Hello team and welcome to episode 495 of the Simply Fit podcast. In today's episode, I have the pleasure to speak with Mary Lynn Clogacy. Mary is a novelist and founder of the Leadership Literary Lab where she's on a mission to help experts in their fields write exceptional non-fiction books. Writing is a powerful tool. There is something about being able to articulate what's in your mind and get what's in your head onto paper. And we are seeing writing practices such as journaling growing in popularity year on year. Even in our modern world, it doesn't seem to be slowing down. And in today's episode, you're going to find exactly why it's not, along with so much more you didn't know about the world of writing. In this episode, you can expect to learn why writing can be so therapeutic and so transformative. What steps you should take if you've got some big ideas that you want to transform into a book, along with what to expect if you do take on the task of taking your writing from a hobby into a career. So without further ado, Mary Lynn Clogacy. Mary Lynn Clogacy, welcome to the show. How are you today? I'm good. Thank you. Thank you for having me. The pleasure is truly mine. I'm excited to dive into our conversation. But before we do, can you give my listeners a little bit of context about who you are? What it is that you do? Sure. My name is Mary Lynn. I'm both a fiction author and the founder of the Leadership Literary Lab. So that's a program that I've designed for experts in their fields to write nonfiction books so they can amplify their authority on a global scale. My fiction writing, I tend to have a little bit of fun with that. So I write paranormal murder mysteries. So there you go. Oh, wow. That's a question I would love to get started with. What is it about these murder mysteries? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm not in the genre completely, but there's a lot of fascination with true crime and murder mysteries and all this different type of stuff. What is the fascination there and how much do these worlds differ? Because maybe I'm putting football and rugby together and they're completely different. And I'm just not aware of that. So tell me a little bit more about that and your interest in that genre. Sure. So my interest in the genre started actually by happenstance alone because I happen to be traveling through the Southern States. And we were looking, my partner and I are both writers and we were looking for a conference. And we happen to come across a conference called Killer Nashville and it's a fantastic conference. It's one of the biggest conferences in the States. And its focus is mystery, thriller and suspense. And I just met so many interesting people. And at that point I had recently graduated grad school and most of the focus was on literary fiction. And I realized I was just enthralled by some of the expertise that these people had. Like there was a CIA former chief and there was a forensic pathologist. And it was just fascinating subject matter. So I think what draws people to this subject and what drew me is that you're literally spanning the cross between life and death in some of these circumstances. And there's this kind of prison of excitement, if you will, around the stakes. And you know, when you're writing it, for me the paranormal allows me to step outside of reality and create these dream sequences that in fact affect the case. And with that, it's a broad field to play in and I just enjoy running in that field and creating these wild scenarios that my protagonist in this book that I'm writing gets involved in. So it's just been a lot of fun. And I should address the question about, sorry I forgot to address the point about the cross, how fiction and non-fiction affect each other. And they're really quite different in the sense that fiction relies on internal supports of plot character structure, things of that nature, whereas non-fiction is of course based in truth, that's the fundamental difference. But it's also got external supports, which are more research and anecdotal evidence. And so stories that you'll pull from real life and more external supports in terms of how you sort of bolster your argument and take the reader through journey. And what do you vaseline prefer when it comes to writing? You know, the fiction is really fun, it's a passion of mine and I prefer to write fiction. But I see the value in supporting thought leaders getting their message into the world. And I really believe in sort of preparing the future and the younger generation by preserving the expertise and some of the hard-fought wisdom that the clients that I work with have. And I think helping them create a narrative that really serves their vision and their legacy well is something that I'm passionate about. Absolutely. And what I absolutely love about the whole concept of books and writing is that even the way that our world is becoming more and more modernized is that books don't seem to be going anywhere. If anything, they seem to be even more of a reliable source of wisdom because of it takes some work to put all of your expertise down into a book. It doesn't take so much work to put it down in a podcast or a YouTube video or a social media clip. But when it comes to a book, there's a lot more authority around that as well. Do you think that that's part of the reason why they've stood the test of time? Because they've been around for ages and they just don't seem to be going anywhere, which is beautiful in my eyes. But it's quite surprising when you look at the way that everything's being replaced by its modern alternative, you know, you might have thought that audiobooks would have come in. And of course someone needs to write the book in the first place for there to be an audiobook when you might thought, okay, well, with all of that type of stuff coming in, then maybe the physical form would retreat, but it hasn't done that by any means whatsoever. So I think there's two parts of that in the first is one of the reasons books are perennial is that humans are designed to learn through story, right? And when you have a long form document, you have the ability to engage the reader to a degree that they're not only taking in the wisdom of the book, but they're also living the story. There's a term that was coined quite a while ago by a teacher named John Gardner, I believe, and it's called living the fictive dream. And whether you're in fiction or nonfiction, nonfiction has to have a compelling story behind it. So even if it's the author's story and memoir, or it's little antidotes that are populated throughout the book in terms of client testimonials or things of that nature, we learn best through story. And I think that's one of the perennial appeals of a book. And when it comes to different types of media, it's interesting what the researchers are saying because there's