#134 How to Write About an Emotionally Difficult Topic

Hey, Hits Splits family, this is Shelly Hits. And today I want to share about how to write a book on an emotionally difficult topic. So I recently had a one on one client that was asking me about this, but also I have a Christian Book Academy member that is asking a question about this. So I thought this would be a great thing to record and then all of you can benefit from this information. As most of you know, I wrote a book called Broken Crayons Still Color. And I shared some very intimate, detailed stories of my life, some of my biggest failures, like my previous addiction to Internet pornography over 20 years ago and how God brought me through that. I also talked about emotionally difficult topics like my grandma's murder when I was 8 years old, an instance of sexual abuse, our, you know, miscarriage, and not being able to have children. And so there was just a lot in there and that's just a few of the topics that I covered. And so I remember when I was first starting to write this book, I got the first draft done and then I got stuck and I couldn't move forward and I just went on to other things. And those of you that know me, know that I'm a person that gets stuff done. And between my husband and I, we've written and published over 70 books. About 50 of those, those are mine. So I normally don't get stuck. This was actually one of the only books that I ever felt this way or had this happen. And so it was the next year and I was in a worship service and I sensed God saying, shelley, finish the book. And I knew immediately which book it was Broken Crayons Still Color. And I had all of this resistance. And looking back I can see that it was because I was facing these emotionally difficult, traumatic events in my life and it was bringing those things back up to the surface. And I just think subconsciously I was resisting it because I didn't want to walk through the pain again. And yet I wanted God to use my testimony to impact lives. And so many of you may be in a similar situation. Now I will say for one of my one on one coaching clients, I did tell her it sounds like this is not the right time to be writing on this topic. And she said she had not even healed yet from, from that particular instance, but she wanted to write about it. And so I think there are occasions where deeper healing is still needed. And we have a previous presentation that was on our Battle Plan Conference and it was by Deborah L. Butterfield. And she talked about writing about an emotionally difficult topic and she actually did write a nonfiction book about a really emotionally difficult topic regarding.

A family situation. So if you're in Christian Book Academy, you can listen to that. I'll link that episode in this. And you can also, I think just still purchase the battle plan. All access pass if you want. But Deborah talked about that in there that sometimes it's, it's not the right time yet. And I totally, I totally understand. So there may be certain situations where the resistance is so strong because you need healing first and that's the most important thing. And so in that case, I would say it's probably better to start with a different book. And that's what I recommended for this one on one coaching client is she had another idea for a devotional book. And I said, have fun, write that book and get used to the publishing process. She hadn't published any books before. And just put that other book aside and know that, you know, it will, it may come up and you may be ready for it at another time. But just right now is just probably not the right time, you know, to pray and ask the Lord. But it's like when you have a wound and you're gushing blood, you need to get help and healing. You need to, you know, get healing for yourself first and then once it's a scarlet, then you can show people and talk to them about the journey you've been through. But some of you, you're still in that gushing wound stage and need healing yourself. Now in another situation with a Christian Book Academy member, her situation is sharing something very vulnerable, similar to my situation where I shared how I struggled with Internet pornography as a Christian married woman. And it's very difficult to put yourself out there and to share something like that and to know, like, you know, how to surrender your self protection and write about your healing experience and really share it for such a time as this, you know, and it was really one of those things that again, years and years ago, even before I wrote about my experience with Internet pornography and healing from it, I knew it was time to start sharing about it. I was free again. I had been healed. I'd even received healing for sexual abuse that had happened to me and you know, that whole area of sexuality. And so I was really on the other side of it. I mean, you never completely get on the other side, but I had really received healing. And so we were speaking and sharing on forgiveness and there was a topic of forgiving yourself that I included in my talk. And I sensed the Lord saying it's time to share it's time to share. And so I began sharing that in that talk that I needed to forgive myself for, you know, the. The Internet pornography. God had forgiven me. He had set me free. But I was holding myself captive. And I just shared briefly, like, I did not share very many details. I basically just shared that I had a struggle with it and I needed to forgive myself. And when I did, you know, what happened, you know, and I share that in my book Broken Crayonstal Color, too. I was driving down the road listening to this song or the. The radio, and the song came on History by Matthew west, and it says, our. Our sin is history. And. And he's forgiven us. And I just sense so strongly the Lord's like, shelly, I've forgiven you. You've forgiven those who've hurt you, but you haven't forgiven yourself. You're carrying this weight, and you're beating yourself up for this. And so I had a turning point moment. I literally had to get off on the side of the road because I was crying so much, and I couldn't see to drive. And so I just had this healing moment with the Lord and a