#197: Daphne Gray-Grant on How to Obliterate Writer’s Block and Get Your First Draft DONE

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Welcome to 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 earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 1 97. Those notes, as always, include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resources we mention during the show. Let's say you landed the project for a great fee, and that's the good news. The bad news is that now you have to crank out a first draft and even procrastinating with this step for days after hours, or maybe even days of staring at a blank screen, you're now getting anxious. Maybe really, really anxious. That anxiety leads to stress, and the stress starts to unleash that inner critic who's continually telling yourself or asking yourself, what in the world are you doing? Who do you think you are? You call yourself a writer? Come on. Those emotions are perfectly normal. We've all experienced them. But the good news is this doesn't have to be the reality for every writing project you work on. Not if you have a proven process and set of hacks for writing your first draft faster. And that's the topic of today's episode. My guest is writing coach Daphne Gray Grant, author of the newly published book youk Happy First A Practical and Painless Guide to Obliterating Writer's Block. Daphne was one of my first podcast guests back in 2013 when I started the show, and I brought her back to share some insights and tips for writing first drafts faster. She has been extremely influential in my own writing, has helped me tremendously through her newsletter, her books, and I just wanted to bring her on because I know what she has to share here is going to be very impactful to you. This in this conversation, she's going to explain why you need to resist the idea of creating a crummy first draft, how to use mind mapping to generate that big aha moment you need in order to write a better draft. In fact, we spent quite a bit of time talking about mind mapping. She's going to talk about practical tips to prevent editing during the writing process, and how to be realistic and kind to yourself during your writing. I think you're really going to enjoy this. Here's my conversation with Daphne Gray Grant. Daphne, welcome back. Great to be talking with you again.

Thanks for inviting me back, Ed. Great to hear from you, too.

Excellent. Well, this is, you know, you were one of my first guests in my podcast. Gosh, I want to say, what was that, like six years ago? And it's been one of our most popular episodes ever.

Oh, great to hear. Thanks so much for telling me that.

Yeah, I still, you know, people still find it. A lot of people come across the podcast somewhere in the middle or current shows, and then they like it and then they'll go back to the beginning. And since yours was one of the first, it's usually there. Plus, it's a really hot topic, so I'm linking to it in the show notes here so people can go check that out. But for folks who are listening who maybe have never heard of you, why don't you give us a bit of background, Tell us about yourself, the kind of clients you serve, the kind of topics that you love to teach.

Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to go way back in time because when I was a high school student, I was kind of born a natural editor. So I was one of those people who loved editing stuff. I would edit all the papers of my friends. I continued doing that when I went to university. And then when time came around for me to find a job, I worked as an editor. My parents owned a small community weekly newspapers, so I worked there for a number of years. And then I got life in the big time. I went to a major metropolitan daily newspaper and I was an editor there. Fortunately for me and for them, I worked as an editor, not as a writer. And while I had the genetic talent to edit, I certainly was lacking that talent in terms of writing. And this became an issue for me when I left the newspaper business. I am the mother of triplets, and I left shortly after they were born. And not being nearly busy enough at home with three babies, I decided I wanted to start consulting as well. And some writing work came its way and I found I hated it. And I was really, really slow at it, which was very embarrassing because here I was with this great experience as a senior editor at a large metropolitan daily, and I couldn't write quickly. And so I spend a little bit of time doing some research on this area and discovered, of course, that I was doing a bunch of things wrong. And so I learned how to write very quickly and easily. And I actually like writing now as much as I like editing. And before long, I started getting requests from others to help teach them how to write quickly and easily as well. So the Way things work right now is I have clients around the world whom I help write faster, better. In terms of where these people fall in their own work, they tend to be in one of three categories. One is academics, and I include Master's students and PhD students in that category as well. And so they need to either write papers for peer reviewed journals or they need to produce a thesis or a dissertation. So that's one group. Another group is business owners who want to write a book that will help promote their business or who are producing a blog to help promote their business. So I help that group as well. And then the third group, which was a huge surprise to me, is fiction writers. And this has been relatively recent. At the beginning, fiction writers would get in touch with me and ask me to help them. And I started off by saying no, because I've never written a word of fiction in my life, apart from maybe an essay or a short story in grade 10 that I had to for my English class. But I'm not a fiction writer. And I thought, no, I have nothing to teach these people. But I am a serious reader. I read a minimum of 52 books every year, and at least half of them are fiction. And I have strong opinions about what I read. And anyways, one day, one particular client just wore me down. She wouldn't accept no for an answer. And so I took her on. And to my surprise, not to her surprise, but to my surprise, it helped her a great deal. And so after that, I started accepting fiction writers and who knew it, but the same techniques that help nonfiction writers write quickly and easily also help fiction writers as well.