a phenomenon that they've been identifying called biliterate brain. And what that is, is they're looking at it through children mainly. And because of the sort of proliferation of electronic formats and the internet in particular, they're learning to scan through vast volumes of information quickly, but they don't immerse themselves in a story. So there's this rapid intake of information, but they don't become engaged in the story in the way you would if you're holding a book in your hand. And so the researchers are saying you need both. You need to have that off the screen reading time and on the screen reading time to be able to develop that fullness of experience around reading and learning. And so I think that's one of the reasons that people turn to books because I think the experience of reading is quite different when you're holding a book in your hand. It affects the brain differently and it affects the body differently. It affects the parasympathetic system differently. So you're able to relax and disconnect from the other parts of your life when you're reading a book because you are fully immersed in the story. And I think that's one of the beauties of writing and reading a book. Yeah, that makes total sense to me completely. And let's roll back the years a little bit. Where did your fascination for writing all again? And was it something that you thought you would kind of pursue as a career or was it something that you thought was just going to remain as a hobby or where did that all start? You know, it's funny because as a kid, my mom used to say to me, you just deliver your head, you just have all these stories going on in your head. And so they'd have to, I could be in any given circumstances and I'd just be off thinking my own thing and living in my own world. And it's funny because it didn't really take hold of me. I used to read voraciously as a kid and always did through to university. So when I was a child, I read a lot of fiction. And then going to university, I was interested in a lot of the kind of psychology and work of, you know, like the inner child work, Bradshaw, some of the meditation and scriptural studies and things like that that I was doing at the time. But I didn't start writing until I was in university and then that love just took hold. Of course, being a mom, I have four boys that are now grown and I'm a grand mom now. And so a lot of that got put in the back burner, raising a family and living as I was. But always that interest in reading and always that interest in story, those were the constants of my life and that's, I think, naturally becoming a writer was not a natural progression of that. And when after the kids grew up and everything along those lines became something that you allowed yourself to invest time in again? You know, as a mom, you tend to put yourself last. I mean, that's, I don't know if all mothers do that, but that's sort of the way I left him. And there was a time when my kids were grown and gone and I don't regret that time in any way, shape or form, just so you know. But I really started to think about what do I love? What do I want to do with my time? Because I had some freedom to think about it. And I think there was something missing during those years where I wasn't writing. I know I was reading a lot and I'm very lucky and I've had a book club that I've been part of for 25 years and I just love those other women. We just have great conversations and it's been a very enriching experience for me. There was a time when I didn't live in my hometown and yet when I came back they warmly welcomed me back in and I really appreciated having that discussion around books and having that anchor so that I was continually reading. But I knew I really wanted to write. And when I had the clarity and the space in my life and the availability to really think about, you know, what do I want? That was first and foremost. Yeah, I can imagine and it's great that you pick that back up again as well because I think a lot of people let those hobbies and those things that they love. They just let them go away. You know, it's great that you continue to reading but writing is a completely different form. And writing is an interesting medium because of it's something that all of us to a degree can do. You know, as long as we've got the skill to write and read, however, many of us maybe don't see ourselves as a writer or maybe we see ourselves as a bit of recreational writer. We write in the form of a journal, what we don't write in the form of a book. What do you think the benefits are to being able to write? I know you're probably aware of who Jordan Peterson is given the fact you're a Canadian and he's now a quite a famous author, or maybe not, obviously, but he always talks about the value of writing. You know, he says, you know, if you're able to write effectively in a way in which you can essentially get your thoughts out on paper in a very, very like educated way and a very formatted way and just something that you are able to articulate in a way in which is smooth, then it's something that's very, very powerful. Not a lot of people have that skill or that characteristic, which is why it's worth it's something to practice. So do you feel the same in the sense of like a lot can come off the back of writing in the sense of like being able to format our thoughts more, being able to articulate ourselves better, being able to make more sense of the world of what's going on in our mind, etc. Yeah, I am aligned with that thinking. One of the things that occurred to me as you were speaking was to talk about the internal world. So we all have an internal world and we all have an internal dialogue. And sometimes, and I'm a big fan of free writing, I should say that, so where you just take pen to paper and you sit and it's analog, you don't use a computer, but you just sit and write up whatever your thoughts are because I think to roam that inner terrain is a very valuable experience because we only hit the surface level when we when we internalize all of this dialogue. But when you actually take the time to get it out of you in some way and put it on a page, you'd be shocked and I'm always surprised at what comes out. There's just a depth of thinking and in some ways, there's unspoken issues that arise and unknown thoughts and unknown desires and unknown pains and unknown trajectories that are happening inside that when you bring it out of you, then that can really affect you for the better. And I often think that it does in addition, I think that learning the skill of writing, one of the things I'd like to demystify because there is this precept in the writing world that while talented writers are born and not made and I don't believe that at all, I think writing is something you learn by practicing and there's two and every great writer has said two things and the first is