How to Write a Life-Changing Book Part 3

BACK TO EXPERIENCE HOME

– small but important life-changing-ness!
– the ‘clean pain’ of losing something you love
– how to recover from stress, exhaustion and overwhelm
– balancing striving and rest
– why there is always ‘loads we can do’, and where to start
– how to expand your capacity
– how can you get back into writing after a summer away from it
– how to remain positive and in belief when your agent starts talking about disappointing sales and ‘bad track’
– what does ‘a draft’ actually mean? And how to do one successfully

“The experience of having a book rejected and then realising later that you wouldn’t have wanted to put it out there as your first published book anyway… that’s a really valuable experience. It enabled you to practise failing, practise feeling the painful feelings that come with disappointing results, and learn that actually events ended up working in your favour despite the pain – because you wouldn’t ultimately have wanted that book to be published. So, you learned how to take your writing to the next level and (although there was some pain) nothing actually went wrong. In this way, we can learn to associate pain and disappointing results (which are always part of any writer’s life, no matter how high-earning or bestselling they are!) with exactly what needs to be happening in order to get us to the next level of our writing lives/selves, rather than (as most people do) with something having gone wrong.”