Paula Rizzo talks with publishing expert AJ Harper about writing a book that lasts. They cover the book's core promise to readers, breaking the project into daily word targets, using writing sprints, and finding accountability partners. Harper runs a 14-week workshop for aspiring authors.
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Hey there, welcome to Inside Scoop. I'm Paula Rizzo and I'm thrilled to have you here today. We're talking about a topic near and dear to my heart, books and how to write them, but more importantly, how to write a book that is going to be on someone's shelf for a really long time. One of those books, you know what I'm talking about, those types of books that you look at and you read again and again and again and you say this is a life-changing book. We want you to be that kind of author. You want people to think that about you. And since I love lists, lots of people tell me that on their bucket list is to write a book. So we're going to help you to cross off write book. It won't happen in one day, I assure you, but we're going to give you the tools to be able to do that because I'm going to bring on in just a minute a good friend of mine, AJ Harper, who is a fabulous publishing guru. Productivity is always on my mind. A developmental editor, an author, and she will be here in just a second to give us some tips and tricks on how to actually get this done. It's totally doable. You can absolutely do it. And I want you to tag a friend. Think about it right now and say, hey, you know what? If there's somebody in your life who has been wanting to write a book, something you wanted to do. If you're watching the replay, leave us questions throughout. If you're here with us live, leave us questions throughout as well. We'll be able to get to those throughout the broadcast, but I want this to be interactive. So if you have questions, leave them for us below. And also I have something that I think will be very, very helpful for, for you as far as lists go. If you go to paularizzo.com/list, what else? paularizzo.com/list, you can get my List Making Starter Kit. And the value here is that you need to put the time and effort into writing the book on your list. So there may be other things that you'll have to take off your list so that you can actually do this task. So I'd love to be able to, to help you with that. So again, go to paularizzo.com/list. I'm also a LinkedIn Learning instructor and I do have several, several courses with LinkedIn. If you go to paularizzo.com/linkedin, you can check them out. And this one in particular, I think would be really, really interesting because it's about How to set boundaries and how to protect your time. Again, if you're going to write a book, you need to protect your time. You can't always go out to that happy hour when we can leave the house again because maybe you got to write. You have, you know, 50, 50 pages you have to write or, you know, 500 words or whatever it is that you're working on. You have to be able to say no to certain things so that you can say yes to the right thing. So I hope that that's helpful for you, you know, to be able to get that done because it is it. It takes commitment to do this. And it's something that if you would like to do it, you absolutely can. And the person that will help you, I assure you, is Miss AJ Harper, who's here with me today. Thank you, AJ, for being here.
I'm so excited about this conversation.
I know, I know. We want better books out in the world. That's the point, right? What is the difference between that book that people shop around and it's like, "Oh, it's a nice business card, glorified business card." And the must-read, the book that we want to take with us and we, you know, put all of our comments in the margins and all that. What is that must-have book thing?
Well, I think that term better business card, I'm so tired of hearing that term. People were using it starting when I started in the industry about 16 years ago. Right. And let's just think about a business card though. What do we do with them? We toss them. We put them in the garbage or we put them in our purse, we forget about it. Now we can't remember who that person was. Why did we even do that? Now it's in the garbage again. And that's why do we want that? What do we want? A better version of something we toss in the trash. It doesn't actually make sense. What we want is a book that really touches people, that speaks to their aspirations, that speaks to what's holding them back and that connects with them. But more importantly, we want a book that actually delivers on its promise. Mm-hmm. And when you write a book that delivers on its promise, then that becomes a must-read for someone. Because even if you change someone's life just a little bit, it's better in some way, then that book becomes something that they wanna hang onto and tell people about. And it's that last piece that's tell people about. So if you have big aspirations for thought leadership or as a speaker, or you wanna be a career author like some of the people I work with, You need to actually have a book people want to say, "Hey, did you read that? You totally should read that." And that's not going to happen if you are focused instead on just getting a business card out into the world.
Totally. Absolutely. And you said some really interesting things about delivering on the promise. I want to talk about that in a minute. But also, one of the books that you've worked on, you worked for years with Mike Michalowicz as a co-writer with him. And those books are amazing. And one of the One of the first books that I read as an entrepreneur was Profit First. And it's because a friend of mine, a fellow entrepreneur who was very successful, said, "You need to read Profit First." And I was like, "What is that?" But exactly your point. That's exactly how it goes. And now when I talk to people, I'm like, "Oh, you know what you need to read? Profit First. Just read Profit First and you'll fix it. This is what you need to know. This is how you have to do it." Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about that promise. You know, I talk about this with, with videos when, when I, you know, work with media training clients and people who want to produce more videos. I'm always like, what is the intention of the video? Because as a TV producer for years, anytime I did any story, it was always about the viewer. It's about the audience. It's about what will they get out of it. So to have that crystal clear in your mind is the only thing that then will be able to give you something really compelling afterwards. It's not about you. It's not about you being famous. It's not about you, whatever. So talk to me about the promise and how do you figure out what it should be in the book?