Who knew?

I know.

Yeah, I love that. So you spend your weeks basically helping writers in many different fields write better, faster, essentially.

Exactly, exactly.

That's great. That's great. I tell you, you know, I'm a big fan of yours. You have helped me tremendously with this. This is a huge stumbling block for me. When you. I was nodding my head when you were talking about it. My gosh, I just. It was embarrassing. I couldn't write fast. And you know, when you are getting paid a fixed fee for a particular project, every additional hour that you're spending on it that wasn't budgeted is bringing down your internal hourly rate. So it's painful from that standpoint too. Not from. For me, it wasn't so much the creative confidence. There was that too, but it was the, oh my goodness, I am now in the red, if you could call it that, on this project. And that created an anxiety that dampened My creativity. And anyway, it just. It wasn't good. So let's maybe start by talking a little bit about first drafts. This is probably the most painful aspect of writing for many of us. You've noted that many writers resist the idea of creating a crummy first draft. We all want the first draft to be like 80% there, and even if nobody's going to see it. So why do you feel that we need to just let go of that? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. Well, the thing is, with first drafts, I think many of us who are readers and we have bookshelves filled with books that are perfect bound, and we pull them off our shelves and we look at them and they're neatly typeset and they're no spelling errors and few typos, and we somehow think they came out of the writer's brains that way. And so when we aren't able to do the same thing ourselves, it makes us wonder about our own competence. And what I like to say to people is that they need to really understand how the process truly works. People like Hemingway, people like F. Scott Fitzgerald, you know, all the great masters whose works we were forced to read in high school and college, they did not write perfect first drafts. In fact, I seem to recall Hemingway had a big problem with spelling. He was not a natural speller. So when you write your crappy first draft, what you are doing is just getting the words out of your head and onto the page. And once the words are actually on the page, then you have something you can edit. And the other thing that I think happens in Western society is our society tends to reward people for linear, logical tasks. And I put editing into that category. It's very linear, it's very logical, and many of us tend to be good at it. And writing, on the other hand, is a creative task. And our society doesn't reward creative tasks, by and large, to the same degree. It rewards linear, logical tasks. So most of us aren't as accustomed to doing creative work, and we're not as good at it, purely from the point of view of being out of practice. So I look at the writers and editors I work with, and I can say that at least 80% of them, when they start working with me, strongly prefer editing to writing. And that's just because of the way our society rewards people who are good at linear, logical tasks. You look at the schoolwork, you look at workplace work, and it's the linear, logical work that gets rewarded. And so consequently, most of us are much more comfortable Editing, we're much more comfortable being critical, even with ourselves. But if you want to write, you need to be able to turn off that critical part of your brain. And when you can turn it off, then you're going to be able to produce a crummy first draft that you will be able to go and edit later. So the way I like to describe it is that people need to be very mindful about the various different tasks associated with writing. Writing is one specific task, editing is a different specific task. And you need to do them both at different times.

And. Okay, so that makes perfect sense conceptually. But how many of us start writing and just automatically, you know, just go, go into editing mode? Most of us do, right?

Yes.

So I understand the concept, but what's one way we can maybe turn off that habit and just realize and kind of compartmentalize that particular task so we can actually get that out of our heads and then deal with the editing?

Well, my favorite hack for this, and I had to break this habit myself. You know, I was a natural editor, which makes it even harder to turn off the editing. Yeah. So what I did when I was trying to break that habit, I turned off my screen. So I'm a touch typist and I've since learned that some people don't know what that phrase means. But I can type without looking at my fingers on the keys, so I can type accurately without doing that. So I turned off my screen and essentially I couldn't see what I was writing. And if you can't see it, you can't edit it. So that's a really, really useful hack. Now some people find that a little bit nerve wracking. So I've since developed a slightly modified hack for this and that is make your point size so small that you can't read it. And to my way of thinking, that's about three point type. So the way Microsoft Word works is the lowest default type size you can switch to is five point. That's still a little too big for me. So I switch it to three point. You can do that manually. So you just go into the little window at the top of your Microsoft Word and change the 10, 11, 12, whatever size you normally use and type in manually, three. And then everything you write will be in three point type. It'll look like little mouse droppings. You won't be able to read the words, but you'll still see them accumulating. And that will give you some visual feedback that many people find quite helpful. So that's a great Hack for turning off the editing brain. If you can't see it, you can't edit it.

