Why can’t I write my book? This is a question all writers ask themselves from time to time.

Watch my video below, or read the transcript, to find out how I can help if you find yourself unable to write your book.

Hello my lovely writers!

Not written your book yet? Are you feeling super-disappointed with yourself that still this book hasn’t come into being, into fruition? Do you wonder, why is it, when someone else asks me to do something, I do it, no problem. If somebody needs a favour from me or a colleague needs me to help them out, I do it, I don’t have an issue with it. 

Why can’t I write my book?

But when I ask myself to do something like write this book that I know I really want to write, it doesn’t happen. Why can I not do that? Why can’t I write my book? 

Does that sound familiar? Is that the kind of rhetoric that goes around in your head when you think about writing your book? 

I can help you with that. 

21 Days of Writing Inspiration

I can give you the motivation you need to keep yourself going so you can build a habit and show up for yourself. So you do the writing for yourself in the same way you would help out a colleague or a friend. 

Sign up for my 21 Days of Writing Inspiration and I will send you a short video each day for 21 days to help you stay on track and stop you falling off the wagon so you can write your book. 

I know you want this. I want it for you. Let me help you. Let me be there for you, just like you are for the other people in your life. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

Give yourself the slight edge by breaking things down into smaller chunks. It’s a great way to stay productive if you’re feeling unmotivated. 

Watch my video below, or read the transcript, to find out more. 

Hello my lovely writers!

I’ve been feeling unmotivated today. I’ve been thinking about why I’m not feeling motivated but also how I can still have a somewhat productive day. 

I like a productive day. I like to come to the end of the day and know I’ve made moves towards whatever it is I’m aiming for. For us as writers, that will be making moves towards finishing our books. 

As writers, we know that, even at the best of times, we’re not always motivated. If the muse is not with us, the wall of resistance comes up and we can feel demotivated. When you’re in the mood and frame of mind where you’re already not feeling motivated, that wall of resistance to writing comes up higher and higher and higher. 

It’s easy to do something. It’s easy not to do something

I thought, what can I do about this? So I said to myself, ‘Delve into your tool box, Emma. What have you got around this?’ and I remembered an amazing book called The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, which you may have heard me talk about before.

In Jeff’s book, he says, anything you want to do in life, if you want to get a slight edge on it, you simply have to do one little thing at a time. The mantra that goes through his book is, ‘It’s easy to do something. It’s easy not to do something.’ 

One example he gives in the book is that it’s easy to make a phone call that’s going to help you in what it is you want to do. For example, if you’re looking for a new house, it’s easy to make a phone call and make an enquiry. It’s also easy not to do it. If you make the call, you’re making a step towards getting that house. If you don’t make the call, you’re nowhere near where you want to be. 

Give yourself the slight edge

It’s very much this idea of the slight edge. You’re doing one small thing at a time. It’s a philosophy I really like about chunking things down, pulling things down into baby steps and making a goal, task or project small and manageable.

If you’re like me today and thinking, ‘I just don’t feel motivated,’ or, ‘I’m feeling frightened about the work I’ve got to do and the writing I’ve got to do on this book,’ how can you break that down into much smaller pieces so it doesn’t feel as intimidating and scary? 

For us as writers, it might be coming up with the name of your book. It might be researching book covers to see what’s out there. It might be writing just 200 words of your book. Just start writing one scene and you’ve written 200 words – done. That might take you, what, ten minutes? Although you’ve not finished a chapter or a scene, you’ve made a start and you’ve made a slight edge to where it is you’re trying to get to. You’re staying close to the fire. 

So, if you’re like me today and you’re feeling unmotivated, break it down, chunk it down, think of the slight edge. It’s easy to do something, it’s easy not to do something. What are those baby steps you can take to get you to where you want to be? 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

Stop planning and start writing. That’s what even the most successful crime and thriller writers do. 

Watch my video below, or read the transcript, to find out why you should just start writing with what you’ve got. 

Hello my lovely writers!

I attended a fantastic discussion between Queen of Crime, Val McDermid, and historical writer Kate Mosse, whose Citadel was her big break-out novel. 

They talked about the writing process and Val did a great job of getting Kate to open up about how she starts her books.

Where do they begin?

Where do the ideas come from?

When does she start writing? 

You don’t need to know what’s going to happen

Kate said, for her, it starts with place. For some, it might be character, but for her it is place. She goes somewhere and the place speaks to her and she described it as hearing whispers and voices in her ear. If she hears nothing, she knows there’s no story there for her but, as soon as she starts hearing those little whispers, she knows there is a story for her. 

What came out from that is she doesn’t know what’s going to happen and she doesn’t know how it’s all going to fan out. All she knows is she’s got a place and, one by one, her characters come on a stage and start telling their story. She doesn’t know everything about it or exactly what’s going to happen. 

That was something Val nodded her head in agreement with. They then mentioned Ian Rankin, the very famous crime writer here in Scotland who writes the Rebus books, which you may know from the TV show. He also says, ‘I don’t know who the killer is. I don’t know who the murderer is. I just have this idea and I get writing.’ 

Stop planning and start writing

This is something I have come across time and time again from published writers, successful writers and, surprisingly, writers who write in the crime and thriller genres. You’d think crime and thriller writers would need to have everything worked out ahead of time because they’ve got to put in their red herrings, misdirect the reader and weave in all those little clues that lead up to the end but, no, taking Ian Rankin’s example, they don’t even know who the killer is. They just know there’s been a crime. 