you have to read and you have to write because there's a rhythm in cadence to language and there's an understanding of how to phrase certain things that you want to say and how longer form documents come together. There's rhythm stops too. It's like a piece of music, right? There's the slower pieces and there's the smaller pieces but there's a continual line of a melody line through it and then there's different harmonies and different bass lines. Same thing that's history with writing. You'll get familiar with how to punctuate and how to pull together your thoughts in a longer, more eloquent way, if you will, when you practice and so to wrap up the two things that I think are really important in this or there's an internal dialogue that's happening that is really valuable to understand your own thoughts so you can express them and you can learn by expressing to the others in other cases, in some cases and also that you can learn to write well if it's not something that you feel that's natural to you, if you will. It's a skill. Yeah, I can imagine and that free dialogue that you mentioned in terms of just putting pens, paper and getting our thoughts out seems to be a very, very effective method for our mental well-being and like we said, making sense of the world and putting that internal dialogue somewhere that's not just your head. Can that have a carryover to your writing when it becomes more formalized in the sense of like if we did want to end up writing a book, do we get benefits from also just putting our thoughts down on paper because of obviously the whole idea of that is just to kind of be a little bit messy to be completely honest, just to kind of get everything out there and there isn't any formal structure, there isn't too much stress on punctuation or anything along those lines. But would it then have an impact on writing if we wanted to do it in a more structured and formal manner? Absolutely. In fact, that's what I start all of my authors with. So a lot of them are keen to start their manuscripts right away and the whole first part of my business program, the whole first month is all about let's leave the document aside for a while and let's just build your chops because think about it as being a marathon runner. If you put on your running shoes for the first time, would you send a client out and say, hey, let's go do a marathon, right? You wouldn't do that. You would say, let's do a training run. In fact, let's see if the shoes fit. You know, maybe you don't need these shoes, but you need another set of shoes and maybe we need to do different training exercises to kind of get you up to speed so you can take on a run, right? So that free writing is essential and one of the reasons it's essential is not just because you want to create the habit of writing, right? It's also that you want to be able to tap into that inner voice and those thoughts, that train of thought without editing and learning to trust yourself. And that is the key to being a writer. You must trust yourself and you gain trust by practicing, by seeing the successes that come by knowing that your ideas will flow and by taking the time to sit down and just look at what comes out and punctuation is very second to that thought leadership that happens when you actually go deeper as you as you free write, you go deeper and you don't just regurgitate those same surface thoughts. New things start to flow, you move through barriers, you begin to understand truly what matters to you and that's the beauty of free writing and it's an essential piece in my mind. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I can imagine it's much easier to learn how to put into a piece versus to get all of those deep insightful thoughts out of your mind and onto paper and formulate them into a way that makes sense to you and the world. So I can imagine that, yeah, that is super, super valuable because it's got to come from some way, right? And I'm thinking that most of our ideas are just going to be sitting on the surface unless we give ourselves an opportunity to go deep, we're probably not going to discover them or not discover them in the depth that we could if we took the time to write on a regular basis as well. Do you find this to be quite transformative and quite healing for people's mental wellbeing as well? I think that's obviously one of the main reasons it's used for but I can imagine it has quite a secondary effect. Maybe someone just wants to write because they find the idea of writing really fascinating, they have a lot of stories, a lot of thoughts in their mind. I can imagine that getting it all down on paper is pretty cathartic and therapeutic. I can tell you, I've never known a writer that hasn't been transformed by the process, myself included. So when I started to write, I was at it at a time in my life where things were more difficult. I had just gotten divorced and my kids were grown and moving on and I had this availability of time and space around me that I wasn't used to so it was very uncomfortable. And I thought, okay, well, how do I start to take baby steps towards finding and creating the future that I wanted to have for myself? And that began with simply journaling. And so I journaled and then that naturally led me to writing some poetry because I didn't want to subscribe to form as you will now, having said that, poetry is one of the most prescriptive forms you can, but I was pre-writing my version of poetry. And then from there, I joined a creative work program where a whole bunch of different authors, pardon me, artists, not authors for different disciplines, whether that was visual or writing, got together and we just talked about the creative process. And so to sort of backtrack to where we started, the healing and the transformation is inherent in the process of writing. It's not something you can't do. It will always affect you in some way because essentially you're tapping into the deepest part of you. You're tapping into that part of you that doesn't necessarily exist on the surface. It's not what you express in your day-to-day. It's the deeper part of your experience of living and that it essentially by its nature drives itself deeper into the heart. And from there, that's when you find the writers often talk about voice and I had a client actually who ended up writing a memoir and it's about a medical malpractice. Your father ended up dying and this was ten years after the fact and as she wrote that memoir, I could feel and see that she was healing from this traumatic experience. After ten years, actually, it took her ten years to sit down and write that. So it's always something that will have a transformative effect. Yeah, I can imagine. So I definitely encourage anyone who's listening who might have even the keenest interest to get started on that whenever they can. And I did have a question regarding the