I'm sweating as I'm listening to you right now. I'm getting really nervous. In fact, as I'm listening to you, I realize, okay, I'm editing actually even more than I thought, because as I'm picturing using that method, that doesn't seem pleasant at all.

You know what? It doesn't take that long to get used to it. And what I find happens frequently with people who do coaching with me or sign up for one of my programs is they relatively quickly get used to the idea of not editing while they write. And then suddenly writing becomes somewhat fun. They have a feeling of liberation, and then they start to develop a bit of a dread of editing.

Interesting.

So, yeah, so then I have to work with them on reacquainting them with the editing process. But no, it's not that hard to do once you make up your mind that that's what you want to do.

And you know what? I don't know if maybe this is the way I'm interpreting it, but it almost sounds like what you're trying to do is, okay, society wants and rewards linear tasks in a way. You're almost trying to inject some of that energy or spirit into this very creative process by compartmentalizing the writing. And then once that's done with the first draft, then you edit. Or is that maybe not the way it's supposed to be?

No, no, no. That's a really good way of putting it. A metaphor I use with many of my clients is I like them to imagine the creative brain as the younger sister. So maybe a four year old sister, five year old, one of those slightly annoying ages who has older brother. And the older brother is the linear, logical brain and the younger sister is the creative brain. And what happens is that bossy older brother wants to take charge every opportunity he gets. And he'll either lock the younger sister in the closet or kick her under the bed, do whatever he can to get control of the situation. And so by turning off your screen or by going to very, very small type, then what you're doing is you're keeping that bossy older brother away from you and you're able to go ahead with the creative job of writing.

I like that a lot, actually. That makes a lot of sense. Tell me a little bit about other ways of getting this out of your head. I know a lot of people do well with voice to text or they'll record their thoughts any Thoughts on that? Is this something that maybe is worth experimenting with? Because by default you can't edit that.

Right, right. So yes, writing with voice activation software is a really, really good idea. I've experimented with that a little bit myself and I found it an interesting experience because I felt like I had a portion of my brain that I didn't know what to do with while I was dictating.

Interesting. Yeah.

But once I got accustomed to it, I found it quite a bit easier than writing by hand. My problem right now is really the very best software for dictation is Dragon, Dragon actually speaking. And I've just upgraded my Mac and they don't support the new Mojave, the new Mac. And so I'm locked out of my software. So I'm going to have to either get the system that will allow me to run Windows on my Mac or try to learn the Mac oriented voice activation software, which is nowhere as good as Dragon. So anyways, that particular trick is on hold for me right now. But another trick that doesn't depend on software at all is mind mapping.

Oh, I love it.

Yeah, this is a really good technique for getting yourself inspired to write. Now on my website there are many links I've written about mind mapping and I've done a number of videos on mind mapping. And so if anyone goes to my website, they can go to the sidebar on the right hand side of my blog page and there is a link that says I think all about mind mapping. And there you'll be able to see all my blog posts and all my videos on it. But essentially what it is, it's a way of capturing the creative thoughts you have and getting them onto paper. Now I teach mind mapping a lot with a lot of my clients and I do a lot of large workshops. So there might be 80 or 100 people in these workshops where I'm teaching mind mapping. And I can tell you a couple of things that people get wrong when they try to mind map for the first time.

Please do, because it's. I know a lot of listeners use mind mapping, but not maybe to an advanced level. So any tricks would be helpful.

Yeah, yeah. So the number one trick for, in terms of mind mapping for writing. Mind mapping can be used for other things, but it is especially useful for writing. You want to understand that it is not the same as an outline. So many people just turn the piece of paper sideways, which of course is one of the things you need to do for a good mind map. Piece of paper needs to be sideways, but it's not an outline done sideways. It is not an organizational tool in any way whatsoever. It's an inspirational tool. So the key thing to understand is that one mind map does not necessarily equal one piece of writing. You should mind map until you feel inspired to write. I like to call that the aha experience. So you're mind mapping, and then you go, oh, now I know what I want to say. And you become excited and enthusiastic about the idea of writing. That's what mind mapping should do for you. Now, some people only need to do a quarter or a half of a mind map before they get inspired. The moment that feeling of inspiration hits, start mind mapping. Don't waste any more time mind mapping. You do not need to mind map. You don't need to get everything out of your brain and onto the mind map. The sole purpose is to inspire you to write.

