#335: Marjorie Turner Hollman’s Journey from Memoir Writer to Book Coach to Author of a Nonfictio...

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 another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With well over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, one of the most important capabilities you can develop as a self employed professional is the ability to pivot and adapt as your business grows and your life situation evolves. Not only is life full of surprises, but what may have worked for you, let's say, five years ago, may not be as palatable or as appropriate today, whether it's the type of clients you work with or the types of projects you pursue, or the side projects or initiatives that you take on. And Marjorie Turner Holman is an excellent example of this. A longtime writer, Marjorie has faced a number of challenges in her life, including some physical disabilities that have forced her to reinvent herself in what she offers to her clients. Her work has evolved from being a freelance writer, to working for a newspaper, to being a personal historian, to a book coach for struggling authors, to the author herself of a nonfiction book series. There are many things I love about Marjorie's story, but I find her resilience and her resourcefulness and her adaptability to be so inspiring. And I think you will too. So I hope you enjoy my conversation today with Marjorie Turner Holman. Hey, Marjorie. Welcome.

I am so tickled to get to chat with you, and I will be talking about what this means to me, but I'm really privileged to get to spend this time with you. Thank you.

Well, I thank you. I appreciate you coming to me. You know, we've been corresponding for several months now, and I'm excited. We finally made it happen. I just love the story you shared with me. And we're going to be unpacking that today. Why don't you give us a bit of background? I'd love to know a couple of things, what you do today and then take us back. The origin story of Marjorie, how you got started, what path you took, and then kind of take us to that pivotal moment where you got that big aha moment about 12 years ago or so.

Yeah, sure. What I'm doing today, I have been a personal historian from what we were talking about earlier, which is helping people record their stories and get them transcribed and transformed into readable narrative to have books that they can share with their Family and friends not getting on the New York Times bestseller list. But that's basically what personal historians do. Get your story, get it written down. Don't think you're going to remember all those stories that your parents told you. What I am doing presently, because that sort of evolved is I am helping people that want to write their own stories but need the support. So I'm basically being more of a book coach, developmental editor, or offering manuscript reviews. So that's an outgrowth of the experience that I've had. I'm enjoying it more. I think it's easier for me. And it's nice to see people getting to do what they need with some support, which is, I feel like a lot of what your work is. So you want me to tell you the backstory of how this has all happened?

Yeah. What were you doing original or tell us how you got started as a writer on your own and then what took you in the direction of the personal historian?

I was a very reluctant writer. I was one of those people that had my mother on my shoulder saying, your grammar isn't right. You need to rewrite that. Just all of the things that keep lots of us from writing. So I actually was, as a single mother, I was gravitated to the world of performing storytelling. I didn't have to write. Wasn't that so exciting? I could just tell the story. That was a good thing. It helped me understand story structure. It also helped me learn participatory workshop principles. And then 30 years ago now, I suddenly was quite ill and had brain surgery to save my life. And I woke up with my right side totally paralyzed. I haven't ever been able to go back to that life that I had before. I live with a changed life. What I could do, because I was housebound for many, many years with seizures and other such, I could write. I had a computer. It made it so I could have some personal connections. This was back when email was exciting and was novel. And so when I would write stories of what my kids were doing and also meditations about living in a changed life, people would write me back. That was so exciting. I was getting feedback, but it was just emails.

So you had a bit of a newsletter. You were publishing this in a way.

