Liz Green | How A Book Coach Can Help Share Your Message

The publishing for profit podcast is brought to you by ghostwriters and co earne more money by publishing better content and learn how do we increase your thought leadership? So you can build your brand head over to ghostwritersandco.com for more information

And now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Joel:  Hello, and welcome to the publishing for profit podcast. This is your host, Joel Mark Harris. And today we interview Liz Greene, who is a book coach, formerly a ghost writer. we talk about her. Halfway from, she was a journalist worked in PR event planning and then became a ghost writer. so we have a great conversation.

This is good for people who want to write a book, but also people who are interested in entrepreneurship. We have lots of useful tips and information to share today. So without further ado here is Liz Greene. Welcome to the show. Liz. It’s great having you.

Liz: Thanks for having me, Jordan. I’m thrilled to be here.

Joel: A lot of places I want to start, but I think perhaps, you can first describe what a book coach is and what do they do?

Liz: Yeah, that’s a really good question because not everyone has had a book coach, people tend to have had of, editors and maybe the agents in the publishing industry, that book coach such a familiar term.

And it’s really been born out of this publishing situation where there’s more and more pressure on publishers to make money, obviously all the time, budgets are getting smaller and editors at publishing houses are having less and less time to spend with authors on crafting the book and getting it ready before it goes into the publishing process.

So back in the day, a publisher would have an editor who might spend ages working with you on your manuscript. And they’d be happy to take on your book when it was kind of 70% of the way there. Because they knew they could spend some time with you crafting it and getting it the rest of the way these days, they don’t have that time.

We’ve also got a lot more people, self-publishing, so they don’t have an editor. Who’s going to work with them anyways. They’ve got to get it as good as possible on their own. And that’s where a book coach can come in. They can work with you during the actual writing process to plan the book. To figure out what is going to say to help you with the writing, the words on the page, but also the head game of racing, where you suddenly find yourself procrastinating and having to do all the laundry in your house instead of writing

Joel: what’s going on, that’s keeping

Liz: you up, right?

We all, every time I say that people not along, because we all know that. Feeling, and it sucks when you’re on your own and you really want to do this waiting thing. But for some reason, you just can’t sit down and get the words out. And so a book coach can talk you through that, help you figure out what’s going on, get you over those road blocks.

So you can actually get to the end of the book and know that it’s the best book you could write possibly. Right. And then when you move on to publishing you, because it really is the best book you’re capable of writing and that. That is a wonderful feeling to know that you’ve put everything behind something and it’s, you didn’t just reach the end, but you gave it everything. And, so, but coaches are invaluable in helping with that.

Joel: For people who are either watching this or listening to this, and they’re like, that’s, you know, this is a great idea. I’ve never heard of this before. When should they think about hiring a book coach? Is it at the very start before they even, you know, they have a concept maybe, and maybe an outline, should they start.

should they hire a book coach then? Or should they hire a book coach when they’re like, Oh yeah, laundry actually sounds pretty appealing, right?

Liz: Yeah. There’s another great question. Because when we think of editors, we think about writing the book first and then sending it off to an editor who can show you where.

All your things have gone wrong and then you get it back and you’d be worried, okay. With a book page, you can address those issues as you’re going along so that you don’t end up varying way off the path that you intended to follow. And you don’t even realize until you’ve written 80,000 words, and then somebody tells you, Oh way back in chapter two, you kind of did this way.

Right thing. And you’re like, well, brilliant. Now I got to rewrite 60,000 words. Awesome. Or they tell you, Oh, throughout this entire book, you’ve got this weird writing habit where you do this thing over and over again, and you’ve got to fix it a hundred thousand times throughout the writing. That’s really demoralizing.

It feels really good. The had to get your edits back from an editor and be like, well, great. This just sucks. So I encourage people to work with. That coach is early in the process as possible. And a lot of people I work with haven’t written a word yet. They just have an idea. They’ve got this idea. Usually, that’s been bouncing around their head for years.

They’ve been thinking they’ve always wanted to write a book. They’ve been thinking about this forever. They just don’t know where to start. Or maybe they’ve written a few words in there. Well, this is rubbish and, and, or they get tripped up or they. So I like to work with people who are early in the process, because then we can do it right from the outset and we can make sure you’re actually right writing what you really want to get across.

But people come to me at all stages, and it’s never too late to bring on a book coach because when you do feel that laundry cooling and the procrastination raising up, and you’re just stuck in a rat. It doesn’t have to be so hard. You can bring in some help and get out of that rat. You don’t need to stay there, but it’s really hard to get out of that place on your own. So as early as possible is a great time to bring in a book coach. Wherever you are in the process, you can get help. You don’t need to stay stuck.