breakthrough. So I share that in that talk. And people would come up to me afterwards and say, I have never shared this with anyone before, but I also struggle. And, I mean, it was women or girls, and it began to open up a ministry that God gave me. And I did not share very many details. I did not share very many things at that time. I just shared that I had that struggle and how God, you know, began to bring that healing into my life with that turning point moment. And so I began to share publicly. And then God led me to actually write an entire book on the topic in 2012, I think it was. And then 2016 was when I wrote Broken Crayonstal Color and included it in that book as well. And at the time, I'm like, God, I already did it. I already, you know, published a book. But, you know, the truth is, most people will not get my other book on pornography. So. But Broken crayons still color. You know, it's. It's a different topic, and it's just. It's just something that more people will be interested in. So anyways, it was definitely led from the Lord. So if you have a very sensitive, significant sin or issue from the past and God's healed you from it, he set you free, you've confessed those sins, and you're on in a different place, I do recommend praying about it and asking the Lord, is this Something that I'm to share publicly. I really don't think everyone is supposed to share those things publicly. But I specifically, specifically sensed, not with an audible voice, but definitely sense the Lord saying, share this story. And I will tell you, I did not. I, I did not and have not even in my book on pornography, I did not share very many details of the struggle. I focused on the part of the healing and the freedom that God brought me. And so I, first of all, I just didn't want to trigger other people that are struggling. If I'm sharing some of the gory details, it could trigger somebody or it could lead somebody to something that I would never want to happen. So I just shared the basics of it. And like I said, even in the book on pornography, I focused on what was it God did to bring healing in my life and forgiving those that had hurt me in that area of sexuality. You know, the, you know, replacing the lies with the truth. And, you know, I did go to counseling and I used a trigger calendar. So I share about that in the book and I do share some practical things. But, you know, it was one of those decisions that I never regret sharing that testimony. But again, I think not sharing all the details is very wise. Now, if you're one on one with somebody and you are again being led by the spirit, you may be led to share more of the details with a specific person, but I think publicly it's different. And I recently just happened to come across this video. Sadie Robinson Huff was interviewing her aunt and uncle and I think it was Al and Lisa. I can't remember exactly, but it was on YouTube and Lisa shares about how she had an abortion when she was young, I think maybe even 16. And she shares very openly about that. And then, you know, just how the healing that God has brought her through and the forgiveness, and I was just really touched by her testimony. And again, like she didn't share all the details and everything, but she shared enough that you knew, wow, like she really walked through a difficult thing and God really did an incredible work in her life. So I think it's going to be individual, it's going to be different for every person. Are you even supposed to share this publicly? And if, you know, like I did, that God has been leading you to share this, then that's where you have to lean on him in business meetings with God and ask him for wisdom on how to share it and what to share. I would rec. Highly recommend that you don't share all the details or very many of the Gory details really think about someone who might have gone through this. How would they, how might they be triggered? And ask the Lord, you know, what you need to share. Sometimes just saying that I struggle with an Internet pornography addiction. That's all I need to say. And I don't need to say anything else. But sometimes, you know, there, there will be instances where I will say more than that. And so that's where wisdom from the Lord comes in. I highly recommend journaling. So at least once a week, get out a journal and ask the Lord, what are you wanting me to share regarding this story? Or is this something I'm to share publicly? Maybe it's something you do need to write out for your family or for, you know, after you're gone. Somebody can publish it, but maybe it's not to be published right now. Maybe it's just something you need to write for yourself. Just for deeper healing. There's incredible healing that happens when we write. And so I would just recommend getting a journal out, do some two way journaling. Or we have an entire program in Christian Book Academy on hearing God's voice. And I will link to that below as well. If you're a Christian Book Academy member, you can get access to that. And that changed my life. How to hear God's voice. And it's Mark Verkler, it's his content that I purchased in order to be able to teach it. And it really teaches you this whole concept of two way journaling. But it's also integrated with a business meeting with God. Now I had the support going through this. So one of the other questions is what kind of support did you have? As you wrote, broken crayons, still color. And that was when I had a prayer team. And there was a lady at our church, Ruth Mott, that this was her ministry, was helping other ministries to set up prayer teams. And I will never forget when she said, do you have a prayer team for your speaking and writing ministry? And you know, we kind of would text people sos, you know, the technology's not working or something's wrong and please pray. But I really didn't have something official at the time that she was asking me. And so several years before, before I started writing broken crayons, still color, I started having a prayer team. And one thing that God led me to do, it was five months that I really worked on the final draft. So I already had the first draft. And he led me to being very consistent and sending a weekly.

