yeah. Then I also use Evernote, you know, just to organize my personal life, things I need to do in the garden, names of, you know, names of people that have, you know, helped me out at particular stores, all those sorts of things, things I want to buy. Those are, again, they're. They're not tasks which are very specific things that need to be done by a certain time. They are. It is information that I want to keep. And I don't like having tons of little pieces of paper floating around. However, I do like. I do a lot of mind mapping. I don't know if you're familiar.

Oh, yeah, I just did a show with Daphne Gray Grant on mind mapping.

Love mind mapping. Been doing it for years. And I like to do it on paper.

Yes.

So what I love about Evernote is I'll go to the coffee shop and have a really nice early morning mind mapping session, and then I'll just take a picture of it and stick it in Evernote so that I can have. I have a digital version of what was going on in my head on a particular day. So once you. So Evernote, for me, contains all sorts of things, and Evernote might have a notebook that pertains to a particular project. But when it is time to start outlining that project and really assembling, really streamlining what that project is going to be, then I have to move into Scrivener.

Okay, so this is Evernote.

Just can't handle it. And I love Evernote. I love Evernote so much, and I think it's amazing. I use it for everything, but just. It's not for writing, not for me.

Yeah. So it sounds to me like if you take it kind of to the offline world, Evernote becomes the replacement for cutting out magazine articles and putting them on your desk, because you don't know where to file them exactly. Or in a physical filing cabinet. So you just ideas, thoughts, whatever articles, file them away digitally. And then once you have a project, then you go to Scribner, because this is where you live, basically. Once you're in the project.

Yeah, once I'm in the project, I live in Scrivener, and Scrivener is where I keep things that are going to definitely be associated with one specific project that has gone sort of from the, oh, maybe this is a good idea phase into the. We're doing this. It needs to get. It needs to get done.

So just. Just so listeners understand the scope of this particular project and why something like Scrivener was so critical. I don't know if you have this, but rough number of interviews he did. Research hours.

Top up, not off the top of my head, but research. Oh, research hours. Oh, my God. I can't even. Oh, my God. I mean, I went to, you know, I've been to the National. I used to go to the National Archives in Atlanta, just south of Atlanta, many times, and just sit there, you know, for days on end, going through boxes of, you know, onion skin paper. And, you know, that's not even compared to God knows how many, you know, probably 50, 60 different books sitting here in my. Maybe more sitting here in my office pertaining to that period in history. Every newspaper published between the years of 43 and 45 in this community, I read and scanned a lot of them.

By the way, how did you scan a lot of those archives? Because you can't. Did you take pictures of what you needed?

They have. If you bring in Atlanta and every, you know, the National Archives, I scanned probably close to. Oh, my God, how many photos did I scan in Maryland, College Park? 2, which is the National Archives facility that has most of their photographic collections. I scanned several hundred. I think more than 500 photos there. And There you have to go in. You have to have a flatbed scanner. So you can't have something that's going to pass, that's going to rub the paper. You have to have a flatbed scanner. They inspect your scanner. You have to wear white gloves. Not everything is available for scanning in Atlanta. You can either use a flatbed scanner or you can take pictures. I've come to find that taking pictures is actually a lot easier. You only have to carry your camera. The good thing about a scanner is you can organize what files you want everything to go into as you're scanning with the pictures. You have to do that after. So that's really the only downside there. But I mean, thousands. I mean, thousands of hours of research, I'm sure. Thousands.

Hundreds of hours of interviews.

Oh, yeah, and hundreds of hours of interviews.

You have all the.

