How to Find the Motivation to Finish Your Book

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.

So in today's podcast, I wanted to do something a little bit different. I just finished an accountability call with my author audience academy members and I, I thought I would share with you an excerpt from that call. I had gotten this question from one of my members today. She said, I feel stuck. There are so many distractions. I really need to fully decide to complete this sooner than later. Any motivational tips for completing my first book? She asked that question and I shared some tips that I thought might be helpful for you as well. If you feel stuck, if you feel like there's so much many distractions, listen to this podcast and then let me know if you found it helpful. I hope you do. I also say a prayer for you at the end, so enjoy. What I always recommend is to picture your target reader. So I want you to think of someone that you have met in person, that you personally have helped in the past to have the transformation that you will be sharing with people in your book. So I want you to think about one person that had, I mean, an amazing transformational experience because of what they learned, you know, from this content. And then I want you to write their name. And if you have like a way to get their picture, maybe from their Facebook, or if you have a picture of you two together, print off a picture of them and make that your motivation. Say, the sooner I'm able to finish this book, the sooner I'm able to help people just like, you know, whoever, you know, whatever Leah or whatever their name is. And I'm going to be able to help so many more people have a similar transformation, have a breakthrough. It's kind of like a vision board. You can have a vision board related to your book and, you know, having their face on there. Putting your cover. Do you have your book cover yet? So having something with your book cover up, ultimately you just have to have but in the chair time, you just have to schedule power hours, power days for you. It may be like a Saturday. You're just like, okay, so you know, every Saturday from here till that, you know, or whatever your schedule is, I mean, you have to decide if you, you know, maybe you sacrifice an hour in the morning of sleep. Whatever you do, you have to make a commitment to yourself and to God and on your schedule, put it in your calendar. If you don't schedule it, it often doesn't happen. So get it on your schedule, say, okay, from this hour, and then be relentless. Turn off your phone, turn off notifications, turn off Facebook, turn off email, and just work on your book for that hour. You just have to be relentless. And you know what? A lot of times we will not be at a place where we're like, okay, this is 100% the perfect decision. But there comes a point where you just simply need to make the next decision so that you can move forward. And you know what you learn from it. And most of the time, it's not life or death. Like, you can change it if you need to, or you can do something different, or you can edit it, or you can do something else. But sometimes we're just so afraid and fear paralyzes. But when we simply, like, surrender it to God and we say, okay, I am going to be a person that submits it to God, but then I'm going to. Once, once I, you know, once I pray about it, once I hear from him, I'm going to move forward. I'm going to take the next step. Unless he just simply says, wait. I mean, sometimes God will say that. And so you need to give yourself sometimes seasons of a little more rest. But sometimes there is a season where you simply have to know. It's kind of like running a marathon and you're hitting the wall and you have to keep going, putting the next foot or the foot in front of the next and taking the next step. And just, you know, you're tired. You know it's hard, but you know there is a finish line, and you know it's coming up in the next few miles, or maybe you're still in the beginning of the marathon or in the middle of it, but it's there. The finish line is there. And you know you're going to cross that finish line. You're going to be a finisher in Christ Jesus in his strength, in his plan. You're going to keep in step with the Holy Spirit. You're not going to meander off and decide to go shopping in the middle, middle of your marathon. You're gonna stay focused. You're gonna keep going even if it's slow, even if you have to slow down to a walk, but you're putting one foot in front of the next. You're making progress every week, even if it's just one power hour, you're making progress. You're putting that next foot in front of, you know, the next step, doing the next right thing, making the next right decision. You just keep moving forward. And you do the. You do what you can with the information you have. You ask God for wisdom, he will give it to you. But sometimes even when you know the decision to make, it still feels scary. Anyone with me with that, Even though you know like this is the next thing, it still feels hard or it still feels scary, or you still have self doubt that can stop you from making that decision and just moving forward. Or putting yourself out there and asking for more beta readers, or putting yourself out there and asking a few people to be on a prayer team or putting yourself out there and asking for reviewers. Many times we have not because we ask not right. That's what the Bible says. We're all human, you know, we all just. Sometimes you just need those down times not to beat yourself up because you're not writing your book, but put it on your calendar, schedule it, say, this is my time. And so then you can putz around the house for the other hours, but you're like, okay, but from 10 to 11 I'm gonna work on my book and then the rest of the day I can do whatever. You don't have to be a drill sergeant every hour of every day. You just need to schedule the times that you are gonna write, you are gonna work, you are gonna make progress and get it done. Like really, really focused during that time. And then you can do other things, goof off or whatever you wanna do. Like for me, I love to create art now and so I can do that. But I know there's certain times that I'm gonna work. So. So that gives you freedom to not beat yourself up and not to not feel guilty when you are just doing other things because you know you're like, okay, these are the times I'm going to do this. And so that's the power in scheduling. I've run half marathons and CJ's done marathons. And it's like a lot of times it's through a city, so there could be shopping places right there on the route. And then you get distracted and you're like, I want to go in and get something. It's like, all right, time to get back on the course. Time to get back on track. Time to finish. Even if you're the last one that crosses the line. Let's be finishers. It doesn't matter. It's not a competition. We're not competing to see who can get it done fastest. We just are wanting to glorify God with what he's given us. That is what we're to do. And what we have been created to do is to give glory to him. We with our gifts and our abilities, and we're not able to do that if we never finish what we've started and what he's called us to do. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and close in prayer. God, I just thank you for today. I thank you for every person that is on this call live, every person that's watching the replay. I thank you for their lives. I thank you for the gifts and abilities you've given them. I thank you, Lord, that you are doing an amazing work in and through them. I thank you that today you are just bringing a renewal of our minds to each one of us. Right now. I know I need my mind renewed on a daily basis, sometimes a minute by minute basis. And so, Lord, I just pray right now that you would renew our minds with your truth, Lord, that you would just give us the motivation and the encouragement and the courage to really step forward and do the next right thing. To make the next decision, to put that power hour on our calendar and to keep it, to turn off all notifications and even possibly turn off our phones. To really do the things that you've called us to stay on track in that marathon and not get distracted shopping along the way, to keep our eyes on the finish line, to do the things we need to to stay encouraged and motivated. Lord, I just pray that you would just help each one of us to just be encouraged in you and that your yoke is easy, your burden is light, and if we are striving or if something feels too hard right now, there may be a spiritual battle in that. And so I just pray that each person would just have a breakthrough in Jesus name from anything that the enemy is bringing against them right now. Lord, I pray that each person would be emailing their prayer team every week with specific prayer requests being covered in prayer. And I just pray for breakthrough in Jesus name and I thank you for this. And we just all say together, Amen. 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 on three proven book writing formulas Every nonfiction author needs to know. This is a fun and fast way to write a nonfiction book but also a book that you're proud of. Plus I will give you two free gifts just for attending. No credit card required. First, you'll get my 10 nonfiction book title templates and you'll also get my ebook titled Brilliant brainstorming. It's a 28 page ebook and both of these bonuses are yours at no charge. Just for joining us for the training, you can sign up for my free training by going to shellyhits.com formulas. That's Shellyhitz S H E L L E Y h I t z.com formulas. This training and the two bonuses are free and I would love to help you write your next nonfiction book.

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