Of a newsletter or I just sent out emails. No, they were. Were just straight emails to family and friends. It was just no pressure. Here I am, I have a computer, I've got email, here's what we're doing. And people would write me back. It was a way to get away from the loneliness and the isolation of what I was living through. I wrote enough of these, Just had a conversation with our local newspaper editor and I said, I've done this writing. Would you give me a chance to try writing for you? And she's a gracious woman and gave me the opportunity. I got a neighbor to drive me. I started writing articles for the local paper, which is such a great way to learn how to write. It's consistent, you know, you get feedback, you work with an editor, you get your skin toughened up some. So you understand that editors want you to look good. I did that. And this editor kept seeing that my strength really was in personal profiles. So she kept steering me in that direction. And the better I got at it, the more I wanted to do. And that brings me to. I had been following you for I don't know how many years, just learning and. And you had this audio webinar about writing opportunities out of the box. And so I just said, sure, what am I got to lose but an hour to hear what you have to say? And one of those was talking about Jennifer Campbell. She has a book, how to start your own personal history book. And you put that out and as it got described, it just hit me like a brick of oh my goodness, this is what I've been needing to know about. I'd never heard of it. Within two weeks, I was at a personal history conference in Boston. I live south of Boston, meeting people that I'm still friends with. All these years later, it just the right time. I went into Boston, which was a big deal and just started. It was really very life changing. It taught me the whole realm of self publishing, that whole world that I had never known. And it also got me connecting with other people, sharpening my skills for longer narrative. I'd done 1,000, 2,000 word profiles. This was now 30,000 words that I was helping, drawing people out. And the basis of it is interview. It's as opposed to genealogy, where you're looking at all the dead facts of what people have done. It's the stories of people who are still alive now before they're lost, Getting them documented, getting them readable, making them share them.

Interesting, interesting. So you find yourself at this conference, you realize that this is really what you were meant to do. You'd kind of been going in that direction already. Personal profiles. So tell me about the early days of this. You know, who were your early clients? How did you find people who would love to have their stories documented? But that is a commitment of both time, energy, and financial resources. So how did you find the people who were willing to make those kind of commitments?

The first step that any potential personal historian is advised is go do a sample interview somebody. No financial. Anything involved. Typically just do it. So you learn how much time it takes, what is involved in it, and then you also have a sample to show people. So you're not just talking about the idea. You're saying, here's my book, here's what I've done, here's what I can do for you. You don't want to miss out. As far as finding clients, I had plenty of clients who were ready to work with me for free. You find lots of them for free. Finding people, especially where I live, sort of out in the country, I had a much more difficult time with that. Some people I know are booking people out months, and it helps if you're in more urban areas. It is still possible when you're in more rural areas. I'm in a pretty rural area, and that was probably my biggest challenge. I loved doing the work, and I did have some clients. I also found it personally for me, I got tripped up on legal liabilities. Memoir has a lot of potholes in the road. When you start bringing other people into your story, they may not like to be brought in, and you have to be very mindful in how you do that. And I came across several where it became very problematic and kind of took the fun out of it for me. I found myself moving towards. Basically, people came to me who wanted to write their own book and needed support. And so just kind of by happenstance, they started coming to me and I said, I really like a lot more. It's their book. I don't have the headaches of it. I can cheer them on. And I can do manuscript reviews saying, you know, you can't tell us that you were engaged to one person and then met your future husband and that poor guy that you were engaged to just disappears. Help us.

Yeah.

And you know, the reader's going to be wondering the rest of the book. Where did that poor guy go?

Who?

Did you dump him?

Yes.

So those kinds of things. I love to read, so anybody who's a writer should read a lot. Just because it's like artists with going to the museum and practicing copying the masters. You practice your muscles for writing by reading.

I want to come back to your days as a historian where you were actually writing some personal histories. How long were you doing that before people started coming to you? Who? No, they were just interested in getting some coaching not for you to write it for them.

Sure. Probably about 10 years.

Oh, so it was a long time. Okay.

It was. I wouldn't say, for me that it was financially very satisfying because I really did have a very hard time finding clients.

Well, you said you live in a rural area, so I'm curious as to how much you felt that physical presence mattered, because I assume that a lot of these interviews are conducted over the phone anyway. Or do you find that, no, you have to be physically present there?

The pandemic has changed that. But for the most part, a lot of your clients as a personal historian are going to be older. And so even just handling what we're doing now by zoom is problematic. And so for a lot of potential clients, you really do have to be physically there in person. The pandemic made that much more difficult. And so people adapted some. But for me and my health challenges, I don't travel easily, and so I really had confined myself to about an hour away from my home. So there are a number of clients that I turned down because I physically wasn't able to get to them. So the process is. Did you want me to talk a little bit about the process of being a personal historian?