Well, you first have to zero in, like you said, on audience. So you have to know who your reader is. And a lot of people, there's a misconception about reader. Most people think that it has to be an avatar. You create this very detailed idea of who your person is, which can be very effective in marketing. But that's actually not that effective when you write a book because hopefully you're writing to a specific type of person, but not with too much detail that leaves people out. What really connects different demographics of people is what's in their heart. So you're writing to a reader that wants something but something is standing in their way. They want something and something's standing in their way. And that could be people from different demographics who both want the same thing, different types of people who want the same thing but can't get it.
Right.
And so having that clarity first, and then the promise is hopefully gonna get them closer to that thing they want. So it might not be the whole thing. One of the things I talk about in my own book is that the promise is a sacred contract with you and your reader. And we have a tendency to put these pie-in-the-sky promises in a book. I mean, I'm sure we've all seen people talking about, you'll make $10 million, right? Whatever. Or you're going to find the love of your life or whatever the promise is. But can you really promise that? There are too many variables like life. I mean, we've all been experiencing that for the last year and a half. We've all been through so many curves and hit so many landmines. It's really more about what can you promise the reader that will happen for them by the end of the book. And that's the key phrase there, by the end of the book.
Oh, I love that.
So it can be a simple change in mindset. It could be relief from something. It could be a greater understanding. Maybe it's a framework or process that they've learned. Maybe it's knowledge that they've gained. But by deciding what can I promise them that will get them closer to what they want, And that then becomes your objective for creating the book. So instead of writing your ideas, your stories, your framework, the things you want to say, now you're writing only what will get them to that promise that you must deliver.
Right. And it does help also to sort of take any of the imposter syndrome, I think, out of it as well, because then it becomes, I'm here to be of service. And I mean, it's the same thing I talk about when people want to do media or they want to do video or whatever it is. I'm always like, how do How dare you not tell people what you know? That audience needs you. They need what you know. So that's helpful too, to be thinking of that book promise is— it takes pressure off the way that you look at it because it's much more about, okay, in this finite amount of time that I read through this book, at the end, what will happen to me because I've read it? What will I have done? What will the transformation be? I mean, it's less scary that it's like, "Oh my gosh, I have to change their life for the rest of their life always," which is a tall order. Hopefully the book will also do that. But it's a really nice way of sort of looking at it in a smaller package versus this big, big, oh my gosh, overwhelming thing. What do you tell newer authors who are just getting a foot out there and saying like, "Hey, I kind of want to write a book. I think I want to do it." What is literally the first step of this?
Uh, the first step is to really think about that reader. It really honestly is. Whenever I get a manuscript from someone who isn't in one of my workshops, I'm just— it was a referral or something— oh my gosh, it's 9 times out of 10, or 9.9 times out of 10, they don't have clarity about their reader, and it shows. And we have to rewind, tear the thing down, and start over. So I would say spend as much time as you need to get clarity about who your reader is. And the very best question to ask yourself if you're just starting out is, who do you want to hang out with for a few years? Yeah, because it's a process of developing, writing, editing, publishing a book, which can take years. And I know that there are options that say they can get you there faster, but there's a reason why it takes a minute, you know. So it's a long game. Yeah, it's a long game. Publishing is a long game. Authorship is an identity and a lifestyle and a and, and a business. It's not just— it's not about writing a book. Authorship is something else, you know? Um, you know that because you know what it takes to promote a book.
Totally. I'm still talking about my, my first book that I wrote. That was 6 years ago. It's never gone, you know? You always want to talk about it, hopefully.
Well, but see, you just said something important. Um, I once had a client, uh, who hired me to write her second book when I was a ghostwriter. And she said— I said, well, let me get your first book. I want to get your voice down, you know, so I can match that. And she said, oh my gosh, don't, don't, please don't buy that book. I don't want you to read it.
Oh wow.
Can you imagine if you felt that way about your book?
That's terrible.
It's terrible. And the thing is, that's where you see so many abandoned books on Amazon. You can tell they're abandoned because there's 2 reviews or less than 10 reviews and nobody's doing anything. And You haven't seen anything in years on there. That person doesn't love their book. And it starts with understanding who you want to serve because you're going to be hanging out with them for so long in terms of writing for them, but then just trying to connect with readership and support them after the launch.