journaling, do you ever read back on some of your entries to try to make a little bit more sense of them or is the art in the writing and not the reflecting? That's a great question. It depends on what happens during the free writing session. So if you are, for example, venting a situation that's kind of in your mind, there was an upset of some kind. You just need to get it out of your system so you can get on with your day. I don't think there's any point in ruminating on that. However, if in your free writing, you've hit on something that you didn't know you were thinking or you've hit on perhaps a hurt that's been festering for a while or you've hit on an idea that you didn't know was important to you and there's this kind of tug towards that thought process, then I definitely think you can reflect on that. And you can take that and you can use it at another prompt and you can explore those ideas. I call it free range thinking and that's where you start with these free writing sessions and then you allow that to organically go wherever it goes. I like it a lot. And find a question regarding the journaling and the kind of free writing. In regards to finding the value in that for children, obviously you said you raised three or four boys, if I'm not mistaken. And when I was growing up, a journal was something a girl would keep, right? Like I grew up in the millennial area and they had the nice little pink ones, they had some padlocks on them if they were lucky and that was generally something that was kind of very, very normal, right? And then obviously as I grew older, I think when I got into my mid-twin season fact, that's when I started journaling myself after hearing a lot of the value of it and everything along those lines and I loved it and I thought it was amazing. And maybe in some ways I wish someone introduced me to it sooner. So is there value in children doing this as well and would they do it in a different form that adults would, is there kind of a different approach because of obviously when you get an adult doing it, there's maybe decades of energy and thoughts and all this stuff needs to come out. But if it's a child, they're still exploring themselves, they're still understanding themselves, they're still making sense of the world in many ways. I know adults are as well, but it's a kind of different frame of mind compared to what we would do in our 30s, 40s and 50s. What I found is when my boys were younger and sort of what some of the literature is saying is they start with what we would consider pictograms, right? So they start doodling. And one of the things that's interesting about this research in Bilateral Brain is part of that was to look at graphic novels, so essentially comic books and things of that nature. So where it's more visual, but there are some writing and it's, and so what the researchers found is that it's as beneficial to look through and take in information with a highly visual form as it is with a written form and the combination is even more powerful. So if your child wants to write, if they feel like they just want to pen their thoughts or if they feel like they want to do whatever they put in that book, I would say that the parents, the gift of the child could be giving them the opportunity to do either. I wouldn't direct the process, I certainly wouldn't edit anything that they write nor what I read it. I think privacy is really important. But I do know that when, for example, my oldest son, he's a musician and so he started keeping a journal. He's in his 30s now when he was in, I think, 12 or 13 and he has consistently kept a journal ever since. And so for him, that's a lot of where the lyrics come from and where he expresses things where, like he's become a father in the last couple of years, I've got an 18 month old son. And it's interesting to hear what he writes in his lyrics for his music because I think that's based and he's so literate. And I think that's based in the fact that he's just spent so much time in writing. And it's not something that I either forced or pushed on him. He picked up that pen and he started doing it on his own. Another one of mine is considering doing it. And you know how he started? He started with keeping a fitness journal. He wanted to keep his program as to what he was doing at the gym. And again, the minute you start putting something down on paper, it takes on some momentum. And now he's like, "You know, Mom, I'm writing down some other things that are going on and I'm finding it helpful. If I can keep a journal on a regular track of these things, I'm feeling like some of this other stuff." And I'm like, "Great. Wherever that takes you, self-awareness is in any form I'm a fan of." And I think that providing children with the opportunity to start early is great. I love it. I think it's amazing. And obviously it's then going to create a lot of self-aware people, a lot of creative people as well. And I'm going to take a little bit of a sharp segue, but I'm curious to get your perspective on this. What is the AI coming in very recently and getting better and better at what it does? It's a lot of people are saying in many years it's going to be creating movies, going to be creating scripts for West End shows and everything along those lines. And inevitably it's going to be creating books and stories and everything along those lines. If it's not already in the process of doing that as well, how good do you think this is going to be for the industry when it comes based on a quote-unquote robot for a lack of a better term, trained on other people and authors and stories, versus something that's coming kind of, you know, it's difficult because of thought is unique, but in some senses of the way it's also not because we're constantly developing our thoughts from other people's other conversations and other perspectives of the world that maybe we picked up subconsciously that we didn't really realize that we had. But in many ways it is unique because the way you formulate that is usually completely yours as long as you're not plagiarizing or cooperating with anyone else. But when it comes to AI, it doesn't have its own ability to think uniquely, only can think based on the information it's been given. So how good do you think this is going to be for the industry because I feel that it's inevitably coming, but how good or bad do you think that might be for storytelling as a whole, authors itself, tell me more about that. So it's an interesting question and it's a timely question too. So I think a few months ago there was a writer strike out of Hollywood and that made its way to New York. So it wasn't just the screenwriter, so it was I think it was also that some of the other folks that are involved in the creative industries. So I work with AI in some of my books and with some of my clients and I have a strong opinion on this for better or