Joel: Yeah. I definitely find myself nodding to a lot of those situations. Like my first book, especially I, I, you know, I, I just did it myself. Like, you know, I guess a lot of people do and I submitted it to that.

It’s the editor and they’re like, no, you have to rewrite the entire thing and then completely change the plot and all the characters. And that, I just remember feeling like a hole in my stomach because I was like, you know, it was a good year. Like I think as a year and a half. Of work pretty much down, you know, down the tube.

And so I can imagine, you know, book, if I had somebody like yourself, a book coach who’s was like, yeah, no stop right there. You know, that would have saved me. Not only a lot of time, but a lot of grief for sure. Yeah, you can, you can help with that.

Liz: Oh, yeah, definitely.

Joel: So I want to switch gears a little bit cause I was reading your website and I love, you know, I love your website.

but something that particularly struck me was the fact that you mentioned your grandmother and how you and your grandmother went skiing. And I feel like there’s some really great stories because your, your grandmother sounds like a pretty awesome person. So I would, I just wanted to. Give you the opportunity, opportunity to talk a little bit about your grandmother and how that love of skiing came about.

Liz: Oh yeah. My grandma is awesome. my grandma, so I’m from England originally. My grandma is English as well, and she learned to ski as a. Oh, as a teenager, when she was a nanny family, he would take her Lavinsky hood and then fast forward through to when she had her own children and my uncle has a son who loves to ski. Ny other uncle and my mom hated it.

Didn’t care for it. And my grandpa couldn’t stand it. I remember once grandpa stood on a pair of skis, cut both feet in, sit there, looked around and said, no, I’m going to the pub. Unclips didn’t even go have a chat left. And that was him done. So grandma had my one uncle to ski with. Unfortunately, he passed away when he was in his twenties.

And then over the years, so she had no one to ski with. And so her grades and children were born and she insisted on taking us on skiing holidays without my mum, because mum hates skiing. just to have someone to keep a company, I think just a good excuse to go, go skiing. She’d take the grandkids alone.

So grandma used to take us on these really special holidays to France, Italy, Austria, and, it was great. Bonding time. We got to feel super special and, I hate it skiing as a child. Take me on these super special holidays. And I didn’t like that one year. I pretended I had an ankle injury, so I wouldn’t have to ski in the race at the end of the week, but I loved spending time with grandma and lo and behold as an adult, a.

Decided to go and give it another try. And they fell in love with skiing. I worked in ski resorts in France, Australia, and New Zealand and Canada. And that’s how I ended up living in Canada. Now I came out to do one ski season hit and stayed. And it’s been, I’ve been 12 years.

Joel: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty common story. Have you always enjoyed writing and did you always want to use your writing as a profession?

Liz: That’s a really interesting question. I remember being about 14 and a family friend of us have written a book. And I remember saying to him, that’s so cool that he wrote this book and she said, yeah, he used a ghostwriter.

I said, what’s that? You said, well, it’s not very good at writing himself, but he had this really cool story to share a true story about his experiences. So he hired someone to help him write the story. So that actually sounded good. And I thought, Oh, so writers don’t have to come up with all the ideas on their own.

They can write other people’s did. That’s interesting because I loved the idea of writing, but I thought I had nothing to say. I had no idea. What would I write about what would I say? No one cares what I have to think. That’s that was what I thought. So it was my first introduction to the idea that you could rate without having to.

Be this wonderful source of imagination and be CS Lewis or someone like that. which I didn’t feel like I was at OU. as I finished my schooling, I studied English. I decided to. Do a postgraduate degree in journalism? I didn’t think writing novels was the way it was a real career for somebody like me.

I didn’t think I had the imagination for it. That was for these mythical people who were demigods. so I felt it. the path into journalism, which eventually took me into public relations and eventually into editing those rating, but coaching and so on, but it wasn’t a straightforward path for me. I didn’t automatically think that I could do it.

I was looking for a way into writing that didn’t require me to be one of those brilliant novelists.

Joel: Can you talk a little bit about your time as a journalist, did you, I assume that you wrote for newspapers?

Liz: It was a short time I’m going to say that upfront. My journalism career was very short-lived. You’re right. I worked for newspapers. Back in those days, online journalism was not really a thing or it was starting to be a thing, but it wasn’t respected in any way. I am. My postgraduate degree was in newspaper journalism because that was considered respectable journalism back then, I. Qualified as a journalist, in the UK, there’s a pretty straightforward career path.

You have to have a particular qualification to get an interview with any kind of editor. So I followed that path and I got my first job as an editor, a regional newspaper. And I was sat in the bullpen, you know, the main open-plan office. And it was in my first week there. And I was just finding my feet and I had stacks of papers on my desk about.