So the moment you get it, stop and then start writing.

Exactly. Exactly. Now, the other thing is what happens far more often, people will finish the mind map, as in, they don't know what else to write down and they still don't feel like writing. So what I say is, if you're in that situation, you need to do a second mind map. And here's where I would go back to what you write in the center of the page. The fellow who teaches mind mapping, the guy who has the worldwide reputation for being an expert on mind mapping, is a guy named Tony Buzzin in London, England. He's written something like 64 books on mind mapping, which kind of boggles my mind. I don't know how you get 64 books.

Well, he did a lot of mind mapping to come up with the ideas.

Yeah, exactly. So he just has people write a topic in the center of the page. I have learned in years of teaching this that writers do way better if they put a question in the center of the page. So not a topic, a question. And the reason for that is a question is provocative. So if I were to give you a topic, let's say Shakespeare, and you were to write Shakespeare in the center of the page, you would probably sit at that topic and stare at it for 10 minutes. You wouldn't know what direction to go in. But if you came up with a question, what's my favorite play of Shakespeare's, then you would have a direction you could go in. You'd be much more focused, and you're much more likely to come up with things to write down on the page. So I know there will be some listeners who don't care about Shakespeare and so I'm sorry for you folks, but pick a topic that you're interested in and then develop a question relating to it and you'll see that the question will be much more interesting to you and much more likely to spark your creative brain with other ideas.

Now, so let me ask you a follow up question on that. If I already know that that's going to be the topic, do I have to put it in the form of a question? So my problem is not that I don't know anything beyond Shakespeare in terms of what the topic or thesis is going to be. I already know in many cases what's my favorite Shakespeare play. Do you feel that it's very important to turn that into a question instead of a statement?

Yes, Yes. I think it is valuable to have it as a question. And part of the reason I say this is a great many people who start mind mapping don't take to it naturally. So if I was. If you put my back to a wall and said, what percent of people take off with mind mapping right away? I would say it's no higher than 20%. So the vast majority of people struggle with it a bit. Now, if you're struggling with it a bit, that doesn't mean it's not going to work, but it means you need to take some extra effort, make some adjustments to make it work. And I find asking a question is a really great way to do that because it's going to provoke your brain in a more specific way. The other thing that happens is if you do that first mind map and you don't get inspired by the end of the mind map, then what you need to do is come up with a different question and do a second mind map. And if that second mind map doesn't work, then you need to do a third mind map. And if that third mind map doesn't work, you need to do a fourth. Now, before anyone panics and thinks I'm going to have them spend their entire day doing nothing but mind mapping, I just want to observe that a mind map should take three to five minutes to do. So if you do six mind maps, that's only a maximum of 30 minutes. And I've known people who will sit and stare at a blank screen for 30 minutes. So at least with mind mapping you're having fun, you're staying acquainted with your topic, you're exploring different ideas, you're making progress.

I have found, Daphne, that it's kind of a micro action for me. So getting to that first draft is that's A big step in my mind, the mind mapping. That's something I can do. That's something I can do in, like you said, a few minutes, less than 10 minutes. And there's no excuses. I mean, everyone's got 10 minutes, right? That's on the long side. So it gives me, I call it gateway actions like drugs, like some kind of. That's going to get you into the next thing. It's a perfect gateway action in that if I can do that, which is an attractive thing because it's not going to take that much time, then it slides me into the next task. It's, it just puts me in on the track and that's, that's exactly what we want. A first draft as a gateway action is. That doesn't work. That's not a good gateway action.

Mm. It's too big.

Yeah, it is too big. So I love that. And I never thought about posing the question instead of a statement.

Yes.

And you are a fan of paper and pen when it comes to a mind map as opposed to software, I believe.

Yes, I am. You can. There is lots of great mind mapping software out there. But the reason I favor pencil and pen is because there's been a lot of evidence that when we want to use our creative brains, it's better to use old fashioned implements like paper and pen or I'm sorry, paper and pencil or pen and pencil. The point at which it becomes better to write on a keyboard is, is when you are actually writing. So you have words coming to your brain and you want to get them on paper as quickly as possible. There was an experiment done, I'm sorry, I don't remember the year, but an experiment done in the US where they took a bunch of grade school kids, I think they were grade six, and they gave them a writing test, an essay writing test, and then they marked the test and they picked this age range because none of these children knew how to type. And then they took half of them and gave them intensive typing instruction. And I think for six weeks, I believe that was the time period. And after six weeks they gave the entire group another test and they found that the marks of the kids who'd learned to type increased dramatically. And the theory for the reason why this happened is because our brains work very, very fast. And when we have ideas about what we want to say, when we know what we want to write, it's hard for our hands to keep up. Essentially, if you're typing and if you're a half decent typist, you're going to type somewhere between probably a minimum of 30 words a minute and maybe a maximum of about 90 words a minute, which is what I type. And so you're going to be able to catch up with the speed at which your brain is working, and that is going to improve the quality of your writing. So when you're writing, use a keyboard, but when you're not writing, don't. Because what you want, you want to feel as relaxed and easygoing as if you were lying in a hammock in dappled sunshine. That's the kind of atmosphere, that's the kind of feeling you want to have when you're reflecting on what it is you're going to write.