worse, but what it is is that AI is a great tool. It's derivative though. So it will never provide you with thought leadership and it will never have its own voice. So I want to give you a, we talked about writing being like music, so I want to give you a comparison. So I was in Europe recently and it's kind of interesting because there's a lot of auto tracked tunes that are based on hits from other authors, but there's no artistic merit to the exact same songs that I was listening to because I knew the originals, right? It's the finessing, it's the personality, it's the voice, it's the confluence of circumstances that would never exist and AI couldn't think it up. And so I think the creative industries need to recognize that A, yes, it needs to be moderated, contained, and there needs to be some regulations around the use of AI. But I think creatives can breathe deeply because I don't think AI will ever, ever, or end or thought leaderships can breathe deeply because I don't think it will ever replace innovative thought and I don't think it has the capability now or ever will. Yeah, but when it comes to musicians, for example, who maybe don't have the voice but I have the lyrics and then they can put Kanye West's voice who I've seen placed on the different hits and everything along those lines, how do we protect that because of maybe certain writers maybe think, well, I've got a certain style. And if someone's loading this into an AI button is spitting out something that's not actually theirs but is based all around my work and it's different from reading my book and trying to write like me but it's genuinely teaching something that's very, very intelligent to kind of spit out something very similar to what I would create, do you still think that they can rest easy? Again, we're talking about awareness, right? We're talking about awareness and we're talking about humans coming together to manage what will be a powerful resource for us. I understand your fears. I get it. I mean, you know, there was an interesting case and I was looking at this and I think the American Authors Association, no, I might get this wrong but I think this is the case where Google had ended up taking certain parts of books that were copyrighted and putting them in a vast database and there was a lawsuit and so I think Google won that one where the authors wanted to be paid and they considered it copyright infringement. So I don't think we're ever going to be able to sidestep AI and I don't think we're ever going to be able to put it back in the box. So knowing those two things, I think what we need to do is come together as creatives and intelligent people that say, you know what, this is a great tool. It's got powerful capability but if we really want to support the thought leaders of today and tomorrow, if we really want to support the creatives, we need to do better in A, helping them find their way in this technology driven movement within our industries and also to be able to pay people properly, right? Like I know musicians and writers are not being paid properly and that's something that I would love to see have some critical mass around a conversation on, right? So technology is not only sort of, if you will, threatening to take over. I think we can manage that but I also think we need to keep in mind the human story which is people need to be paid for their work and they're emboldened and impassioned by their own successes and so they should be and I think we need to consider that in the overall conversation as well. I think it's a whole nother podcast for another day. I'm talking about stuff on that topic. It's no, it's certainly an interesting one and I, you know, a lot of different thoughts come to my mind as well but it's interesting the work that I do primarily, I help them fitness coaches when all of these other things come along and people are like, "Ah, chat GBT, you can write your workout program," and everything along those lines, like I have no doubts. I'm like, there's no way that they can express the same empathy and compassion that I can as a coach. There's no way that they can manage your social occasion in a very unique way that I've gone through. It's like, of course, they can learn all this stuff but at the end of the day, I think that's where you just have to trust in yourself and trust in your work and trust in the unique way that you do things so I definitely share the same perspectives from that side of things as well. I'd love to get into the depths of let's put ourselves in the position where we're getting started on writing a book. Like you said, you don't go and run in the marathon on the first day but something that a lot of people come to terms of when they do get started is that blank page. It's just looking at that white screen and they're quite overwhelmed and I understand you've got like four different steps, four different phases that you go through. Can you run this through this briefly in terms of how you would approach writing a book for the very first time if you've never done it before? Yeah, for sure. So my program is called the Leadership Literary Lab and the four phases are preparation, prewriting, production and publication. And so what it is, it's designed to take writers from the beginning to the end, from conception to completion. So the prewriting is all the stuff that we've been talking about which is what is your mindset? Where are we starting? I start with an author self-assessment and then from there, I work with clients directly so that's one of the things that's unique about my program. I might create something online. Right now I'm not oriented towards that because I'd like to be able to deliver it personally. I think authors really need a mentor. It doesn't matter who you are, please find somebody to work with because you can't edit or go straight your own work. You really can't, nobody can. And so you need somebody with that critical eye and I know it was funny when I first went to grad school, I had asked family and friends, "Do you think this is okay and what do you think?" I always need that level of expertise to be able to get that discerning eye because they'll all say, "Oh, it's fabulous." And I learned a lot about that and a lot about people and of course we need our advocates and our cheerleaders but to get that critical eye is really important. So back to the question. So the first one is preparation. We work on systems and tracking, we work on free writing, we work on understanding what it means to face down the blank page. So it's a lot of setting expectations and understanding your starting point. That's the first month. After that, the prewriting is a lot of technical stuff so it's about before we get to the outline, we're going to work on things called themes, tenets and timelines and I have a whole section on this and that's all about what's the big picture