School fire drills and country fairs. And you know, it was the rubbish that you get assigned when you’re the new kid on the block and an ambulance went stirring past the office window. And we were in a downtown area that was pedestrianized. No vehicles were allowed on the streets and the editor came bumbling out of his office, knocking over stacks of paper as he went and he screamed Liz, Liz.

Go chase that ambulance. I said, what so good chase the ambulance, get the dairy. We need the story. I was like, you literally want me to chase an ambulance said yes. And get a photo. Do not come back without a photo. And I thought, Oh my God, he wants me to take a photo of someone who is dying or something.

So I went out at the office and I, Unfortunately could not get past the police tape by the time I found the ambulance, didn’t really try that hard to be honest, but that was the moment where I thought I can’t do this. I can’t do it. I’m not cut out for journalism. I don’t, I want to write, but I don’t want to hunt down the story and chase ambulances.

And that was, I stuck it out for a bit longer, but that was when I knew that I couldn’t continue in journalism and I would have to find some other way to write.

Joel: I think that’s brilliant. You’re literally an ambulance chaser.

Liz: Literally. It was awful.

Joel: You went into PR and then you made a jump into, I think it was sales for a convention center.

Can you talk a little bit about that transition and why you decided to make the jump?

Liz: Hmm, that’s a good question because it’s kind of random. So I got a job in public relations for ski resorts in Bev, Canada, and. I was feeling unfulfilled. They felt like all I was doing was writing stuff to make which ski resort owners more money.

And there’s nothing wrong with this. Give us our owners, give guys perfectly entitled to make money, but I didn’t feel like I was doing anything that contributed to any good in the world. All I was doing was churning out stories and press releases that. Just help keep this machine taking over and it didn’t feel very you’re fulfilled.

So going on in the background, in my personal life, I got engaged to an awesome Canadian gay, or we got married and I loved planning the wedding. I had so much fun. We got married on top of a ski Hill. We ski down with all of our wedding party. There’s a lot of fun and I thought, well, maybe I need to change.

I’m not satisfied. In public relations, maybe I’ll do event planning and maybe that’ll be good. I can help people have wonderful experiences. And so I was motivated by wedding planning, but I ended up working. Can you conference planning, which is kind of more satisfying, actually, it’s a lot more intricate.

And, so I did conference planning for a few years and it still wasn’t. It didn’t scratch that itch for me was so part of a machine make him more money this time for hotel owners and conference, event owners. Yeah. And it still didn’t, it kept me busy. It paid the bills. I was pretty, I was enjoying that.

I was able to do something. I was good at. But it didn’t feel like an, a thing that mattered. And that was when I got sick and I had a minor medical procedure, no big deal. And they said to me, you can expect to be in pain for a couple of weeks after this. Just take it easy, take some pain over the counter painkillers.

So it did, and the pain never went away and I stayed in pain and. I essentially developed a chronic pain condition. There was some nerve damage when they did the procedure and I was in pain, had a lot of doctor’s appointments. I couldn’t work. And I had to go on sick leave from my conference planning job.

And it was really kind of a rough time for me because I did enjoy working even though the work wasn’t super fulfilling. I really enjoyed having goals and going after this stuff and doing things, couldn’t do that anymore. Didn’t know what to do with myself and was pretty bummed out about life for awhile.

And it forced me eventually. I thought you know what? I got to do something to keep my brain busy condo conference planning. I’m not up to it. I don’t have the stamina for it. And I thought, well, I can write blog posts. I had a friend who was a wedding planner. I said, can I write a blog post for you for free?

just to see if I can write blog posts for people. And she said, Oh, I just got back from a conference where they were talking about how important blocks for building your business. Could I hire you to write a blog for me every week? I was like, well, sure I can do that bed in my pyjamas when I’m not feeling very well.

And, yeah, you could definitely paint E and so I started waiting for her and it didn’t realize what I was doing at the time was ghost waiting. I was writing in her voice in her style using her words and her lingo. And to share her stories, which is what ghostwriting is. So it was writing blogs and, and she recommended me to another friend, a wedding photographer who recommended me to another friend.

And before you knew it, I have my own business where I could run it while I was. Working on getting better. Thankfully, now I have a lot there. I was able to do it while I was working on that I was writing and I still didn’t have any ideas to my own, but yeah, I was helping other people talk about the awesome stuff they were doing.

It was fun. And I started to find my groove again. I still wasn’t doing anything. Particularly meaningful, but it was writing and it was adding the money and it was enjoyable. And I could do it without just feeling like I was part of another machine again.