I also love to see the whole thing in front of me. You know, there's something really magical about that. And with software, you don't get that. And sure, it's more flexible and all that, but it's. To me, it's a. It should be kind of a messy process. I don't need it to be neat, and I like having it all in front of me.

Yeah, I agree. One thing I do is I have the world's worst handwriting. It is really illegible frequently to me as well. So I always do my mind maps with the paper and pencil. I have an artist's notebook, actually, so it keeps them together and it keeps them bound. And it's very interesting because I can review them in chronological order that way. But if I want to keep a mind map for reference purposes, then I will go into the software and I will just type it up, copying it. So I'm not mind mapping originally in software, but if there's one that I need to keep as a reference document, then I will transfer it to the software, frankly, just so I can continue to read it.

Beautiful. So let's talk about maybe another idea here to overcome this obstacle. Of the first draft, we talked about mind mapping at length. What would be another idea that's proven to work well?

We also talked about this before. We talked about not editing, not editing.

Sure.

That's really important because I found that that was the number one thing for me when I broke the habit of editing while I wrote, I more than doubled my writing speed. So that for me was a really important part of the technique for improving my writing speed. Another issue I would suggest is very, very important for many writers, and that is being realistic about what it is you can achieve. And, you know, I have an accountability group with a bunch of writers, and they have to report in to me one day. A week about how many words they wrote each day. And so this accountability lever is very, very effective because these people, they know me a little bit, especially after they've been in the group for three months. But we're not friends and they're always embarrassed to have to tell me they didn't write that day. So so many of the people say they wouldn't have written that day if it weren't for being part of my group. And the other thing I would say about that is that accomplishing any long form project, so like a book or a thesis or a disser is really a long term project. A typical book is about 80,000 words. You are not going to write that in a day, you're not even going to write that in a week, you're not even going to write that in a month. It's a long term project. It takes most people a year to write a book and the best way to accomplish it is by doing a little bit every day. But that said, we all have days where things go wrong or go sideways or we just have too much work, other work to spend time on this other long term project. And so what I say to the people I work with, if you see a day coming up where you're booked in meetings all day, you have to get up early, maybe drive to a meeting that's an hour out of town, you're stuck in these meetings and you have to drive back home and you just know you're going to be too burnt out to write that day. Then don't write that day. Give yourself permission not to write that day. There is nothing wrong with that. It's way better to be manageable and kind to yourself, taking off those days when necessary so that you have the energy and the chutzpah to write on all the other days. Because writing is something that accumulates gradually over time, especially for long form projects. So don't beat yourself up too much. Another thing I would say about being realistic is I've noticed many of the people I work with tend to grab what seem to be obvious goals. So for instance, they'll say something like, I'm going to finish my second chapter this month. And when I say to them things like, well, how many words is that chapter? They'll say, well, I don't know, which makes me want to scream. What goes through my mind is, how the hell can you know you're going to finish the chapter this month if you don't even know how many words it is? Yes, that's just crazy. Talk. And that's not being realistic. There's something where as human beings we're drawn to the nice, neat, easy solutions. One chapter, one month. Both those numbers sound very easy and well rounded. But you know, if you have one chapter that's 3,000 words and another that's 10,000 words, I don't know how you're going to be able to write the 10,000 word chapter in a month if you're, you know, if you're able essentially to do 400 words a day. So, you know, you have to be really ultra realistic so that you don't get yourself discouraged. Because it's discouragement that does.

Most people in it really does. And I am a fan of focusing on effort goals when the outcome is not as easy to define or reverse engineer. But with something like this where, yeah, it would be relatively easy to figure out how many words roughly that chapter would be. So then that's something that lends itself, I feel, to an outcome goal. But you have to have the information right. You have to know. So I'm assuming that you're more of a fan when it comes to this kind of work of setting outcome goals instead of meaning going to write so many words this month or this week as opposed to I'm going to spend so much time writing today or this week.