Well, I would like to touch on some of that, but I. I guess before we get to that, what do you feel, looking back at what went well and what didn't go well, other than physical distance, what other challenges do you have to overcome, and then what do you now realize needs to happen for you to overcome them? So you mentioned the financial viability. So if one of the challenges is, you know, people just didn't have the budget to pay for this, then looking back, what do you think would have been a way to get around that?

What would have been helpful and what didn't happen several times was that I did a memoir for someone who was going to have a big celebration. This happened several times. One, once, they never finished it, and so we never had the celebration. That's basically one of the advices, is always have a book launch with your author so that they can invite their friends and family. And that's where you're going to get word of mouth, because everyone's excited, they see it, they hold the book in their hand, you're right there with them. And so the first one I thought would happen, the family members never finished the book. So all these people that they were going to invite, it never happened. I had another client who was ready to have exactly that 80th birthday party, and his birthday was in June. Of 2020.

I see we weren't doing a lot of parties. Not great timing. Yes.

It wasn't great timing at all. And it would have been up here in Massachusetts, and it just didn't happen. You know what? Life happens.

Sure.

And so those would have been really advantageous. Those are like the primo ways of getting a really good kickstart to move into word of mouth. I did lots of presentations at senior centers, at libraries. I've written articles for the newspaper. I interviewed church members and got their personal history. And that booklet never got published. So, you know, a bunch of different things didn't happen. I did a community history and got paid for that, which was very exciting. And the book launch was April of 2020. Again, just, you know, lost opportunities that there was nothing that could get done. And so, yes, I've moved a lot more to things that I can do online with people who are younger and are able to handle the zoom calls and other such. I work with people now from Washington State, a client I just worked with in Vancouver. I've had people in Virginia. I've had people, you know, I'm not sure. Several people, other projects. Detroit, Milwaukee. It doesn't matter for all those. So that the kind of work that I'm doing now is much more suited to my own challenges and just works better for my stamina.

Got it. So would you say if you had found something that works really well for where you are in life right now, limitations that you have in preferences? But if somebody were really intrigued by this idea of being a memoir writer or personal historian, what two or three things would you tell them that they really need to focus on in order to be successful?

Okay. One of the first things is, like I said, write a sample. Find somebody who's willing to get practiced on. Get a very simple digital recorder. I was a newspaper reporter, so I wrote everything down, and this introduced me to recording a person's voice. It's different. You get a different quality. You also don't miss things that you wished you'd got before, so just aren't relatively inexpensive. I spent $100 on a digital recorder, if you really want to, because you don't want that digital recorder to quit, and then you're stuck, or you've done the interview and found that it didn't work. So backup always back up. What made a big difference for me was finding a personal historian community. Here in New England, we have what's called PhNN Personal Historians Northeast Network. And it goes from New England down to New Jersey, Philadelphia. We Used to have an international organization and it crashed financially in 2017 for unrelated to personal history reasons. So there's an awful lot online. But this PHNN organization is really valuable. They have meetups that are open to the public. Quarterly, pretty much. There's also one in Northwest Pacific, the Pacific Coast. There are a few others, maybe one down in Texas. It isn't as easy to find colleagues as it was, but they are out there.

So it sounds like that could be a good source of potential leads. People who are right in the general public who are very interested in finding a writer.

Right.

And that's one of the places they would go. Which means that if you're a member, you're active, you can potentially find some. Some opportunities. Got it.

Doing the, you know, the practice project, having something in hand, finding colleagues. Don't go and buy a whole recording studio. Start simple because you don't know which direction you're going to end up. Most people have some specialties and then just talk to people and I doubt find that it's that what's missing people are, you know, what are you going to be sorry for when it comes to. By the time you're at a funeral, it's too late to get that person's stories. So you look for the pain point and start practicing conversations with people, finding out what they do have, finding out what they wish they had and what are they going to do to make that happen. It's really a hard sell sometimes because for most of us, we don't think about it until it's too late. And so that's emphasizing that possibility of loss is, you know, from a marketing standpoint is really important. But people don't like to think about loss. So you have to kind of push the engine a little bit and say you don't want to wait till the funeral to say, oh, I guess I wish.