and how do we flesh out that big picture? What are the core principles that you want to discuss? Now that's whether you're telling it even in a memoir or a story where you're populating certain principles of thought leadership within a story format. Human stories are really important to include in any type of book, it depends on how you want to do it. So we figure out what's called historical strategies which is let me give you a simple example in a cookbook, a rhetorical strategy is here's a picture of the dish and then we're going to describe the dish, then we're going to give you a list of ingredients and then we're going to tell you how to make it, right? So it's all these steps in figuring out how do you communicate that message to your audience? The same thing holds for different types of writing and that's whether you're trying to create a framework so something like atomic habits by James Clear. She had one very simple theme which is small habits done daily and stacked on top of each other lead to big changes, right? So we flesh out all of these things before we come up with an outline and that's one of the things I do differently. A lot of these programs starts with outlines and I don't think the depth of thought leadership is there and you can go vastly awry when you're not doing the homework first and you're not really what I'm doing calling spade work where you're not digging in and figuring out, well, what is this really all about? And one of the parts of that is figuring out what do you want to stand for? Because if you're going to write a book, that message you're going to be talking about it a lot so make sure it's something you really believe in and you're really passionate about. And then the third phase is the production phase and that's where we do the back and forth writing and there's still some lessons in there. I go over some technical stuff like voice and verb tense and coherence and consistency. So there's different teaching principles that you'd get on a weekly basis as we're writing but really that's where the back and forth happens at the book and that's where we get into the nitty gritty and then the publishing phase is all about the stuff that happens after you have that manuscript complete. What is editing all about? What are your publishing options? How do you want to launch your books? Again, it's expectations and there's some things about marketing. So I really work on a big picture because a book is a lot of time and if you're working with a mentor, there's a financial investment in it too. And so I want to make sure that authors understand really what they're facing and they're aligned in terms of their bigger picture and they know where they're going and how to get there. So that's the program and it generally takes about nine to 12 months. That's really interesting to know and I'm glad you shared that. So thank you and in regards to coming up with your big picture idea, I'm probably going to say something that's maybe a little bit offensive to some authors but maybe you agree with this in some ways is that many people are not necessarily creating books because they want to. They're creating books for things such as marketing, personal brand and everything along those lines. And quite often what you find in those books is it's just one is interesting because you said, obviously, atomic habits has one clear idea but I've read atomic habits and it's a fantastic book. It has a lot of different layers to it but there's many books that you come across where there's one simple idea and it's just hammered home for 500 pages when really it could have just been maybe a long article. What is the danger of that and do you identify that with the clients that you work with as well and maybe say, okay, well, this big picture is that maybe there's not enough substance here. Maybe you're just going to kind of be repeating the same thing over and over again. In some ways, I think that can be valuable depending on the message but in other ways, it can get a little bit higher for the reader who thinks, well, I just could have been summarized into a 10-minute article. Yeah. So I differentiate the two. One I call a long lead magnet and one I call a non-fiction book. So I think there's a qualitative difference in the level of research, in the building of the rhetorical strategies, in the development of the themes and tenets. It's a very different thing. And some people, some coaches and speakers, they want to create a long lead magnet. And I think as long as you recognize, again, it comes back to the big picture, how is this going to serve you? If you're just writing the book to have that title of author, which then brings authority to it in an international space, then you can do that. And in fact, it's funny. I was looking into AI. We were talking about this earlier. And there is an AI program where you can put your name in. You can give them a subject matter and you can say, I want to write 10 chapters and it will write the book for you. So there are some technologies out there that can take care of that. So that's why I asked my authors, how invested are you? And I mean another version of that too. And it's something that I try not to be too disparaging about, but you'll hear the slant in my response. There's the write your book in 30 days or you write your book in four months or something like this. And what I know as an author and somebody that coaches authors is if you want to write a quality book, it will take you nine to 12 months. It will take you time in the chair. There's no way to shortcut that process if you want to create a quality book. One of the things that I do to help my author set expectations around that is I do what's called pacing charts. So I say, okay, if you want to write a 200 page book and your work count because there's specific word counts for specific genres. So let's say it's self help and let's say that 60,000 words, we have to break that down to, well, this many pages in this many, this much word count over this long period of time, let's say you want to write it in six months, that means you have to give me, let's just say, for example, 10 pages of fresh copy each week, not including revisions or edits of any kind. And, and then I liken that to what you do in a grad school program, which is you have eight months to produce 50 pages. Now do you really think you're going to be able to give me 10 pages per week of innovative fresh copy every week for six months? So this is where expectations come in, right? So I have a way of working with authors to say, let's, let's get real about this and let's see what it's going to take. And then let's decide if this is really what you want to do, because if it is, I'm very happy to help you. And if it's not, then, you know, make some different decisions, maybe some different decisions are coming down the road. But having said