And video I took. There's this pile of videotapes. Because what I want to do now is I'm in the process of, you know, turning this into a documentary. So, you know, I have stacks of videotapes on my desk right now. So I videoed everybody I talked to as well. And then there were things like going to Historic Preservation association meetings, you know, going to coffees, and just listening to people, you know, reminisce about the old days. So beyond interviews there, there was a lot of just kind of going to community meetings and gatherings and listening to people talk about their experiences in a group setting. Because a lot of times group interviews can be informative in a different kind of way than individual interviews can. And they're both valuable for different reasons. People. I think it's easier to kind of. To get more detail and more personal stories out of them if they're alone. But people in groups can inspire each other to remember things. They can remind each other of experiences that somebody may not have been able to recall if you were speaking to them alone. So that's good in that respect. And large groups, they bring out a different kind of memory dynamic, in a sense, when they're together discussing certain events, when you talk about the scope of what was here. And I have thousands of documents, and they're all on my computer. And the thing is, you have only a certain amount of time and hours that you can spend in the archives. And they have 5,000 boxes pertaining to the Atomic Energy Commission. I mean, you can't get through that. You have to be there 10 years. So you have to be very. You have to make choices. Writing, no matter what kind of writing it is, is always about Making choices. And some of them are difficult choices because a lot of those choices involve leaving things out. And that's always, you know, you can only make that choice once, you know, once or twice. And then you have to move on and commit to the path you've chosen to shape your story. Whether it's, you know, a short piece that you're doing for someone or if it's a, you know, piece of advertising copy or if it's a book, you have to make a choice about which path you're going to follow, which, which means you're going to use to communicate this idea that you have. And that is the tough part, especially when you're dealing with the volume of information that I was. There were so many interesting people I interviewed that, you know, I, you know, I found out fairly quickly they were not going to be in the book. And that's, you know, they're thanked in the book and you know, they're conversations may have, you know, inspired me or made me think in, you know, a particular direction. But you know, it's always hard to, to leave certain ideas and individuals out of a, out of a story. But it's, it's all about choices.

Well, yeah, it is, it is. And you have to, at one point you got to force yourself. And here's what I'm wondering is, I'm listening to you. I'm overwhelmed because I've never tackled anything near that big and I can get lost very easily in the weeds. So when there's so much information, how do you find your way back to kind of what the storyline is going to be?

That's a very good question. And there are times when I wonder who even wrote this book. There are times when I like, I look at it and I think about everything that went into getting it done and I just think, think who did this? Was I around when that happened?

You know, it's a blur.

It's a blur. And it's kind of an out of body experience sometimes and it's incredibly overwhelming. And there are a couple things that I think are important for long projects. One is you have to find a way to stay inspired about what you're working on. And inspiration can be, can come in various forms. There have been times I've been working on projects and you know, not this one. There have been times I've worked on projects where what I was getting paid was inspiring me and that's okay.

Yeah.

Or a particular idea I had come up with, you know, was inspiring or what I was going to do. After the project was done was inspiring me. But it's, you know, but with this, with this book, it was the story itself that was keeping me working. But it wasn't always possible from an energy standpoint to engage with the text in the same way. I mean, some days, you know, some days are writing days, some days are not. And you've got to stay really in touch with your, with where your energy is. And if there was a day when I thought, you know what, I just don't feel like, I don't feel like writing today, I would watch, you know, I would watch an old documentary about the time period or I would flip through photos and, you know, just to kind of get me, keep me in, in the, in that same, in the same world. Even if I, you know, felt like I couldn't do any intense writing that particular day, or I, you know, I would rework my outline, like, what if I turned. Sometimes I just like to turn everything completely upside down and say, wow, you know, I, I've been convinced that I want to do, you know, tell the story in this fashion. What would it look like if I started here instead? Or what would it. And just kind of turn things upside down. And even if you go back to your original structure, your original approach, that can provide incredible, incredible perspectives sometimes. I'm a big believer in calendars, and calendars for me can be written. Might be a piece of paper that I say, you know, I work backwards from the date. I, you know, the first big date, of course, is the date you have to turn in your first draft to your editor. And, you know, I might work backwards from there, knowing my ability and the speed at which I can write and, you know, taking into account that not every day is going to go the way that you want it to. Managing expectations of yourself is, I think, very tricky and very important. We all want to be these amazing productivity machines, but our work life does not exist in a vacuum and things come up because that's the way life operates. So having a little bit of play worked into your calendar I think is important. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of task lists. Now tasks are, you know, I consider, separate from information gathering or file keeping. Tasks are very specific things that have to be done on a certain day. And having a task list for my projects was very important. You know, was there someone that I thought I wanted to interview that I really had to get a hold of? Was there, you know, a document I was looking for? Was there a, you know, all those sort. Was there somebody I Needed to call back, was there, you know, all those sorts of things have, you know, I would plan those as well. And, you know, then you get to the point where if you've laid all that groundwork and you have a calendar you're working with and you get into your sort of, okay, now I'm working on my rough draft. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that stuff isn't going to completely explode. And everything, you know, the best laid plans are often, you know, get tossed to the side because, you know, like I said, life happens where you find something new and exciting and you think, oh, my God, this is going to screw up my really perfect plan. But, wow, it's really good. I have to follow it.