Yeah, it's true. That is like coming to terms with like, who is the audience and do you want to hang out with them? One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given when I first started a blog, so I've had a blog, listproducer.com for 10 years. I've been writing about lists and productivity for 10 years. 10 years. And a friend of mine who was also an author said, you know, when I came to her and said, you know, I think I want to write a book, she said, don't write a book, start a blog, do 50 blog posts, and if you still care about lists that much and you find that other people care about lists that much, then keep going and see if you can develop it into something else. And it was some of the best advice that I was given because, you know, if you jump in on something that you think you like You know, it might not actually be the thing you want to talk about for 10 years, right? 10 years.
That's the point. Uh, you know, people are often trying to choose between which book they should write. Oh, I've got 2 or 3 book ideas. The question always comes back to who do you want to hang with? And then also that heart book, right? The book that, you know, is really on your heart. We have a tendency to try and, well, I should write this other book because I think it you know, would be easier for me, or everybody thinks I should write that. But you gotta have that calling in your heart toward it, or you're not gonna sustain that journey, 'cause like we said, the publishing game is long.
It is. Oh my gosh. So, so long. And you know, I come from the TV world where things is like 20 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute later, we're done with that story and onto the next thing. And when I, you know, got into the world of publishing, I was like, wow, does this take forever? And I remember both my books I handed in early.
To the— I bet you did.
Oh my God, of course I did. And they were like, literally, I think the first publisher was like, in the history of this publishing house, no one has ever handed anything in early. And you know, we're still not going to look at it for like 2 weeks, right? And I was like, it's fine. I just needed it out of my hands. I needed to be done with it. You know? Cross it off the list. Exactly. Well, let's talk about some tactical ways to actually get the writing done because you do need to be able to put it on your list. But not put write book on the list because you will never write a book in one day. You need to pull it apart into little pieces. So what do you tell your students and how do you help to support them to actually get the work out?
Sure, great question. Well, in workshop, we first spend a number of weeks developing, getting clear about reader, getting clear about core message, getting clear about that promise we just talked about, writing a really transformational outline that, that actually delivers on the promise. We do all that work. So before you sit down to write, it's important to get all the clarity you can rather than just write to write. And it's okay if you're writing on a really difficult topic, you know, maybe trauma or something that happened in the past you're trying to deal with. It's okay to just journal and write about that with no aim in mind. But when you sit down to actually write the actual book, you need to have that development in place because, I mean, you'll appreciate this, it just takes longer to write a book that you aren't 100% clear about. Yeah. So it's important to do that work. And then once we do that, what you want is to have— I have a 3-step surefire way of beating that mythical writer's block, which I really don't think is a thing. And believe me, I used to think it was a thing and I bought into it because I've been a writer for more than 30 years. And it isn't a thing.
Right.
So the 3 things that you need, the 3 practices you need in place is number 1 is to reframe from thinking about the quality of your work to thinking about quantity. So I always say the first draft is just math. You figure out how many words you're going to need, and you can learn more about that from publishers and so forth. But how many words was your last book?
Not that many. So my first book was 30,000 words. Okay. And the second one was 15,000 because it's a workbook. So a lot of it was fill in the blanks.
Okay, cool. So those are shorter books, but actually shorter books are on trend right now. We have shorter attention span. So I'm so in vogue, AJ. You are in vogue. You are in vogue. But let's say you wanted to write a book that's 30,000 words. What you would do is break it down and figure out how many words you would have to write per day in order to meet some sort of goal you have in the future. Or you could say, I can do, say, 200 words a day and and you'll be able to figure out how long it will take you. So you can reverse engineer it either way. You, instead of thinking, I'm gonna write for 3 hours or 4 hours today, you think, I just need to get my 200 words in.
I love that. It's such a good way of looking at, like, you can do that, but also, like, this is very, this was very different for me too, because I was not used to write as a, also a writer, but a television writer. My currency was time. I would write a script that would be a minute-long script, right? I have no idea how many words that is. I just know it takes a minute to read it, you know?
Right.
But then when you're thinking in terms of publishing— so that's one of the big mindset switches too. If you are starting as a brand new writer and you haven't done, you know, anything in publishing, the currency here is words, words, words.
So that'll be in your contract.
How many words? I remember in the— when they put it in my first contract, I was like, I don't even know if I can write that many words. And 30,000 words now, to me now, is like, oh, that's like nothing, you know. But at the time I was like, that's a lot of words. But I think also doing the exercise of writing, maybe timing yourself to say, how many words can I write in 25 minutes? You know, what can I actually do in that, in that short time frame? You know, what is the minimum and the maximum that I can actually do would be helpful too.
