Are You Giving Away the "Seed" in Your Writing

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Are you giving away the seed in your writing? Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz. I'm an author coach and the owner of authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. And in this training, I want to talk about a concept that, that I have recently heard that has been challenging me. So I always think that we should be growing and learning. And as a coach myself, I also invest in coaching and mentoring and in training and continuing to learn. Right now I'm in a phase where I am growing as an artist. I literally have an art studio in my home and I find that exploring art also helps my creativity with writing and marketing and all of that as well. But, but I was looking for a community and also for a mentor or a coach in this whole aspect of art. Because although I have been creative and I've been writing and publishing books for years, you know, since 2008, this whole area of art is new for me. So I joined an art mentorship group by Matt Tommy. It's a Christian group, and he talks about in one of his videos, are you giving away the seed? And I thought this would be a great thing to share with you as writers because I think it really does apply and it's been something that's really challenged me so many times. We get ideas. We get ideas for books, for blog posts, for many different things that we're writing and especially our books. And, you know, we get ideas and sometimes that idea is the seed. So what does that mean? It means that it's just the initial idea. It's not matured. We haven't allowed it to be planted in our life, nurtured so that then it can grow. And sometimes that initial idea that we get that seed, it grows into something completely different. Now I'm a take action activator. I'm a doer on the Strength Finders 2.0 test. Two of my top strengths are are achiever, activator. So I am a get it done type person. And sometimes I will admit I probably take action and I give away a seed instead of letting it really have time to nurture it, to let it grow and to really let it blossom. However, I really saw this happen in my writing last year, writing the book Broken Crayons Still Color, and I had initially started it back in the fall of 2000. Let's see, what was it? 2015? Because I published it in 2016 and I was ready to get it done. I was moving forward in my normal fast speed. And that was a book God did not intend to have written fast. I mean, I have written and published books in seven days. Yeah. Now those are books that have been written on topics and on things that I have really allowed to mature and grow in my life. And it's based on experience and that sort of thing. So it wasn't something that I just, I got an idea and I wrote it without having already years and years of experience. But this particular book, broken Crayons still color. I picked it back up last June. I just sensed God saying, shall I finish the book? And I allowed it to be planted and I allowed it to continue to be nurtured to until it grew into the fruit and the plant. And what happened for me in particular and those of you that have been following me, know this is God led me to have a beta group. I had about 150 people agree to be in the beta group, probably about 50 really active, giving me feedback. And through that process of the watering, the nurturing, you know, the getting the feedback from the beta group, I mean, it became a completely different book than the initial seed, the initial idea. It became something so much better.

Much shorter. It went from a 12 week study to a 7 week study, which when I started doing my market research, six to seven week studies are about the norm. But it became something very much different. And so I want to ask you today, do you really allow those seeds, those ideas that God gives you for books, for other products or things that you're doing to allow it to grow? So in the art community and in this mentoring group, he was talking about ideas God may give us for an art piece, a painting, something like that. And again, I am a get it done type person. And I realized I don't have any works in progress.