Yeah.

And the other thing about all of this is, you know, it's like, it's. It's like, you know, it's like a gps. You know, I want to get to this particular date having finished this first draft, and in order to do that, I'm gonna go straight here. I'm gonna take a right turn there. I'm gonna take a left turn there. I'm gonna go there. Blah, blah, blah. Well, if you get way off course, you're just, you're, you know, it's recalculating. It's. Your GPS just recalculates. You're still gonna get. But where you're going, you just have to occasionally reassess and make sure you're en route, even though the route may be different or may necessarily change because either of inconvenient life, things that just pop up, or because of very exciting things that you find along the way that you think are worth pursuing.

I love that metaphor because I think there's a lot to the whole GPS thing in terms of, you know, your destination, but only the GPS knows the way. All you can do is follow. And I'm a big believer in following your instincts and just going with the flow, making sure that you're focused, of course, but because, right. It's. You just have to trust. I trust my gps. And you can't possibly map out the entire route between here and Los Angeles.

Right.

You just can't. And if you try to do it in your head, you're going to get overwhelmed.

Yep, exactly. And you can try and do. You can try and do broad strokes about, you know, how far you want to get by, you know, I want to drive X number of miles a day or something like that, but you just have to be. You just have to realize that, you know, it's those unexpected stops that are completely unavoidable and they can also be the best thing for your project at times. So trust, I think you're absolutely right. I think trust is a huge part of staying on course when you're dealing with a big project that, you know, can be both, you know, overwhelming and also can be, can be tiring.

Well, how do you, I'm wondering how you deal with the emotions that come from, you know, the days when you wake up and go, oh my gosh, you know, what have I gotten myself into? And this is not going well. But you know, you don't, you know, the deadline's still a few months away, but you know, how do you stay focused? How do you get back into the game?

How do you come back from the dark place?

Oh, yes, very dark and low light.

How do you come back from the dark place? Well, everyone has, I think all of us know or hopefully know those things that we can do in our life to de stress and you can't, you can't be afraid to do them. Self awareness. When you're dealing with projects like this or just a career as an independent contractor in general, I mean, it's. If you work for yourself and you make your own schedule and you get your own clients and you, you know, do your own bookkeeping and all that sort of stuff that goes along with being an independent contractor. It is, you have, you wear so many different hats during the day and just because I was working on this book didn't mean I didn't have to deal with all of that sort of stuff that I normally have to deal with as an independent contractor and being aware of sort of what makes you tick and what makes you not tick is incredibly important. So I think actually doing a little bit of soul searching into what works for you when you are, when you go to the dark place is very important. For me, it's walking and I mean like a lot of walking. So I had to be willing to look at my. When I was getting that horrible feeling, I had to be, you know, willing to look at my schedule. And even if it said you're supposed to do X, Y and Z today, know that I know I'm supposed to do X, Y and Z today. But what I really need to do today is walk for like an hour or two and just calm myself down because that's what works for me. For other people, it's long showers. I know people who swear that long showers clear their mind. So I know people who are like, I just went to the gym and sat in the sauna, in the shower for an hour. And sometimes I think it's just other people I know they go straight for stress relief with massage. And some people just have confidants that they talk to. We have other friends in the business that we talk to when we're frustrated. And sometimes just hearing another human being, because it can be very lonely work. So sometimes just hearing another human being who's worked on a long project and hit that wall or gone to the dark place say, I know exactly what you're talking about. I felt that way because of this, that or the other, you know, here's what I did. Or, you know, just sort of having that another person say, yes, I get it, it's gonna pass. That can help too. I actually do think that that's also what you do on your own to sort of, you know, get your, get your mind back in the game. Sometimes I garden. Weeding helps me. I love to weed because, well, it's.