So it seems like the kind of the thing that you're probably better off from a marketing standpoint to talk to the converted than to try to convert people. Right. So have it set up so that your marketing educates. But by the time you have a conversation with somebody, they are sold that they want to do this. Not just sold, they're highly motivated. They don't need to be told. You need to start today.

Genealogy is a big, big deal. And people don't draw the line from genealogical research to interviewing the people that are still alive. So there's an awareness of genealogy. They're not making the connection that they're missing an opportunity to talk to People who are still alive. So that's still an education. People don't typically need to get educated about genealogy. They understand that. They have television shows about it. There's a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of practitioners, a lot of genealogy groups. What I know that personal historians have done is go in and talk to genealogy groups and help them understand and maybe partner. I have partnered with genealogists. I've actually gotten referrals from them to work with clients.

Yeah, it's perfect. Jumping off point. I get that. So let's now move into the area that you've transitioned to a little bit more, because I'd like to learn a little bit more about what you're doing. What do you call yourself today? How do you refer to yourself?

Several different things. I call myself an editor now, which I never would have done when I was a reluctant writer. I'm not a copy editor, meaning that editing level of getting things so that they're ready for a proofreader. I know there's copy editing that's more commercial writing that it kind of mixed terms. So I call myself a book coach, a developmental editor, which is looking at a story and saying, how are you going to make this the most compelling that you can be? That's where my storytelling skills kick in. That training in telling stories. I have a strong sense of beginning, middle and end. And how do you make things flow from one to the next to the next? So I've got a couple of different hats. They all complement each other. For the most part. I'm doing book coaching, which is taking people at hand. People get very intimidated about the self publishing process or whether they should do hybrid publishing or self publishing. And I'm able to kind of demystify that. It's all part of the book coaching is getting their book to publication and making it so they don't have to grasp all of the myriad details that are involved. That I will provide that support because I've done it so many times.

Is there any particular type of author that you work with or is it all over the place?

Most of them have been memoir. I really enjoy topical memoirs as opposed to chronological. They typically fall into one category or the other chronological. I was born, I went to school, I got married, and I did whatever is amazing that I wanted to write about. And here I still am. A lot of biographies follow that. Topical basically focuses on here's something I've been really interested in. Here's what got me there, here's what it's about, and here's the various manifestations of that topic. I helped with some really cool ones. A guy in Washington state was a spill responder. All those hazardous waste things that people have to rush in and not let oil into the water and such. He wrote an amazing book, but he needed to add some more humor into it. He needed to get his beginnings of his chapters to be punchier. There was no good flow from one to the next. And I was able to point him in that direction and then get him working with other editors and made a really, really cool book. I'm very, very proud.

Oh, that sounds neat. That's. It sounds like he'd get involved as a book coach with people at different stages. Right. Somebody's already got somewhat of a manuscript, but it needs work. Or what about somebody who hasn't even started? They know they have that story, that book in them, but they haven't been able to really get started. Do you work with those people as well?

I think so. I'm trying to think of an instance of that. Most of people have some idea of what they want to write but are really struggling with focus, so they have a germ of an idea. I would work with someone like that. Yes.

It could be I have the idea, but, you know, I need some help getting it out of me. Or they think they have it down. You just named an example where. Well, yeah, but it's not very focused. It's kind of all over the place. Or I have something workable, but it's got issues. Right. So that's where the developmental editing really comes into play.

I can't think of an instance when somebody came to me just with a germ of an idea and said, help me write this. I'm trying to remember. I feel like I might have, but can't think of it right now. Most of the people I can think of have written something but know that they need some help.

Okay.

They just, you know, they understand, but they're not even sure what to do. And so I basically will do a manuscript review and then go back and say, here's what I've seen. Here's what we can do. If you'd like to work with me.

What would you say is your typical coaching engagement? Lengthwise? How long do you typically work with an author?