Email to my prayer team with very specific requests. So if I was working on a specific chapter or topic if I needed wisdom on putting together the slides for the videos or the viewer's guide or the coloring pages or whatever, because there was a lot of things that were involved in that book. I wrote out very specific prayer requests and I sent it every week. So just having that support in prayer, obviously the Lord is the one that gives us the strength and he's the one that gives us the wisdom, but he gives us the body of Christ as well to support one another. So definitely having your business meetings with God weekly, where you're doing the two way journaling, you're asking God, you're getting wisdom from him, but also having your prayer team where you're sending that specific, specific requests to them every week and really being specific, as specific as you can. And then obviously I had my husband, he's a huge support to me, C.J. and he would often pray over me in person. So if you have somebody that you can meet with in person, if it's not your spouse, you can also, you know, somebody from your church, I would recommend meeting with them maybe even once a week during this time because it was the hardest, one of the hardest five months of my life where I was finishing writing that book. It was the final draft. And I, I just know that many of you face these same types of things. And so I would say, you know, having that kind of support would be really helpful. Now, something else that I did for accountability, because I knew I had put it off a year and I knew I needed some sort of accountability to get this book done, is I decided to ask my editor if she would be willing to edit my book one chapter at a time. So it, depending, it really depends on the book. And if the, the editor needs to read the whole book, I mean, you could always give them the rough first draft that you have, just so that they can get the overall view and idea of where you're going with the book. And then what I did was I didn't do that. So I just, you know, told her the topic of the book and each chapter kind of stood on its own and built on each other, so it worked fine. But I would send her one chapter every week. I would finish writing it, I would do my self editing and then I would send it to her. And so she was willing to do it that way and edit each chapter one chapter at a time. And then I set up a beta group and this was my biggest beta group ever. I had over 100 people. I'm almost thinking maybe close to 150. I'd have to look it up, but it was over a hundred. And then I would send that chapter after I got it back from the editor, I would make my. I would accept the changes or make the changes that she suggested, or I would update things that as needed, and then I would save that as a PDF and I would send that chapter to my beta group. And what I did, I. I was doing this full time. Like, I really. I mean, I had Christian Book Academy at the time, but I was really, like, my main focus during this season was finishing this book. So if you don't have a ton of time, you may want to spread it out a little further, maybe every two weeks. But, I mean, I did it every week. I would finish editing and send a chapter to my editor. She would send it back, I would accept the changes, and then I would send it to my beta group. And then I. Also, for this particular book, I was recording videos. So I would create the slides for the videos and the viewer's guide, and I would. I would host a live video for my beta group. Now, today, I would do it in zoom. But at that time, I record. Or I created a Facebook group and I did it in there. And that's still a really great option because you can say, you know, you can, you know, save the videos in there, and then people can watch them and continue to add comments, which is really helpful to see, and it's just encouraging because it really encouraged me that I was on the right track and that it was gonna help people. People. And so that's another option is some sort of accountability. You could just do it with an editor and say, I just need the accountability to get this done. So I'm, you know, I'm going to send you a chapter, you know, one chapter every week or one chapter every two weeks or something like that, and get on their schedule, make sure that they're okay with doing something like that. Or you could, you know, have the. The complete book edited and, you know, have, you know, everything already done, and then, you know, bring in a beta or bring in a group to do, like, videos or any additional content that you want to do with it, but, you know, I just did everything at once. And so I had not only my editor that I knew was waiting for that final draft from me before she made the edits, but I knew I also had that beta group waiting for the chapter every week. And I think there were. I did have to delay it a couple times, and I just told my beta group I'm going to have to push this back a week or something like that. So, you know, you don't have to be so strict on it. But that really helped me, I will say, to get it done. So there might be some sort of accountability that you use as well. And you know, consider that something else that helped me. When I was writing my book Forgiveness Formula, which I also talk about my grandma's murder in that book and some other hard things that happened. I was working full time as a physical therapist during that season, so I didn't have a lot of time. You know, when I was writing Broken crayonstall Color, it was like my full time job. So I didn't have a lot of time. And again, it was very.

You know, very difficult topics, you know, to start writing and talking about. Emotionally difficult. And so during that season, what I did was I had a very detailed outline and what I wanted to share and then I got all my research. So I actually got all of the public.