Yeah, it really does kind of depend on the project. I would say for my fiction writers, spending X amount of time is probably suitable for fiction writers. But for someone like an academic or a PhD student who has to produce a dissertation within X number of months, they really need outcome goals because they need to know that they're going to be able to submit that sucker on time.

Yes, that makes perfect sense. So, yeah, what I'm hearing from you is, look, it's be kind, be easy with yourself, be realistic. At the same time, don't let that become a habit. So if you can't do it tomorrow, that's fine, pick it up the following day. But don't let that be the beginning of, well, today this is going to happen and then the next day something else happens. Right. You have to know yourself. I think I'm very much that way. I have to have a really good reason and then I'm good with myself, I'm kind to myself. But if not, it can get out of hand quickly.

Yes, yes, it can get out of hand. And one other thing I'd say is I have one client who she writes, but if she misses a day at the beginning of the week, I know I won't get any more reports from her for the rest of the week. She seems to be hardwired that if she gets going on a Monday, she'll get Monday to Friday. But if things fall apart by Tuesday, it's toast for the rest of the week. So, yeah, try to guard against things like that. You just want to be realistic with yourself, but also easy on yourself when you make a mistake, when you screw up, when you don't do the writing you want to do, forgive yourself and get started again the next day.

So I know this is a big topic, but as we start wrapping up, since he just mentioned that, I'm curious if you were to maybe make a suggestion on how you can better manage the emotions that come with this kind of work where one day wasn't good or you missed your goal. Any practical tips to make sure that you stay on track emotionally and not let it derail you?

Yeah, I guess the number one tip, I would say, is understand that you have your job, which is to finish your writing, and your emotions have their jobs, which are totally at odds with your desire to finish your rating. And so let your emotions do their job and you do your job of writing.

That's great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So don't ignore the emotions. Be conscious of them, but just recognize that they have their thing they want to do and you have your thing you want to do.

Yeah. Don't let them come in and crash the party. And, you know, it's fine, they're there in the kitchen, but you have your party. Yeah. Good stuff. Daphne, I know you have a new book coming out, and I'd love for you to tell us more about it. Your previous book was just such a game changer for me. That's why I wanted to bring you back on, because you have so many practical ideas that make a real difference. So tell us about this new book, what it's about, and why you wrote it.

Oh, thanks for your kind words, Ed. This new book is called you'd Happy First Draft. And I just want to tell everyone a little bit about the title. I had originally intended to title it your Crappy first Draft. And because that word tends to get people's attention. And then I started to have really serious second doubts about it. A couple of clients said to me, oh, that's, you know, the word crappy is not a very pleasant word, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, oh, it's kind of a negative title. And I went through probably 200 other titles, didn't feel really comfortable with any of them. And then a Friend of mine emailed me back your happy first draft and she pointed out that if you just put an X through the letter CR&AN H over them, you could turn your crappy first draft into a happy one. And I thought this is the title that's meant to be for this particular.

That is it. I love it.

Yeah. So the book goes through all the processes that will help you become a more comfortable writer. So for instance, I have a very long, detailed chapter on mind mapping. And people who go to my website and sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is free, they can get a little booklet I've done on mind mapping. But the chapter in this book is eight times as long as the little handout. And it really goes into all the ins and outs of mind mapping and what you can do to become really comfortable and productive with this process that so many people find incredibly helpful. There's another chapter in the book, interestingly, given your question, about the emotions of writing. All about the various emotions of writing and specifically how to deal with them. So that's a chapter that I think many people will find quite helpful. There is also a chapter, I think it's the most important one in the book, on how to break the editing while you write habit. We talked a little bit about that today, but I think I have something like seven hacks in that chapter that'll really help you blow that bad habit to smithereens. So those are kind of the highlights of the book.

Awesome. Where can people learn more about it?

It's going to be sold only through my website. I don't sell through Amazon.com and I don't go into bookstores. I just sell it through my website, www.profitcoach.com. so that's where people can get it. And anyone who's interested can also sign up for my free weekly newsletter. It goes out every Tuesday and I have subscribers to that all around the world.

Excellent. So, guys, check it out. This is, as you can tell from listening to Daphne today, she's got great, great stuff. And I have a review copy of the book. It's excellent and I appreciate you coming on the show today, Daphne, and sharing these ideas with us.

Thanks so much, Ed. Great to talk to you again.

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