Again, it varies. I have worked with a person for a year. I've worked with a person six months. I've worked with a person just a month or two. It really completely depends on the quality of their writing, how much work they're able to do, how much Time they're able to commit to it. A lot of times I will meet with a person every week or two if they're really motivated and then they'll send me stuff before we meet again and then we'll go from there. But we do regular check ins. So a lot of it is writing accountability.

I like it. I mean it sounds like I can tell that you are really enjoying this work, that this is really what you were meant to be doing. And it's interesting how it evolved, right? Because I don't get the sense that this was your plan all along. It just kind of evolved into that it wasn't.

Because then it takes us into my Easy Walks books and that was not at all what I had in mind. But if I hadn't done all this other work and hadn't learned the self publishing when I sensed the need, when I saw the need, I would have just said, well, that's not something I can do. And I had the tools in place. I'd already published self published books so I knew I could do it. And what it required was going out and doing the field work. Did you want me to explain just a little of how that I was.

Just going to ask you, why don't you tell us about the Easy Walk books? Because I think it's a fascinating story and really want to know where it is taking you. Not just the books themselves, but the community that you've been able to build.

Right. I was writing for a newspaper even as I was doing this personal history work and I just get bored after a while. I'm an instigator, I'm not a sustainer. I like to get things started. And so I said to the editor, how about if I just write about local trails that people might want to visit, we can just make it a series. And so I went out with my photographer and visited local trails that I knew of. And after about a year, so about 12, I finished that and said, yeah, I'm ready to do something else. So I just put them aside. I kept trying to find people that would put them up on a website. I had a sense it might be a resource and nobody had the capacity to do that. I had a writing website. I'd been inspired by you and from Peter Bowerman is it? Yeah, that's where I learned about you was through Peter, through his book. So you know, I had a website in marjorieturner.com through all these changes. It was really good. Peter said, just make it your name, that's not going to change. And What a great piece of advice that was. So I put the articles on my website, and people kept finding my website. They would ask questions like, where's Joe's Rock? Well, it's a trail in the next town. And, you know, they kept finding my article. After about the 500th time, somebody had asked, where's Joe's Rock? I said, you know, I think there's a need there. I don't think people know where to go to get outside. And I mentioned this to my editor, and she said, do you really think there's enough places to make a book? Well, why don't I see if I can? This was not pre Internet, but very little was on the Internet. This was 2012, and so I'd already been learning about publishing, and I had to go out and do field work, walking into conservation offices and saying, do you have any trails that might be enough for me to walk on there with my hiking poles and not real obvious paralysis, but I can only take easy walks. So I went out and did the field work. Some were one and done and didn't get into the book. Others I started, you know, searching out, looking for trail kiosks. And before I had enough to make a small book and just printed it and started marking it, somebody said, get a Facebook page. And I didn't have one, so I made a Facebook page. What do you put on Facebook? You put up pictures. So I went to more trails and put up pictures of the ones that I was visiting then. And I realized I'd written another half a book, so I needed to finish that one. So it just kind of take on. Took on a life of its own. And then the pandemic, of course, really changed things. Trails were mobbed. People had no place to go except outdoors. And that's where I had created a Facebook group. And suddenly I was getting a hundred more people every day. So it's up to 13,000 people now. Massachusetts, Rhode island, and beyond.

That is amazing. So you've created a whole community of people.

It's got a database. I wish it were on another platform because it's a borrowed platform, not mine. It could go away tomorrow. But that's where people are, and it's searchable. So every person in that group who puts something up, it becomes part of a growing database. I'm the taskmaster, and I say, if you're going to share something with us, there's people who are disabled, there's people who are older. You need to tell us where it is, how to get there, and address what Are the trail surfaces like. Because for those of us with mobility challenges, any trail guide that neglects to tell you what the trail surface is is excluding a large part of the population. So an easy walk is not too many routes, not too many rocks, relatively level, with firm footing and something of interest along the way. I don't like to think how many years it took me to get. But that's an easy walk. Doesn't matter how short or long. It's up to you what your stamina is. Tell me about the trail surfaces. Help me find it, Help me know what's there, help me know if there's benches there. Is it sunny? Is it shady? All the things that people with limited stamina or mobility or other challenges, you go and you find that it doesn't work, but you go home's disappointed. And so giving people that information empowers them to make their own choices. So now I've written four trail guides and other additional books, including my memoir, why Easy Walks? Which goes back to losing my ability to walk and learning to walk again and learning to walk with support.