The repetitive nature of it.

It's repetitive, it's meditative, and it's also immediate gratification. If I pull the weed out and I get the roots, the weed is gone. So weeding helps too. But I think there are those things that you do for yourself alone to kind of get your head back in the game. But I do think it is important, because of the solitary nature of what we do, to have people you can talk to and just say, God, it is just not happening for me this week. I don't know what's going on with me. And just to have someone else say, no, it's, it's okay, it's normal, it's going to pass. That can, that can be helpful as well.

I want to run something by you, Denise, that, and I think you, you might agree with me, but I'd like to get your thoughts on it. So I've kind of moved away from very strict outcome oriented goal setting to more effort based goal setting. So in other words, okay, I know I have these deadlines and okay, so somewhere in there I got to have these milestones. But instead of mapping it out in a linear fashion, I just focus on today. What can I do today to get closer to either that milestone, that first milestone, or to that deadline that might be a year away or a month away. And how, you know, did you maybe try some of that as you were approaching this?

Oh, well, I think that, I think that in addition to whatever you're working on, you know, in my, in my instance, the book, I think it's always Important to see how your, that project or what you're doing. I agree. What you're doing today furthers not just this project, but furthers whatever it is your life goal is or life goals are. And those goals may have something to do with the project at hand or they may might not appear to have anything to do with the project at hand, but they should be related because ideally we're all working on things for a variety of reasons. But one of those should be to further our life goals and to achieve those kinds of not just work milestones, but also emotional milestones, social milestones, family milestones, and to kind of take a step back and say, oh, I can see how my being really engaged with this project today is furthering my, my efforts in these other areas as well. That's a good thing. I agree. I think that's a very good thing to remind yourself of. I don't know that I would give up my calendaring for a large project because it's. Even if I don't adhere to it strictly or I allow myself, like I said, I allow myself to get off course, you know, knowing that my GPS will get me back on. I do need to be have an understanding of how much time certain things are going to take. And so that I do make sure I don't because I can go down the rabbit hole when it comes to research. I love research. And you don't want to, you don't want to not manage your time well. You want to make sure you're managing your time well while allowing yourself that flexibility. But I think it's important for your spirit really to remember that what you're doing each day, how that does connect to other life goals or milestones that you might have. Yeah, I think that's interesting.

So you've been writing for a long time. I mean, I know you started out as a journalist, you've written. How many books have you written?

Well, let's see for if you include like, if you include ghost written books and you know, movie tie in books or books I work for hire books and educational books I did for kids. I don't know, it's got to be 20 or something. I don't know. I've actually never, I've never really counted.

See, that's why I surprised you.

But I've never really counted. But I'm looking at my shelves now. But yeah, a lot.

You've been writing for a long time. I guess the biggest thing is this is not the first book project you tackle at all.

It's not, but it's the biggest.

It's the biggest. So I'm wondering how did this particular book change the way that you'll approach future book projects?

See, on the Dark Days, the effect would have been, I'm never doing this again. That would have been the effect that it had. I think there's just. With everything that you do, with every project that you finish, I think just having that knowledge that, you know, I did it, I can do it, I know how to, I know how to do this. I think that, that, that the knowledge that you, you know how to get a certain thing done is in itself just an incredible boost for whatever you're doing next. I mean, I'm sure, you know, when I thought about, you know, the size that this book was going to be, I thought about, you know, substantial but smaller books that I had already done or newspaper magazine articles that I've already done. And I thought, well, you know what this is like writing, you know, it's a 15 chapter book. This is like writing 15 really long magazine articles. I can do that, you know, and sort of breaking it down that way and relating it to a smaller achievement I had already attained and that. So this, you know, now I have, I have just kind of one more, one more, one more tool in my toolbox. Really. It's like, okay, I know how to, I know how to do that. And just knowing that I know how to do that, I think helps you with your, with your next, with your next project.