Right. So that's the second piece is that first we figure out a word count and you can adjust it once you figure out if it's doable for you. I always say go really low because you do not ever want to disappoint yourself. We have this inner critic, which I call the troll, and the troll tells you really reasonable things. That's why the troll is so effective. They just sound like they make sense. You know, they don't sound crazy or mean. They're just like, you know, 'You probably can't do that because you have this other thing to do.' Right.
It sounds kind of realistic, right?
You're like, I got the reasonable over-the-shoulder troll, right? Yeah. Why don't you make sense? To get past that, you have to have a very doable, low-expectation word count goal. Don't go crazy and say, 'I'm going to do 5,000 words today.' Right. Don't do it. That's a bad day. Let me tell you, that's not a day you want to have. I've had double that days. So just do something that's manageable. And then the second part is to set yourself up for writing sprints. So this is something that I do in workshop. And then I also have a group that just meets for writing sprints every weekday. And it's two 25-minute sprints at a minimum with a 5-minute break in between. And it's not revolutionary. It's the Pomodoro method. A lot of people— Use an egg timer. But the beauty of it is you agree for these 25 minutes, I will just write and then I'm going to take a break and then I'll write for 25 more minutes and donezie done. Done, done, done. Yep.
I agree. And I have been doing that. You know, now I think, you know, I'm working on a fiction book. I do. So yes. And I have been doing that for, oh gosh, about a year, year and a half maybe. Because, you know, you're in the middle of doing all your other stuff. When do you find time for it? Well, I do it on Fridays. I have a set time every Friday from 2:00 PM on, uh, and I meet with a writing partner. She's working on a memoir, something completely different. And we do exactly that. We set up two time blocks for 25 minutes and we just go and we write. And it's literally the only way that I've been able to consistently continue to do work on that novel. And it is the way that I wrote my second book, Listful, uh, Living, because I had work, you know, other stuff I was doing, and I blocked that time on Fridays. But I was very specific about what I was writing, which was very helpful for me too. When you do have the clarity, to your point of saying like, this is my outline, this is what it looks like, I'm going to write this part today so that you know and you're not just sitting there procrastinating like, what could I write today? What should I do? You know, do you give yourself assignments or you tell your students like, I'm with something in mind?
Yeah. So if you see behind me, I've got my outline for my own book behind me. That's my outline. And everything, everything in pink is a teaching point and everything in blue is a story. And then the yellow is research and so forth. And, and I like to do it like that because I like to move things around and just have a visual. And in the morning, because I get up at 6:00 to write with my writing community in the morning, I'll grab a Post-it and I will write to that Post-it and it's whatever I feel like. So because I've already laid out the outline, I'm not too worried about it. I'm just going to write that teaching point all the way through or that story all the way through. And it's not going to be great. It's just going to be done. Just get it out there.
Yeah.
Just like you talk about, you know, just checking off things off the list because book, great books, must-read books are not written in first drafts. They are made in editing. Hmm.
Such a good point. There's more to it. It doesn't have to be perfect right away.
It doesn't have to be perfect right away. You just, as I say, you've got to get the clay on the table so you can make the sculpture. And that's, that's all it is. Let's just get all the clay on the table and then let's see what we've got. And the problem is when people don't get that book checked off on their list is because they're stuck in first draft. They can't finish it. And then they put that first draft in the drawer unfinished, believing that it has to be of a certain quality. There's never been in the history of time a first draft that was great, period.
Right.
That's why we need editing. So just get her done, focus on the numbers. And then, like you said, have a writing practice. That's what— that's that second part, which is writing sprint practice. Yours is on Fridays. You could have— mine is on every weekday at 6 o'clock in the morning. Um, it could also be, uh, I'm gonna do Saturdays. So the third component though is community. Okay, so by you already doing that, you got a writing partner. So in our writing sprint community and in our workshop, we all meet at the same time, and just by having that appointment, it, it lifts you up and, and holds you accountable. And those people don't even have to say, hey, you didn't show up today. It's just the appointment that matters, right?
Right.
Yeah, it's true.
You show up for each other, you know. You show up because it's like, I don't feel like writing today, but you know what, they're gonna be there, so I don't want to disappoint. I want to make sure that I show up and I do this. And, you know, you talk about similar things, and, and, uh, you have people that understand. You know, you might not be surrounded by writers or surrounded by authors or people who care about books as much as you do. It's nice to have that community. And I want to throw up this website. I've been throwing it up a little bit here and there, but this website here, ajharper.com/top-3-authors. If you go there, AJ, tell them what that's all about.