Joel: Can you talk about how, your job as a conference planner was really part of your identity and how, you know, like after not being able to do that job, you kind of felt, and maybe I’m putting words in your mouth, but, this, tell me about that time when you were like, really not sure about what.

Liz: Maybe it was a really hard time. And I didn’t realize until then that I had put all of my identity into my career and it wasn’t even a stellar career. I mean, I was doing it right. I was at, in money and I was keeping busy and I was, had a steady job in.

Banff, which is a difficult place to find good work because it’s a very popular tourist town. So it was doing okay. But I had put everything that I knew about myself into this. Korea identity. So I was somebody who could show up and get the job done. I was somebody who was working her way up the corporate ladder.

I had got promotions. I had got title improvements. This was the track I was on. And I didn’t realize until it was taken away until I can do it anymore. How much of myself I have put into this thing that I didn’t even really care about that much? And that was a bit of a shock. I didn’t know who I was. If I wasn’t working.

I mean, yeah, I was, you know, a wife, I was a skier, not very good skier. I was somebody who loves the mountains. I loved living in Banff. I loved hiking. You know, I had these things that I loved, but nothing really felt like that was me. And I realized that, yeah, I put everything into this career that wasn’t even that awesome.

Anyway. And. I was left kind of scrambling to figure out who I was, what I was without that. And it was so it’s so interesting because I never wanted to have my own business. I never wanted to be self-employed. I came to it out of necessity, out of needing to work. But not being able to show up reliably for a nine to five or having to work on doctor’s appointments.

So really keen to out of necessity. But what it’s taught me over the years is that I am capable of molding my own future. I always, before assumed that you had to figure out the best with what was available. And now I’ve is that what is available is actually a lot broader than you usually think. So I was able to make this career, make my business work.

Once I broadened my perspective of what I could do before. I’d been kind of narrowly looking at this career paths, and this is how you make money. This is how you go up, take the steps up the career ladder and all of the rest of it. And it wasn’t until that was stripped away that I realized that actually you can do a lot more than you think.

You think you can’t be an awesome well, just because you haven’t done it before, maybe you can’t. Other people have done it for me. Other people have run their own business while having chronic health conditions. And that was actually one of the big motivators was I discovered another business owner who had a chronic health condition and was making it work anyway.

And so I love, this is why I tell all of my authors to read other people in those genres when you can see other people who’ve done, it makes you realize that, Hey, maybe I can do that as well. When you realized that these authors who you love art, didn’t spontaneously, they appear as bestselling authors.

They have histories and backgrounds. They were waitresses and, you know, or, you know, full-time parents or whatever. And they would people before they became a bestselling author. And you can see when she can see these examples about the people who have done it before you. It broadens your perspective and encourages you to do it?

Joel: Yes, I can definitely relate to that. And I’m sure a lot of people can as well. I’m curious. Would you ever consider going back to a traditional job, a nine to five after experience entrepreneurship?

Liz: I think I’d be unemployable to be honest, I think, I think that’s. I, my tolerance for BS unlimited. I work for myself and I get to choose my clients.

And you know, you don’t always know what someone’s going to be like when you go into working with them, but I can choose to continue that working relationship or not, it isn’t or I used to think that. Being self-employed was the best thing in the world. And it’s for absolutely everyone. It’s not for everyone.

It’s hard. It’s you have to be okay with uncertainty, with not necessarily knowing where the money’s coming from next month, two months’ time in six months’ time, you have to be okay with. A lot of uncertainty was making all the decisions all the time. Sometimes that was exhausting, but I wouldn’t go back now.

I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. But I think anyone would have me.

Joel: Yeah. I think I’m the same way. There’s definitely times where I’m like, Oh, you know those rough days where like, Oh, I should just go back and, and, you know, have. you know, vacation time and, and be off at five o’clock. That sounds amazing.

Right. But ultimately, you know, it’s not something I want to do and I think, yeah, once you, you know, a lot of people who taste the entrepreneur life, they’re like, Nope, can’t go back.

Liz: Yup. Yeah.

Joel: After your health scare, you started green goose writing and some curious, I would say, I know where the green comes from, but your husband also has a, I think it’s a construction firm.

That’s green goose construction. So obviously there’s a meaning behind this. And then I’d like to dive into that.

Liz: I get asked this all the time. So green is because my last name is green and, the goose comes from, an amalgamation of myself and my husband. So I’m English, a traditional English bird is a goose.

You know, back in the day, people used to have gifts at Christmas. Turkey’s more common now. My husband is Canadian and there’s the Canada goose. So we liked it as something that worked presented, both options allergies, and we just thought it sounded good. So, yeah, my husband has green grease renovations. I have green goose writing. We live on a small acreage called green juice acres and that is a little empire.