I don't have any unfinished artwork. I finish everything. So I work small because I like to finish it. That's my personality. I don't want these things hanging over my head. I don't like unfinished tasks, unfinished projects. And yet the Lord's really challenging me right now and stretching me saying like, okay, Shelley, is this really your best work? You know, if you did have some works in progress and you left some time and you allowed yourself time to think and strategize and really get other ideas, could it become even better? Yes, of course. And so I have been recently listening to Mandisa's new album, out of the Dark. Love it. I totally recommend it. And I recommend listening to her interviews. She's done. She was in a deep depression for three years, and this album is called Coming out of the Dark. She has a powerful testimony, so I definitely recommend listening to the interviews and the meaning behind the songs. But she has a song called Unfinished. And as I was thinking about this whole topic of letting the seed have time to grow, God brought that song to my mind. Unfinished. And I was like, ooh, unfinished. Like, I don't. And I have, like, a page in my journal where I wrote unfinished. And. And, you know, I just said, I sense the challenge and the prompting from the Lord to allow more time for my ideas to germinate and to grow, to bear fruit. And I says, what does this mean exactly? I'm not sure yet. But this journal, my art journal, is part of the process. A place to write down and sketch ideas. Brain dump, refine, pray, over, cultivate. And so the other idea I got from Matt is to have an art inspiration book. Now, I have done this for my writing all the time. Like, I have place, you know, I have notebooks and journals and idea books. And, you know, I have places like that. I store ideas online, like Trello, But I didn't really think about it for my art. So I don't know if you're already doing something like this, but this is amazing. Like, have a specified notebook for your ideas for those seeds. And then, like, I've already. I just started this this weekend, literally, and I have, like, pages of notes already, and they're just coming. And as I write it down, as I write down ideas, and then I get other ideas, and then I capture them, and then I can add to them later. And then I, you know, things that I really sense God asking me to paint or to do, I can write that down. And I may not do it today, but maybe it will come later. So are you allowing the seed to grow or are you giving away the seed? The initial idea, and then do you have a place to capture your ideas? Some sort of writing inspiration journal? And the third thing I wanted to mention is that we are to create with excellence. And sometimes when we create fast and we go, go, go, go, go, and we don't allow that seed to germinate, sometimes. Sometimes we're not giving out our best work, but also we should always be continuing to learn and grow. So it's been a challenge to me, and right now I'm really focusing on my art. But also it applies to writing, our business, our marketing, our publishing, whatever we're doing. And I've really made an effort in the last couple years to take everything that I do to a new level of excellence with my Broken Crayons Still Color book. I did everything I could to make that my best book yet. Whether it was the formatting or the format or the content, everything in there, I went above and beyond anything I'd ever done before. And you know what? That book is really selling well now. I'm not saying that it was because I really did that. I don't know, I mean, I just feel like it's God's blessing because that was a book he wanted me to write. I didn't want to write it. You know, I didn't want to do it, but I obeyed. But are you also growing in your skills? So are you growing in your skills as a writer? Are you growing in your skills as a publisher? Are you growing in your skills as a marketer? We, as independently published or self published authors, we carry the role that hat of all three Writer, publisher, marketer, we have all those roles. And so are you continuing to grow your skills in that area? And Matt really encouraged us to continue to invest in training. And I believe in this 100%. When I first started investing in coaching and training, that's when my business really started to take off. And so I was challenged. And I have been doing a lot of research and I've been taking a lot of classes on skillshare, I've purchased books. I'm a learner, so that's what I do. I research, I learn and then I teach it. But. But I was kind of challenged. And so last week I also invested in an advanced lettering course, an online course to really take my lettering to a new level. And already people are noticing on Instagram and commenting on it. So I want to challenge you today. Have you invested and are you growing in your skill as a writer or as a publisher or as a marketer? There's, you know, three different, very different roles and there's many different places to invest for that. I have low cost books you can invest in, but I also have an academy, it's called Author Audience Academy. And we cover all of those areas. And the one area we probably don't cover as much is just the mechanics of the writing, like your grammar and all of that. But we cover all of these things in the academy and you get the support, you get the encouragement of other authors, plus you get access to me as a coach every day. You can ask questions and so it's a way that you can invest. And if you're ready to invest, you can join us@authoraudienceacademy.com but it may not be the right fit for you, it may not be the right season for you. There may be someone else that you're investing in that is good. That is fine. I just encourage you to keep growing in your skill as a writer, as a publisher, and as a marketer. So tell me, what is one thing that you can take away from this training today? What is one nugget that you heard that really impacted you? Or what is one action step that you want to take as a result of hearing this training? Let me know in the comments below if you're listening on itunes. I covet your reviews. I love them, I really appreciate them and it's a way to help reach other authors. So please just take a minute to post a review and how this training has helped you. But I will see you next time and thank you so much for being here. Bye bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Author Audience. I would like to invite you to attend one of my free trainings all about how to sell more books without being pushy or self promotional. It's called amplify your message. Plus I will give you two free gifts just for attending. No credit card required. First you'll get my best selling book 9 Strategies to Build and grow your author Platform and you'll also get my ebook titled List Vend 5 powerful emails you can use immediately to grow your business. These are basically fill in the blank style templates and they are yours at no charge when you join us for the training. You can sign up for my free training by going to ShellyHits.

Amplify. That's ShellyHits.coms h e l l e y h I t z.com Amplify this training and the two bonus ebooks are free and I would love to help you sell more books.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.