You know, documents that I could find about my grandma's murder, about the trial, about the man who murdered her and his sentencing and, you know, just the different things. I got all of that. I mean, they, the state of New York sent it to me. It was thick, it was like a couple inches thick, but I had all of that content. And so I just got all the information like from my journals that from that period of time and found it. And so I gathered all my resources and then CJ and I went out up to a retreat center for a long weekend. And during that long weekend, because I had done so much work ahead of time of getting, you know, really getting detailed on the outline, getting all of my research together and all of the facts, you know, and the things that I wanted to include, but also, you know, adding in the story. I was able to finish my first draft and I think we were there three or four days, I can't remember. But you know, so it might be a thing where maybe you take some time off of work. And I had a different one on one coaching client I was talking with recently. And this is her situation. She works and she's exhausted by the time she comes home from work. And then this is an exhausting topic for her right now that she's writing about too. And so I recommended this to her. You know, what if you took time off from work, you took some vacation days and you locked yourself into a hotel room or went to a retreat center or went somewhere in, you know, have make it really easy for your meals Whatever and just focus on writing your first draft. Make sure that you have all of the, the research of content that you need. Make sure you have a really detailed outline. Do all of this pre work so when you go there, you can just get that messy, ugly first draft out of your head and onto paper. You might want to try different ways. So with this client I recommended that she maybe if she feels stuck, like if you start coming up against some resistance because of the emotionally difficult part of topic, you might want to try something else than just trying to sit and type on your computer. You might try writing. So my mom, it works really well for her using paper and pencil. Like even pen does not work well. She likes to have something she knows she can erase. So I don't know, it's just interesting. So try something else. Try paper and pen or pencil. You can also try dictating. So I really like the app Otter AI and you can get so many minutes for free and, and just talk into this app. What happens is it, it will record your audio. So you'll always have the audio that you can listen back to if for some reason the transcript doesn't come out good. But then it also transcribes it right there for you and then you can take that transcript, clean it up and change it. So sometimes that can be easier. Something else that I recommended to this client that might be helpful for some of you is that you may want to just get like on a Zoom call or in person with somebody and record kind of like an interview or a conversation about it. So on Zoom you can record it and then that recording you can actually turn on captions too and that they'll automatically create a transcript for you in Zoom. But you can also do it on your phone. Like just have the Otter app up and then have somebody there and have a few questions like that they can ask you and let them know like, this is a difficult topic for me and I just feel stuck and can you just ask me some questions and talk me through it and help me and get me just to, to talk about it and share the story? Sometimes if you're you, you're like looking across the the table at a friend that you really love and trust or you know, on Zoom it's just easier to talk it out than to try to sit there and write it. And then all the resistance comes and it just feels like you're stuck. Or go on a walk. I've done this before too. Go on a walk, open the Otter AI app and then try it. There so these are a lot of, this is a lot of information, a lot of content, but I just wanted to make sure that I was really as detailed as possible. I've had several people that this has come up lately and so I wanted to share this with you all. And I know God is a is glorified through our testimony. Revelations 12:11 says we overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony, so we have victory over Satan by Jesus, the blood of Jesus who died on the cross for us. And it says the word of our testimony. And so it is really powerful and the enemy will come against it. There will be a battle to get it out because so many people could be impacted from your testimony. So let me pray for you. So God, thank you so much. For each person that's listening and the stories and the testimonies that they have, we pray for wisdom and guidance as they continue to take the steps of sharing their stories, whether it's one on one, whether it's just privately writing it out in a journal or if it's time to share it publicly. And Lord, we just pray that you would be glorified. We pray that you would have your way. And we just thank you for what you're going to do in their lives as you lead them and guide them in their business meetings with God, that you will show them what to share and what not to share, that you will provide support through a prayer team, that you will show them if they need additional accountability, even with maybe just finishing one chapter at a time when or maybe scheduling a retreat to get away or do you know, doing a different type of writing, whether that's recording an interview with a friend or taking a walk and recording into an app like Otter AI or writing it out with paper and pencil. But Lord, you know, you know what each person needs. So we just pray your your blessing upon their writing and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Something else that just came up as I was praying. I felt like the Holy Spirit just wanted me to remind you that you are able to publish under a pen name. So if you really believe that you're supposed to share the testimony, but you really are not wanting to share it in a way that's publicly connected with you. And again, ask the Lord, he will show you if this is something he is to your to do, then you can write under a pen name. We do have.

We do have a lesson in Christian Book Academy in the bonus section about how to write your story when it involves other people and this really can also, it's in the optional lessons area and I'll put the link to it if you're a Christian Book Academy member below. But this might also help you with this if you're, if you're considering wanting to write with a pen name. There's some information I think in this lesson, so that's something else to consider. But again, let God lead you, because there is. There, there are so many people that need what you have to share. And you know, if you do publish under a pen name, just know that the marketing is probably going to be a little bit different. And you can still use Amazon ads and that's really been one of the primary ways that we've sold broken crayons, still color, so you can still, you know, get the book out and sell it. But it's a lot easier to market a book when you're marketing it as yourself because you can do all of the things, you know, you can, you know, do the podcast interviews and do the things online you are doing, you know, but you can still blog, you can still, you know, do email marketing. You can still, you know, there's a lot of things that you can do without having to show your face or without having to say anything so you know, your voice. But anyways, I will put that in the description as well. And if you are a Christian Book Academy member and have additional questions on this, you can post it in our forum. There's an Ask Shelly forum that I will reply in that forum or you can come to our next steps call. We have it every month and that's where you can get coaching from me and I would be happy to help talk you through it. We also have the availability for one on one coaching for Christian Book Academy members with me. So if you'd like some one on one coaching, just reach out to me and I can give you the information on that. So I hope this was helpful and I will talk to y' all soon. Bye Bye.