So in my workshop, which is a 14-week course, I only accept 15 students and they love these writing sprints to get their book done. I mean, it's actually a couple of times a day during weekdays. And some people ask me, could I create that just the sprint thing for folks who aren't— or just want to write together but aren't in the workshop? And so I created that last summer, and it is so fun because we're all working on different things. They can ask me questions in the breaks, and we actually cover a lot of stuff about publishing, creative work, marketing, all of those things. A number of students finish their first drafts in record time, uh, just by showing up to this writing community at 9 o'clock in the morning and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. That's it.
Yeah, it's like you're accountable, you're gonna show up, you're gonna be there. I love that. So absolutely check that out, it's a great resource. And I just want to tie a little bow around your, your 3, your, your 3, um, tips there. One is to, you know, reframe your thinking around quantity. So we're talking about page— not page, um, Not page numbers, but words. Words of the currency we're talking about, right? Number 2, set yourself up for some writing sprints. 25 minutes of focused time, Pomodoro, uh, we'll get it done. And a writing community. Get a writing community. People that will support you, people who get you, people who know what you're doing. I want to go to some questions because we've gotten some questions that have come in. And if you're watching us right now, please leave your questions below. We'll get to them. Uh, I wanna, I wanna dive in on some of these that we've gotten here. Dr. Caroline says, "Thank you, great tips as I am writing my first book." Awesome. That's great. Awesome feedback is another one that I've got here. And there's another question here. Let's see. I'll get back to that in a sec. But there's one here about writing a book with an accountability buddy. This person from LinkedIn says that they have written their first book with an accountability buddy. "We didn't write together, but we met weekly and held each other accountable in a very friendly way and took a deep interest in each other's projects, it turned out to be so powerful. It really is. All, all of my books I had a writing partner for, you know, my first book too. I remember I would meet with her. She was writing fiction. We would meet in a cafe in the East Village. We were not like great friends or anything at the time. We would just be like, hey, how was your weekend? Talk for 5 minutes. Okay. Get to work. And then that was it. That's all you need really.
Yeah. Fiction writers are really good at this, by the way. I remember I was at the American— I was presenting at the American Library Association before COVID So I guess it's almost 2 years ago and I had a number of— I also work with fiction authors and a number of my authors were there and they texted this group text. They said, okay, café, 7 o'clock, we're going to do 45 minutes. And I ran down there and I have a photo of it, the 3 of them at the table and they were just grinding it out for 45 minutes and then they went back up to their rooms.
And that was that.
That was that. It's really, really helpful to have that. Community, especially if it's not— this is a key thing though— to not have a— it's not a critique group, right? Um, you need to avoid that in the early stages because your work is your little baby and it's very fragile, and you have to protect that baby from any criticism whatsoever, even well-intentioned criticism. It's so true.
It'll shut you down and it'll put you into that fight-or-flight mode, and you will put that book away and it will never come back again, you know. You will not feel strong. Um, that, that is great advice. We have another question here about co-authors. What about getting a co-author? You can speak about this.
I can. Yeah. So I've, I've been writing with Mike Michalowicz since his very first book, but that it's evolved. So it started as a ghostwriter relationship, which he's transparent about. And now over time, which has been about 13 years, We have this way of working together, and I would call it more of a co-authorship arrangement. It can be great, but it's like a marriage. Right, right.
It's very close.
Yeah, you need to try some smaller projects first and see if you work well together because, you know, you need to have the right chemistry. And you need to also— we're back to the reader. If you're both totally focused on serving that reader and delivering on a promise, And that's one of the reasons Mike's books are so impactful for people, because we are just like a dog with a bone about that. We have to deliver on the promise. We will edit, edit, edit until we do. And if your co-author doesn't share that same value, then you have a problem. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, right. You need to make sure that it is a love match in the writing department. Love match. Yes, you need a love match. Well, this has been so helpful. Thank you, AJ. If you're watching the replay, please continue to leave questions. We'll be checking back here and answer all of your questions there as well. And I want to, you know, make sure that people go over to ajharper.com/top-3-authors, uh, check out what AJ is up to and to join some of those writing sprints. Because once you do it, you're going to be hooked and you're going to say, hey, you know what, it's the time that I needed to be able to do this. You need to be able to isolate that time to really get it done. Um, so AJ, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Of course, of course, of course. And thank you all for being here. Always fun to see you and to chit-chat. And until next time, I will see you later.