that to wrap up, it's worth the time. It is worth the time to write a quality book. Yeah, I would agree. And I liken it to the work that I do in the sense that, yep, you can get in shape in six weeks, you absolutely can. But trust me, if you do it for six, nine, 12 months, you are going to have a far better time. You are going to have an incredible result and you're also going to have a chance of sustaining that as well. So the quality of the result is completely different comparatively to something that's rushed. And yes, on paper, it can look like the exact same thing, you know, someone's in shape, took them 12 months, someone's in shape, took them 12, half of 12 weeks, let's say. And you know, it might look like the same, but it's when you actually look within the content, so you use an analogy of a book, then you start to realize the difference between the two. And yeah, that's really interesting to know. And I think that that's a lot of what's happening. And you mentioned James Clare in the book, Atomic Habits, and I do want to ask a question as we've brought it up, is that that's such an outlier in terms of how long it stayed on the bestseller list, and obviously the impact it's had on the world. What do you think that if you had to dial it down to like three keys to success there in the sense of like why that book was such a hit? Was it timing? Was it just very well written? Was it marketed super well? Because it's a great book, don't get me wrong, but it's not the greatest book of all time. However, when you talk to people and when you look at the New York Times bestseller list, you would think it's the best book of all time. So what were the components to so much success there? So I have read the book. I don't know what his platform was before he started. I think he did have a platform before he started, but this kind of created a juggernaut, was a juggernaut that kind of catapulted him. So I would say I have, I looked at the back, so this is a very well written, very thoroughly researched book, even though it's got a simple premise. If you look at the back of the book, I believe there's like 30 or 40 pages worth of citations. So he did his homework. That's number one. I think it's a very well written book. I think one of the things he's done is he's created a structure that's very well, the structure of the book is very well written. It's, it includes some stories, some personal story, but then he also takes some of these principles and he talks about other people's stories throughout it. And I think that's one of the things that made it compelling is he's not just hammering you with principles. He's showing you the living example of these principles. And that's one of the things that I think people really gleaned on to. And I believe he actually marketed it very well. I mean, I think that marketing is a long term prospect. And as he gained success, I think he probably started to work within that system where he's both creating a social platform and I know he's done some talks, Ted talks and I believe he's done some Fortune 500 company talks. And so I think it's, it's not one thing. I think it's a combination of a lot of things. And of course, there's the zeitgeist of when he wrote it, right? And I think people were looking for solutions to how do I achieve my goals and the way he packaged that and explained that and did his research around that and created story to compel people. I think it's a combination of elements and not just one simple element that came into play. Yeah, it's interesting because it's certainly an outlier and it's not on the surface something that looks completely different to any other book, but it is certainly different in terms of its performance. So that is very interesting as well, which brings me on to another question I have to ask you as well. Is there how much money is there in being a small publisher? Because I think that a lot of people have this idea. Like I said, maybe it's a long lead magnet in the sense that, okay, let me put my book out there in the world. I'm going to make any money off of it. But then obviously it's going to pay me back in terms of people signing on to my business. But then also if you speak to other authors, they'll be like, well, if you want to make money, don't get into writing. Well, a lot of people say that from different industries, but you hear a lot of that as well. So is this something that people could genuinely make a career out of if they wanted to? Or is it something that maybe it should be a side hustle to begin with whilst you're continuing to become better, to see how your books do in the world, et cetera, et cetera? I don't think there's one answer to that or a pat answer to that because I think it depends on the individual. So if somebody is truly oriented to write and they have multiple books in them and they're developing their thought leadership over time, I believe that they could make a career writing. It's not easy. That's true. And so one of the things I do in my program is I create a sensitivity analysis. So for example, at the end in the publishing phase, I'll say, okay, if you sell this many books for this type of royalty and you're going to, these are your print costs and there's all these variables, then you can actually do work the numbers yourself, right? I think to expect to have the kind of juggernaut that atomic habits was off the bat is an unrealistic expectation. I think authors need to know that the work in some ways begins when the book is finished and that's in getting your message into the world, right? It used to be that publishing industry was for the few and now with the proliferation of online platforms and with the growth in self-publishing, there's a lot of authors that are putting work into the world. So I do believe for those individuals that are oriented towards writing as their focus, given that they know if they acknowledge it won't happen in the first book, it'll happen after a series of books, then I think that it's possible to make a living writing a lot of writers teach and they have other careers for sure. Think about it in terms of fiction too, right? Think about it in terms of a series. So maybe the first book in a series isn't the big hit, but maybe the third or fourth or fifth book, it gains traction and then that person will grow an audience over time and that audience will learn to look forward to their new editions and their new books and they'll get to know that name. And so I don't think there's one answer, I think there's multiple paths, but just be aware that it's not going to be, you write the book and you put it in the world and instantly you'll have an audience. That's when the work actually begins to create adherence to your brand and advocates for your story and for your structure. And does the idea of building on top of that and creating more books, because maybe some