Wow, so you have a whole series.

I just published Easy Walks in Milwaukee. Easy Walks and Paddles in Milwaukee. I've never been to Milwaukee, so I have collaborators. The one in Massachusetts that I just did earlier this summer, I had collaborators, one of whom is legally blind, you know, opening up doors that I never imagined.

I'm curious about how you balance your coaching business now with this other self publishing arm that you now have. Right. Because there are things to do there. It sounds like you don't like to sit still, which is wonderful, but how can you balance all of this when you are excited about both of them?

For one thing, the collaboration has really freed me from the field work, which is, yes, I enjoy doing it, but physically it's hard for me. So it's bursts of effort in discrete time. My Milwaukee book, they had a deadline that they wanted to get for a book launch. And so the week before, as we were going back and forth with edits, was pretty intense and I did spend quite a bit of time, but I was sort of between clients for the editing job. So that worked out. Right now I have three different editing clients, but I also am more a coordinator for a lot of it. Once they've got to where they're ready for a copy edit or a line edit, then I refer out. So I've got trusted people that I can work with that I can just say, here you go, talk to me in a week or two or three, whenever you're done with that, and then we can go back. So it's not a constant effort. And it's in. I don't like to say fits and starts, but they're very discreet periods of time. And if I need to say, I can't get to you till next week, I do. So mostly it's worked out. It's not so intense. And I honestly can't work all the time. I work maybe three or four hours in a day, but I am very consistent. I do it almost every day. And my husband will finally say, could you come downstairs and get away from the computer? And that's good too, just to get out for a walk.

I love the consistency because I preach the same thing. It's not about the number of hours, it's about consistency. Just doing a little bit of every day on whatever you're working on, whether it's, you know, some initiatives, some new projects. It's better if you do a little bit every day. You build momentum that way.

I truly don't work 8, 10 hours at a time. I physically cannot do that. I lose my focus and I just really not able to maintain that. But yeah, I work usually late morning into early afternoon. By 4 o', clock, I fade. It's very hard to focus after that. If there's something really necessary, I'll come back up after supper and maybe work for an hour or two. But mostly it's limited time, but very consistent.

So I'm curious about where you see things heading. You know, what future projects do you have in mind? What ideas are you thinking about pursuing? Anything come to mind.

I would welcome more collaborators with the Easy Walks projects. It's just fun. It isn't tremendously lucrative for me at this point because the people that do the field work deserve to get paid for their time. I'm basically writing contracts that make it so I keep the online sales. And since they're local, any marketing efforts are to their benefit for the physical books. So, you know, I gave the copyright away for one nonprofit organization I worked with. And I'm really sorry I did because I no longer have the control to be able to order books when I do make local presentations. So for these others, even though they're a long ways from where I live, I want to keep the copyright because it makes it a growing body of work that I have. I'm happy for them to get rewarded for their work and I would welcome more of those. Like I said, I'm negotiating with somebody in Detroit right now. Never been to Detroit.

There you go. So we may have a few listeners who might reach out to you and, you know, with some ideas there.

It takes a lot of cooperation. You know, it really gives a lot of communication. But zoom or phone calls and email, or we transfer for documents, it's really not a barrier at this point. And it's. For me, it's tremendous amount of fun.

Oh, I bet. I bet. So, Marjorie, as we wrap up, I got a couple of questions for you. One is a bigger question and then an easy question for you. But I'm wondering, as you reflect on the journey that you've taken, what impact do you hope you will have on the writing community and beyond that, particularly those with disabilities?