Joel: Can you tell me a little bit about your time ghostwriting and how you built up your business through ghostwriting?

Liz: I started, you know, when I was doing all that blogging and writing blogs for people, I was enjoying the writing, still not fin, particularly for build though, I started to work as a virtual assistant for an editor, somebody whose podcast I listened to all the time and she was looking for some help.

I thought, yeah, I could do that. I started, sting her in her business. And eventually after a few years, she had a client who had come to her for editing, but his book was rough. It was, it was in there. It wasn’t quite ready for editing, which is fine. We will go through those phases, but she said to me, Hey, I know you like.

Writing. I know you’re really good at writing and other people’s voices and picking up on what it is. They’re really trying to say when they’re kind of wandering all over the place. Would you mind working with this writer and seeing if he can go straight parts of the book to bring it together? Get it ready for the editing stage.

And I was thrilled. I had so much fun doing that. And that was, but I was reminded about that childhood moment when I was 14, I was like, Oh yeah, ghostwriting is a thing. I could actually do that. I have all this experience writing in other people’s voices, through. The journalism and PR I know how to ask questions of people.

I know how to interview and know how to draw out what they really want to say or to pinpoint what the point of something is and know how to do these things. And so I started a ghostwriting company and I just said it I’m going to do it. I’m just going to do it. I’m going to cool myself, go straight to it before I’m really a ghostwriter.

And I’m going to be open and honest about my experience level and so on, but I’m going to start doing it. And I start to put some small projects, 10,000-word books, working with people. And I. took a business marketing class and I learned how to promote myself, how to get slightly bigger projects if we time.

And now I’ve ghostwritten 14 books and I really enjoy it. But as I was doing more and more ghostwriting, I found that my favourite part of the process was helping the authors figure out what they want it to say. And how to say it and what the structure of the book was going to be even more than the actual writing thing itself, which sounds kind of crazy for a writer, but I loved this guy kind of discovery process and this detective element of figuring out what it was all about.

And all of those things, I’m talking to waiters. I love getting on calls and talking with people. And that was when I realized that I wanted to shift into book coaching. So with ghostwriting, I was working with people who had something to say something that they wanted to get out into the world, but they didn’t want to do the weighting themselves for whatever reason.

And now it’s book coaching. Yeah. I’m working with people who want to write. Do the actual legwork of writing themselves, they’re just stuck. They don’t know where to start or they’re stuck in a rat. They don’t know how to do it. They’re beating their head against the wall, hate in the blank screen.

And they just need some help. They just need someone to work with them and I’m able to help them so they can do the actual writing and feel really proud of it. Cause they know it’s good.

Joel: And do you help with the actual marketing side as well using that marketing background of yours?

Liz: Actually, no, I don’t. I’m pretty clear about what I’m good at and what I can just about passing off marketing. I know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be great. So do you stay in my lane? I’m really good at writing and planning books and, Only okay. Marketing. So don’t do the marketing side, but you know, you and I are both in the industry.

We know a lot of people and certainly pasts pass my clients onto people who can help them. But yeah, that’s not, that’s not where I should be playing. I’m very clear about that.

Joel: and so what are some common pitfalls that you see writers? I guess like hit up against common pitfalls?

Liz: Good question. The first would be a feeling of overwhelm that when people say to me, I just can’t get started, or don’t know where to start. Is this feeling of overwhelm? I think that is creating that block. And the overwhelm is often because we haven’t spent enough time in the planning stage. So often we think of writing as sitting at the computer, tapping away or holding the pen in your hand and breaking away.

But writing actually has. Three, very distinct components. There’s planning, there’s writing and there’s editing. We tend to think of writing as the actual writing, but that’s the middle component. And the planning component has to come first. And this varies for different people. Some people love to plan to an extreme degree.

Some people just like to have a vague idea, but you got to do something. You got to. Understand what it is. You’re trying to say with this book, why you want to write it? Who you want to read it? Why are you even bothering? But the whole, like, why is, what is this way? Well, you don’t have to understand why you feel cool to write.

A lot of people feel that including me feel that cool to write, and we don’t really know why. But you got to understand what you want to say, what you want to do with that cooling, what you want to do on the page. And when you start to get clear on that, that’s when it comes easier to actually start putting things down, writing the words, doing the actual rating, but you got to put in that thought work first.

And sometimes that involves writing. Yeah, typing things out. Sometimes it’s sitting through and talking things out with someone like a book coach or a friend or some, or somebody who knows about writing so that you can get clear on those things. And that’s where the, so many people just try to push through and it doesn’t work and they stay stuck and.