people have only got, I've got this one idea for a book, is it something that comes during the writing process where you're writing a lot, maybe one chapter is becoming pretty extensive and you're like, well, actually, maybe I could hash out another book off the back of this. Is that something that tends to happen? Because I'm sure that a lot of people, maybe some people come within the idea of a series, but I imagine unless it is fiction, I would say that most people with nonfiction would be like, I've literally got this wonky idea and I want to write a book about this. Do more ideas come off the back of writing or? Yeah, I think it does a lot of times, you know, and it's funny because working with new authors, they'll have all of these ideas and when they do the free writing, they'll be like, oh, I want to include this and I want to include that and I'm like, okay, this is your theme. This is the one key takeaway for your reader and these are all the tenants and timelines that we're going to work with to sort of create this story and the structure or framework. But then there's all this other content and that may or may not become a book, but all this other content then leads to other ideas, right? So the key to having a successful book is to having a strong focus and that's one of the things that I think we've been talking about, Habits, he did very well, is that he stayed on track. He just kept reinforcing with different stories and different techniques and different tools and different ideas, that one key idea and I think that's one of the reasons that was such a strong book. But you look at somebody like a Bernay Brown and you think of how many books she's written, right? Now she's a researcher and she has a team behind her and in fact she's become this whole organization and congratulations to her, I mean she's done some great work in the world, but it started with this one discovery that she had on vulnerability and she's like being vulnerable, which was very at the time very counterintuitive in the workplace is actually a good thing. And in fact we need to embrace this and so while it seems commonplace now it wasn't at the time. And so it's from that one key idea that look what she's created, amazing, right? Or Marie, was it Marie Kondo? I haven't read her book, but it's all about the sparkle joy, spark joy about the story about having this clean slate and this clean mindset and a clean environment. And good for her, I mean I love the concept of sparking joy, right? That's the brilliance of that book. I mean you just smile saying that and so that's where an author can have more than one book because they just fall in love with an idea and if they explore it fully there's always more ideas to come. And that's the beauty of time as well. I think that when you mentioned obviously you're looking at maybe a 12 month time frame to create a book as well as that well whilst you go through the process of life different things happen and that might influence your writing as well, I think a lot of people would say that okay well yeah I guarantee if you asked someone if they wrote a book five years ago compared to today it would have completely different content because of all those lived experiences maybe even the ideas that you would have in a fiction book, right? You maybe just didn't have that creative thought pattern and that character didn't come to you in a certain time as well. So I think that's the beauty of time as well that can give you an opportunity to just really get more content and more solid content into a book and as obviously as we discussed if it's not going to be in this book it can obviously be in the next one and the ones to come as well but this has been a super super fun and fantastic and fascinating conversation so thank you so much for your time today and I've got two final questions for you. The first is what impact would you like to have on the world with the work that you do? I guess again it's twofold we've been talking twofold and on a lot of questions. The first is for my fiction. My fiction I write paranormal because I'd like to bring a light aspect to it. My books are full of the dire circumstances but I want to empower people to understand that there's reason to hope and believe in a brighter future. There's been a lot of negative talk and a lot of conflict in the world and my stories while there's a lot of ups and downs and ins and outs ultimately there's stories of redemption and there's stories of hope and that's one of the things that I'm very passionate about so that would be one of the legacies that I'd love to leave. Secondly for my authors I would love to be able to help people write the books that are near and dear to their hearts and bring their thought leadership to the world so that the younger generation can benefit from that hard thought wisdom. There's a lot of ways in which the older generation is now passing the torch and some of these experts in their fields are now again being replaced by technology or there's a lot of different modes of thinking and I think over the course of time if we can reflect back on what we've learned then we can move forward with that awareness and we can create a better future for ourselves and our children so those are the legacies that are important to me. Yeah I think they're absolutely fantastic and I'm sure you're very much on your way to leaving those legacies and with that being said where is the best place for people to find you if they want to keep up with the work that you're doing or if they want to discover your program and finally get that book out of their mind and onto paper. The best place to reach me is my website which is leadershipliterarylab.com and I also have a fiction writer's website if you want to track some of what I'm doing in terms of my own creative work and it's marylinclogacy.com I'm not sure if we can get the spelling of either of those to the audience but for the nonfictionwritingleadershipliterarylab.com and then my name for the fiction. Amazing we'll make sure that those are in the show notes below but Marilyn thank you so much for your time today it's been a really insightful conversation. Wonderful thank you I appreciate it and that was a simply fit podcast I hope you gained a huge amount of value from today's episode I feel inspired to improve your help and wellbeing. Be sure to search for Simply Fit in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify or anywhere else you get your podcast from and go ahead and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Also if you like the episode please don't forget to give it a 5 star rating I'd love to hear your feedback or any questions you have so reach out to me on social media you'll find me on Facebook and Instagram at @eliahasoonie. Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to talking with you all on the next one. (upbeat music)