I did write a book specifically targeting those who live with a changed life, and that's the more spiritual side of things. It's my liturgy of Easy Walks. It's a series of meditations about the process and the experience of dealing with loss, dealing with change, finding a way to create a new life that you never planned on. I have been told that that book has made a difference to some people. Oh, I bet that means a lot. It's not just that it's my story, but people are able to see those core, less life lessons in what I'm writing about. It's not just me, me, me. Here's my story, here's life lessons learned. Take what you can from them and leave the rest. So for that, I feel very strongly I've become much more of a disability advocate. When I first started writing the Easy Walks books, I didn't really acknowledge the disability. It was just a trail guide. And as I've gotten into it and done more presentations and had more questions, I've become much more comfortable. For a long time, I wanted to pass as normal until I wasn't able to. And at this point, I've really made peace with a lot of that and understand how important advocacy is and for normalizing differences and helping people understand that. All of us live with adaptations to get through life. We have stairs. We don't all have to climb up ladders. We don't have to climb like climbing a tree to get in our house. We have cars that get us placed. We don't have to go everywhere on foot. We've got running water as opposed to hauling things. So much of modern life is adaptations without the resentments that there are for people with disabilities. People grow impatient with, why do we have to spend money on that? Well, we spend money on every kind of adaptation, but mostly we don't acknowledge that they're there because they're for normal people. They're everyday stuff, but they're all adaptations of modern life.

That is a powerful perspective, and thank you for sharing that. I think that's beautiful. I'm in awe of what you're doing, and thank you for being you, for being authentic, for being an advocate for people who may not really have, you know, that voice. So I. I think that's fantastic. I love that you're able to take your gifts and your talents and your passions and you're able to give back to the world.

I write a lot about how powerful it is to feel like we have something to give because especially if you're in a tough place in your life, that feeling needy is not an admired part of our culture. It's a very shameful part, for the most part. And learning to understand that everyone has needs, everyone has something to give. And if nobody ever does, the receiving. Who are you going to give to?

Yes.

Somebody's gotta do it.

Yes. I love it. I love it. So, Marjorie, so here's my last question for you. I want people to know where to learn more about you, your work, your books. Where can I send them? What would be the best place or places?

Thank you. It's Marjorie Turner dot com. Thank you, Peter Ballerman, for telling me that years ago. To advise, just use your name, M A R J O R I E. Marjorie Turner will get you all sorts of things there. The books, the editing, the Facebook group.

Is there a link to the Facebook group there?

I think it's in there. The Facebook group is easy walks. Massachusetts, Rhode island and beyond.

Okay, so that's an easy thing to search for.

Okay, I think so. Yeah. It's a private group just to keep the spam out. But all you have to do is tell me where you like to walk. It's not tough. So I'll let you in. And then it's a protected space that anybody can share in.

Well, Marjorie, thank you for coming on today, for sharing your story, sharing your insights with us. I do want to just commend you for one thing. Beyond everything that I've already said, you took action. Took in what I like to call inspired action. You know, what is it? 12 years ago, you. You heard, read something I put out there, and that was a spark that took you on a very different path. And that might not seem like a big deal, but I can't tell you how many people just hear something, get that nudge. They don't act on it, and things don't get better. So I think you're a beautiful example of someone who went ahead and they felt inspired. They didn't wait. They started looking into it, started taking action, and look at you. So thank you for doing that and thank you for reminding all of us that that's super important.

You know, a lot of us, I, I don't want to keep you, but a lot of us have that inspiration to give people. And if we ever hear that somebody's inspired, we say, oh, wow, that was really something. And I say, well, it doesn't take a lot, but it takes something. And for those of you, those of us who offer that something, to see somebody take it and run with it really means a lot. So I have felt grateful that I could tell you that you did something and that was what it took. So do something. You never know what's going to happen. I bet you didn't have any idea that that was going to happen.

Not at all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And we'll end on that note. So, guys, check out Marjorie's website, check out her books, her resources, and again, Marjorie, thanks for coming on today. I really appreciate you.

My joy. Thank you so much for everything.

Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More in Less Time. The Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the detail show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.