They think that it’s because they’re a bad writer or they’re not destined to do this. No, it’s just because you’ve been trying to go to stage two before doing stage one. So that’s the number one thing I see coming up for people. Yeah.

Joel: No, I think that’s amazing advice. I just want to highlight it a little bit because I think the planning stage is always, the most important, And that’s your right, you know, like when something doesn’t work, it’s usually because of something before that happens.

And so I think, so would you go back if you’re constantly, we hitting your head against the wall or doing laundry, w you go back, would you go back to the, the planning stage and look at that, and maybe recraft that a little bit.

Liz: Yeah, absolutely. In writing 14 books, every time I’ve got stuck on a chapter, I think it’s because I’ve, I’m trying to approach it before I ever really know what I’m doing with it.

What was the goal is, or the structure or something higher level. So I absolutely would recommend that you take a step back. Look at it from a broader perspective and think, okay, what am I trying to accomplish in telling the story? Or like, or this school part of this memoir, there’s this one incident I want to write about, but I keep getting stuck.

Why, why do I want to include this incident in my book? What’s the point of telling this incident? Why does it matter? Why do I want somebody to know about this little thing that happened? Within the Florida context of MoMA, or if you’re writing self-help, you know, why does somebody need to know about these principles?

And I’m trying to describe what, how does it fit into the bigger picture? Oh, you’re getting stuck on trying to tell them how to apply it. Why do they need to apply it? Where does it fit into the whole process. Whatever you’re teaching in your self help book. If you’re doing fiction and you come up to a scene and he just can’t get the scene to come out, why are you telling this thing?

What are you trying to accomplish with it? What does this do for the characters when you come up and you can usually find something that you haven’t quite narrowed down yet, and maybe it means that you don’t even bother with that scene. You don’t actually need it. Or maybe it means that. You’re trying to tell it from the wrong angle.

You need to shift how you talk about it a little bit, or maybe you realize, Oh God, talk about this because I haven’t talked about that other foundational principle first, and they need to add an extra chapter that introduces the foundation before I can, to this stuff can make sense. There’s something that will come up when you take a step back and start asking these broader questions of why.

And. What’s the point and how does this, how does this fit in? And. Only once you do that, can you, can you actually make progress? And it’s amazing once you answer those questions and your, when she got to figure it out, it’ll flow. Like it will, it happens every time for me. If we’ve all 14 bucks, I got stuck somewhere along the way I pulled up.

I figured it out. And then once you go back into it, you can keep going. We had the same experience.

Joel: Definitely. Yeah. I think I’m, I’m at a point now, you know, this kind of, I, I knew I knew this advice, but you know, we hearing it and, and kind of. I guess internalizing it. I’m like in my, I’m writing this a historical fiction book, it’s a trilogy and I’m on the last little bit and it’s just, you know, I’m yeah, I’m at that stage where it’s just hitting my head up against the wall and I just can’t make anything work.

So I think we have, and I really need to go back and. And look at my overall, outline. And I think, the issue is because I, you know, I tend to rush through that stage and so I need to go back. And so, yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. It’s great advice and I think everybody can, take it away and use it for sure.

Joel:  There’s a lot that you mentioned there, but I want to take it who should write a book and is there a book in everybody? Can everybody tell their life story? Or is there some, criteria that you shouldn’t be before you even start writing a book?

Liz: Oh, I have actually changed my mind about this a bit recently. I used to think if it fit in with your business or life plans, goals, oval structure. I used to think there’s not, because writing a book is a big endeavour. It takes a lot of time energy. I used to think it was only worthwhile doing, if you could see how it was going to help your business.

So if you’re writing self help, how it was going to. Promote your business, or if it was going to fit into your life plan some way you want to weight your memoir, because you want to have a career as an author, for example, but actually I’ve shifted this a little bit in the last few years because I’ve seen how awesome it is for authors to tell their stories, whether it’s a fictional story that they want to share or their own life story in a memoir.

Well the advice and the things they’ve learned through their business and self help, hidden peaks, such an impact on the past. Then to go see the process of writing a book, just standing what you do. You’ve forgotten putting it on the page and sharing it with the world. That even if it doesn’t necessarily check all the boxes for making sense for your life goals, it can still be so worthwhile.

And that’s kind of, that kind of took me by surprise. When I first started to see this, I started. See a few people who I was working with, who I thought, I, I’m not sure that this is the best use of your time right now. I’m happy to be here for you if you were determined to do it, but I’m not sure it’s the best way to move your business forward or to spend your free time, doing this thing, but they still want to do it.

