What to do When Your Book Project Turns out Differently Than You Planned

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.

Oh, no. Things are not going as planned. And now what are you going to do about your book project? Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz. I'm the creator of authoraudienceacademy.com I'm an author coach on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time for you to let your light shine. And in this training, I'm going to talk what to do when your project turns out differently than you planned. So, you know, you may have had a book on your heart for years. You may have been dreaming about publishing this book, or you may have gotten the book idea today and you start working on it now. Whatever your situation is, there may be a time when you have all your plans. You have outlined your book, you have done extensive research. You even have the first draft of your book and then you decide something major needs to change. This recently happened to me with my current book project, Broken Crayons, Still Color. I was planning on having 10 main chapters and then an introduction and a conclusion. So that's a pretty good length for a book. Normally, you know, 10 chapters. However, the way that I'm doing this book is I'm also having a corresponding video for every chapter. So I had a video for the introduction, I'll have a video for the conclusion, which, which makes it a 12 week book study. Now, the other night, I've been thinking about this for a while. It's like, man, is this too long? Is this too much? And so the other night, literally I dreamed about this all night. It was almost like God was speaking to me in my dreams. Does God ever speak to you in your dreams? So I woke up with this heavy on my heart, like, do I need to change this book project? Do I need to shorten it? Now, if you've ever written something of significance and then you have to really drastically edit it, you know how painful this can be. I already basically had the first draft. I mean, every week I'm going through and finalizing and editing and finishing that first draft. However, I pretty much had it done and it's like, you know, you mean I need to consider changing it? What I would encourage you today is whether it's in business, whether it's for your writing and publishing, is to be willing to change, not to be so stubborn or so much of a control freak. I can be a person that likes to be in control or, you know, just, you have your plan set, you have your outline, you have your first draft and nothing's changing. You know, I encourage you to be willing to change. So just be willing to change. I like to say pivot and shift. So when you're working on a project, whether it's a book project or something else, be willing to pivot and shift if needed. Now sometimes that pivot and shifting can just be procrastination. You know, it can just be a way to delay your project or to put it off. But for me in particular, I had to be willing to look at my current project to look at the current market. I went and I looked at a bunch of different book studies and they tend to be around six to seven weeks in my genre. My genre is Christian living and a lot of Christian type book studies or Bible studies. I'm not calling mine a Bible study because it's more of a book study. Are tend to be around six to seven weeks. I thought, whoa, 12 weeks, that's a long time. So I was willing and I have cut it back to eight weeks. So there will be six main chapters with an intro and a conclusion. I told my beta group about this and overwhelmingly they were like, Shelly, it really sounds like the right decision. And I have such a piece about it. I was able like within maybe 20 minutes to reorganize everything. And some of what I was going to put in some of those chapters that I cut out, they're now going to actually be in the video training. And I was able to, I don't know, it was just like things just fell into place. Once I was willing, once I surrendered my control, you know, my plan, it doesn't have to be exactly what I thought it was going to be. It can be something a little bit different. So what have you experienced as far as this goes? Have you experienced where you started to write a book and it turned out completely different than you planned? This normally does not happen to me, to be very honest. Normally I set a plan, I know what I'm going to write and I do it. I think it's just part of my personality too. Like when I was in college, I knew I wanted to be a physical therapist. I went for it and that's what I ended up getting my degree in. Whereas most people change degrees like what, four to six times or something on average. But with books, I think sometimes, you know, we have a plan and it's really, really, really important to have that outline, have that plan, have that plan. Of action, but to also be willing as you're going through the process to see is it going to actually turn out different than I thought. My husband CJ went out and he ran to the very top of a 14,000 foot mountain. Today we call him 14ers here in Colorado. We live in Colorado Springs. And he just got home. He's in the shower. So I want to finish this and get off so that we can spend some time together, eat some dinner. But I just wanted to encourage you today to.

Not feel like you have to have ultimate, ultimate control. It has to go an exact process sometimes. Have you ever seen those pictures? I think it's a meme on Facebook that's been shared so many times it says success. We often think success is going to look like this, a straight line up. And many times we may think when we're writing a book it's just going to be like this, a straight line up. But many times it looks like this. You know, success looks like this and it ends up turning around and going all different ways than we originally thought. Have your manuscript, have your idea, but hold on to it loosely. I believe in the power of divine direction, divine guidance. And so if you're a Christ follower, God may even be begin to guide you in a different direction like he did with me. And when you're willing to pivot and shift, it can be so powerful. It probably depends too on your personality, like how you normally handle projects. But whether you're a planner or whether you're more spontaneous, I think we all can benefit from holding our manuscript a little more loosely and just seeing where it goes. Planning, yes. Having an outline. Yes. But being willing to pivot and shift when necessary. Awesome. Well, I'm going to let you guys go. If you have not yet taken my free training, I have a free webinar. It's all about the three book writing formulas every nonfiction author needs to know. So it helps you choose your book topic, helps you outline your book and choose how you will write your book. So it is a jam packed take action webinar and you can sign up for free@shellyhits.com formulas let's breathe. You know, take a deep breath and know that you will cross that finish line if you keep taking the next right step. Don't get discouraged if maybe it takes a little longer than you think or maybe it takes a little different twist and turn than what you think, it will probably only make your manuscript even better. I believe that for my book and video project I'm working on it's only going to make it better. It's only going to make me really focus in on these core eight weeks that I'm going to be creating instead of 12 and really make them powerful, really make them even better. And so I'm excited to see the end result. I'm excited to cross my own finish line because you, you guys, it's a lot of work running a business and doing a big project like this, but it's so exciting and it's definitely worth it. Fear is excitement without breath. It's the author of the Big Leap. And many times when I'm worried about something or I'm not sure how it's going to turn out or something like this where it's like, ah, I'm like cutting out four chapters of my book that I've already written, it feels so painful.

Remember to breathe because then that fear, it's like it can turn into more passion and excitement. And so thank you guys so much for joining me for this broadcast and I will see you next time and in the meantime, keep working on your manuscript. See you next time. Bye bye.

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.