I, I know that every time I push myself and gone after a project and completed a project that was much bigger or much more complex than anything I had done before, the feeling of satisfaction and just pride. Oh yeah, right. And self confidence too. If I can do this, you know, right. And that's huge. You can't put a price on that.

You can't. That's why it's so important to do things that scare you a little. And you know, this scared me a little. And it's so important to do that because when you succeed, and it's not that mistakes aren't made, but when at the end of the day you've essentially finished what you set out to do and it was something that seemed a little scary or a little, you know, beyond the normal scope of what you do, that is incredibly powerful and that stays with you for a really long time, beyond the, beyond the finishing day, beyond the day that you check that big project off your list if you're a list keeper. But that's something that really, when you Push yourself and do something that scares you a little and you make it happen that has really long lasting effects that I think it's hard to even be completely aware of. Really.

Yeah. I love this quote from Jim Rohn, the late Jim Rohn, who said, the real purpose of a big goal is not the attainment of the goal itself, is in the person you become in pursuit of that goal.

Oh, sure.

So true. Right. You'll never be the same person again after going through this. It's changed you in ways that you wouldn't have been able to change or achieve through something that was maybe more modest.

That's right. That's right. And when you were talking earlier about also having effort based goals, I think I'm probably not saying it the way that you.

Yeah, that's what I call them. I don't know.

Yeah, so no, no, no, that's. I just want to make sure I was getting that right. That's, you know, looking at, you know, that has a tremendous effect on your psyche and your ability to do not just future work, but your ability to kind of tackle things that come along, that come along in life. And you know, so you have the, you have the big macro pictures with these huge projects. You have, you know, what you need to get done and when it needs to get done by and what information you need at your fingertips to achieve it and who you need to talk to. And then, you know, how much you need to be writing each day to get it done. And then you have these other kind of daily moments, ideally of reflection of, well, you know, look at what I'm working on and I'm doing something a little bit outside of my comfort zone. And that feels good. And that is in line with the kind of person I want to be or the kind of, you know, the kind of business I want to run. And I think that's very important.

Well, this is fantastic, Denise, and I really appreciate you coming out talking to me about the book. Talking, sharing your ideas and insights from going through this project. Where can listeners learn more about the book?

Oh, okay. You can go to www.girlsofatomiccity.com and you can also go to denisekeernan.com D E N I S E K-I E R N A N.com and we'll make sure.

To include the URLs in the show notes as well. But guys, I can tell you I've read the book cover to cover when it came out. It really is an amazing story, extremely well written. I really couldn't put it down. It just really a beautiful story of how these people gave so much of themselves for something that they had no idea what it was all about. It was a different time and it really took me back to really a different America. And there's so many lessons to be learned here. It's just a fantastic book all around.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Oh yeah, thanks for coming on, Denise. All right, folks, so I hope you enjoyed that interview. You know, one thing that's now very clear to me after speaking with Denise is how much of a mental game these type of large projects can be. I knew that it required excellent organizational skills and excellent research skills, for example, the ability to interview people. But I really hadn't thought about what it takes in terms of self motivation and the way you talk to yourself day to day and the way you manage your your energy and your emotions through these projects. And it doesn't matter if it's the project is commercial, nature, fiction, nonfiction. This, the ideas that Denise have shared here really apply. I wanted to remind you that you can grab the detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 15 the number 15. These are detailed show notes that make great reference material, especially if you're somewhere where you just can't take notes when you're listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, I would also be grateful if you shared it with friends. And the easiest way to do that is to go to B2B launch or to simply use any of the social media sharing buttons on the show notes page. And finally, I wanted to thank all of you who have taken the time to leave me either a rating or a review on itunes. It really means a ton to me that you've taken the time to do that. If you're enjoying the show and want to leave me a star rating or a sentence or two about the show, you can do so very easily by going to b2b launcher.com iTunes so that's it for today's episode. I'm your host, Ed Gandia. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you have an awesome day.

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