And they did it and they were so fulfilled by it. Like the piece that almost like a sense of relief of knowing that left this part of themselves on a page, whatever happened to them next they’ve left the part of themselves in this world. It’s pretty impressive to see. And I started to realize that that is available to everyone.

And it depends on what you want from, from writing. For some people, they definitely want it as a cooling car for their business, or they definitely want it because they want to make a career as an author, but I’ve started to kind of stuff it and see that. The fulfillment, like, yes, it’s great. If you can give it with these things to your fetus, but the process of writing can give so much to yourself that I feel like now, if you’re cool to do it and willing to put in the work, then you should do it.

Joel: That’s a really cool answer. I have not. I’ve asked that to a number of my guests and your answer is my favourite. We won’t tell anybody.

Liz: Okay.

Joel: Amazing. Because for me, writing is very therapeutic. I’ve always had trouble expressing myself through where it’s. And so whenever that happens, I am.

Able to, like you said, like leave a piece of myself on the page and able to work out, you know, a bunch of emotions or why this happened or, you know, and see like all these, all these themes that kind of rise up to the surface. So it’s yeah, I agree. It’s a pretty cool, experience and process.

Liz: Yeah. I think that’s true for a lot of people. They have the same experience as you and, and it’s such a worthwhile experience.

Joel: I want to talk about your course. Cause I believe this memoir course is, is fairly new. can you tell us why you decided to create this and how it’s going so far?

Liz: Yeah, it is putting you is cool to break your memoir a step by step plan to finally finish your book, even if you’ve barely started.

And I created it, they did it because they saw a lot of people who wanted to write their life story. They have been thinking about it forever. They really, truly did want to finally finish the book, but they didn’t know either how to start or is it just written down a few thoughts? They perhaps weren’t in a position to hire a book coach and myself.

you know, my monthly sit when I work one on one with people it’s really intensive, hardcore, we get your book done. That means that, you know, it’s not the cheapest thing on earth. So some people aren’t in the position to do that. And I still want it to help them because like I said, I was saying. How fulfilling it was for people to write their life stories.

And I want more people to be able to do that, even if they weren’t in a position to hire a book coach right now. And I knew that so much of what I could say would be helpful. So I created this course. It’s a. Bunch of videos. And then there’s a massive work because well, which we go through step by step in each video and we go Sue from the very idea, like I’ve got this idea, I’d love to write about this thing that happened to me.

I’d love to write about my experiences with this. So you start with this kind of vague idea. And then, then we broke it down into what it really means the theme. And we look at the structure and how to get a list of. Chapters have to do that upfront planning work, and, you know, you can expand or collapse it depending on what feels good to you.

But we do set that up front planning where we end up with a list of chapters that you’re going to write about. And in chapter one, I’m going to talk about this thing that happened to me in chapter two. I’m going to talk about this. And so, So that you can actually start writing and know that you’re going to take the reader on a really cool journey and through your life, through your experiences, something that’s going be really powerful to read.

And then there’s also a lot of, writing tips and tricks and how to deal with writer’s block. And what if your grammar isn’t that is kind of rusty and, Yeah. How, what is, what does this writing advice mean that you always hear that I don’t really know what to do. So we go see all of that as well. And it was a lot of fun to occurred.

And I remember that first person who signed up, she said that she just spent the whole time nodding. As she was watching the videos like yes, yes, yes. Okay. Yes. And, I’ve had such great feedback on the course. It’s been really fun to see people actually making progress on their books. and, and it can do it.

Of course, right now we’re all at home. not venturing out into the world as much. So they’re able to do it at home, online from the safety of their own home and use the time to finally finish their book.

Joel: Does a memoir need a theme because I’ll tell you my take is yes. That there’s definitely, you know, any life and it doesn’t matter what that it is.

It has yeah. Certain fee thematic elements that are, you know, good to know takeaways for the reader. Do you find that’s the case or do you, I’m sure you got. people who you work with are like, no, my life’s just my life. It just, this is how it happens. It doesn’t need a theme.

Liz: Yeah. Interesting. I find that when we start to, like, as the things people want to talk about in their memoir, so the different events that have happened to them throughout their life. Themes inevitably crop up. You may think that it’s just a same, the stuff that’s happened to you with stuff that you’ve done.

But when we guys do an exercise of people where we look at every kind of event that we want to talk about in the book, cause you know, we have this, you know, I want to talk about my life, but within your life, there’s that time that I met my husband at that time and that my sister fell off, you know, this is the status.

I’m very curious. You know, there were these little stories within the biggest story. So we looked at all the little stories and we say, Why do I want to tell someone about this? What was the point of me sharing this story? Why does it, why do I feel called to tell somebody about this? Oh, because that time that my sister fell out the stairs and broke her wrist, I want to tell people about the book.

If you’re being an idiot and fooling around the bad things. Okay. And it happened to you. Cause my sister was being an idiot. And it sounds kind of fun and you’re like, that’s not really a very profound theme. It doesn’t sound very literary or very good, but that’s kind of why I want to share it. So like a Mo Teo, right?

So then you got this. That is, that is, you know, it may not sound very profound, but that is your theme of that little story. And to take people through this exercise where we identify the themes of what were these little stories, even if it’s kind of silly, And without fail, we see the same themes coming up over and over again.

And it’s because as human beings, we tend to, we get taught certain things. When we’re kids, we have experiences that affect us profoundly at various points in our life. And these things come back to us again and again, and we see the same things popping up and it’s different for different people, but. The same things affect us throughout our life.

You know, if you had a, a parent who was really tight with money, you might find that all your life you’ve had like a weird relationship with money. You felt grabbing you or greedy or scared about money, and that’s come up for you over and over again. And. At the end of the day, you can choose what you focus on with your writing.

She with writing you get to decide what you’re going to focus on. But when you look at these incidents that you feel cool to write about, you do usually see the same themes coming out, private again, and you’re like, Oh, That’s what it’s about. Oh, I thought I just wanted to tell a funny series of funny stories about my sister being, but really this is about, you know, what does it mean to be, to have a silly attitude in life?

It goes from being just a series of anecdotes that you’re telling someone which is fine, but it transforms from a series of anecdotes into something meaningful, something where people read it and go where they close the book at the end.

And they have like something that lasts with them afterwards. That’s when books really start to get good.

Joel: That’s awesome. so I’m going to close off with this question. And this is a question I like to ask and feel free to, have more than one answer, because most people can’t narrow this down to one, one book, but I like to, to ask, what is your favourite book? What is a book that you like to gift often?

Liz: So funny, you introduced the question that way. Cause you told me in a bunch, you were going to us this and I was like, Oh, I don’t know how to, so there’s so many things for a long time. It did have a couple of favourite books, Lord of the flies. So we can go back was one of them. A weekly book by Russell. So I’m looking at my bookshelf when you walk up by Russell Hoban was one of them and you know what I read Lord of the flies. So many times as a teenager, I came back to my early thirties.

It had probably been a decade. I was still calling it one of my favourite books and I read it and I was like, really? This is what you’ve been raving about? So, I guess I go through phases. Like everyone, things that resonate for you at a particular time of life. one of my perennial favourites is the Harry Potter series, maybe cause I’m still a big kid at heart, but I think it’s really because that was what brought me back to fiction. So I read the Harry Potter series when I was in my mid, my late twenties and I hadn’t been reading any fiction. In those years when I was working in public relations, when I was, this is before I got into ghostwriting and I just kind of abandoned it and fallen by the wayside.

I was skiing, potting doing my thing. And my cousin said to me, You have to read this kids, but I know it was a kid’s book. No, it’s a kid’s book, but you going to read it as a, come on Beth. Like it’s like 11-year-old. Come on. She’s like, you going to read it. Just give it a chance. So I did and it remained it.

These books reminded me what it feels like to be completely transported out of your world when you’re stuck in a crappy job and you open the pages of a bag and you’re in suddenly this wondrous place and it can completely take you out of something. And. I was in a crappy job and I wanted to escape and I read the next book and the next book, the next book.

And then I took the sorting quiz about it. I’m a Gryffindor. And now we’re still in the movie and I still love the Harry Potter books. I still listen to 15 minutes of a Harry Potter. 40 a bit every night before bed, because it’s a little escape. It’s like, come, it’s like a comfort blanket for me.

It’s just a little happy whatever’s going on in the day. You can turn on 15 minutes and be in a magical place. With death and destruction sometimes, but you can escape for 15 minutes and you know, my life is good now. I love my life, but it’s so fun to go somewhere else for a few minutes. And so I would always love those books because they brought me back to the wonder affection.

Joel: Yeah, well, we’re talking about theme really is about how to escape, like a very ordinary life into something magical and something special. So yes, those are very great books. Well, Liz, thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate your time for listeners who want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

Liz: Yeah, you can find me. Being ghost writing.com. So like we said, that it’s green, like the colour goose, like the bird .com. And if you want to check out the memoir course, it’s green juice waiting.com/memoir. And you can have a look at that and there’s a contact form on that website. Shoot me any messages you want to, any questions you want to ask?

I’m always happy to talk or things, books. So I’d love to chat. Thank you very much.