If you know this is what’s holding you back and you’re waiting to have everything worked out before you start, I cannot encourage you enough to stop planning and start writing. Take what you’ve got. Take where you’re at. Take what you know already and just get writing. 

I promise you from my own experience that, those little nuances, those little details, the little things you cannot plan for, they come out in the writing process. All the gold, the gems, the magic, that comes in the writing of the book itself. It doesn’t come in the planning. You can do as much planning as you want but you won’t get the golden nuggets in there. 

Do what all of the other writers are doing, all of these successful writers, even the crime writers and the thriller writers. Take what you’ve got and get started because the rest is procrastination and, in your heart of hearts, you know this. If you know that’s you, get writing, get cracking and the gems, the gold, the magic will come as you are writing. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

Do you know the difference between a lack of confidence and imposter syndrome? Did you even know there was a difference?

Watch my video below or read the transcript and see if you recognise any of the signs in yourself.

Hello my lovely writers!

My question for you today is, do you know the difference between a lack of confidence and imposter syndrome? 

Do you think they are the same? Perhaps you think having a lack of confidence means you’ve got imposter syndrome. That’s certainly the conclusion I had and how I viewed those two things. What I later learnt was that they’re two very different things. 

Everybody lacks confidence sometimes

Everybody goes through moments of lacking confidence. For example, when your work asks you to do a presentation, or give a speech, or show somebody senior or from a different branch around the office. Or maybe you’re going for a job interview, or you do amateur dramatics and you’ve got a show coming up. It could be anything. Anything that is heightened or out of the ordinary that you’re feeling pressure about. 

Most people will feel a lack of confidence in those situations. They might feel unsure about themselves at that moment but they do the show, they give the presentation, they go for the interview, or they show that person around the office. 

Afterwards, people come up to them and say, ‘Well done, that went really well. You did a great job. I really enjoyed that show. That presentation was great,’ and your confidence goes up. You think, ‘Yeah, that did go well. I did a good job there. I’m really glad I prepared for that,’ or, ‘Gosh, I was thrown into that situation and I did a really good job and I’m really pleased and I’m proud of myself.’ 

Do you have imposter syndrome or do you lack confidence?

There are many types of imposter syndrome but all of them have this in common – after you’ve done the presentation or the show, you think, ‘Oh my god, did that go okay? Was that all right?’

It doesn’t matter how many other people say, ‘You did a great job there. Oh my goodness, that was so interesting! I didn’t know this,’ or ‘You made me laugh in that show, it was so good,’ as a person with imposter syndrome, your brain is telling you, ‘They don’t really mean that. They’re just saying that because they feel sorry for me. They’re being polite because it was so bad they just don’t want me to know that.’ 

Your brain comes up with all kinds of justifications as to why the job you did was really not that good and you do not deserve the success or the accolade that you are receiving. 

If somebody says to you, ‘That story was really good, you did a great job there,’ do you come up with a reason as to why it isn’t and you think they’re just saying that and they don’t really mean what they’re saying?

Or can you take that praise or applause and say, ‘Thank you, I worked hard on that. I’m really pleased and proud of myself.’ 

Which one are you? If you’re the first, you’ve got imposter syndrome. If you’ve got the second, then your confidence, like most people’s, comes and goes. 

Let me know if this resonates with you and, if it does, and imposter syndrome is something you recognise in yourself, then join my Unlock Your Creative Block course. It’s all about letting go of imposter syndrome so you can write your novel with confidence, to enjoy writing it and enjoy the accolades you get when you finish that book. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

It’s hard knowing when to hit publish but it all depends on whether you’re an indie publisher, or if you’re going down the traditional publishing or hybrid publishing route. 

Watch the video below to find out more. 

 

Hello my lovely writers, how are you?

Somebody who watched an interview I conducted about Launch Pad: The Countdown to Publishing Your Book – a wonderful anthology I’ve been involved with – asked me a great question. 

The question was: How do you know when it’s the right time to hit publish? 

This question arose from a conversation about how, as soon as you hit publish, you are a business. While we might start writing stories to be creative and to fulfil a need in us, the reality is, as soon as you become a published author, that story you’ve been writing – possibly for decades – becomes a commodity. It becomes a product. It becomes an asset to you and, believe it or not, to your children as well. 

We need to shift our mindset

We need a shift from that mindset and all the ups and downs and angst that comes with being a creative. We have to shift from that mindset into one of a business person and put on our business hat which, for most of us as writers and creatives, is not a natural situation to be in. It’s certainly not why we thought we were getting into the book writing industry. 

The truth is you do become a business and you have to think differently about things. You have to stop thinking of your book as part of you, or as a child, because your book is not your baby. When you put your book out into the world, it belongs to everybody including individuals and book groups who are going to find, read, enjoy and discuss your book and its characters. 

If the amazing happens and your book gets optioned, your book very much stops being yours, as you’re putting it into the hands of TV or movie producers who are going to decide what happens to your story. They’re going to chop it up and move it around and turn it into something quite different that’s suitable for a viewing audience rather than a reading one. 

Knowing when to hit publish

But even after shifting our mindset, that still leaves us with the question: When do you hit publish?

This will depend on how you decide to publish your book. 

If you take the traditional route and find an agent who loves and believes in your story and is committed to finding a publisher for it, it’s then in the hands of that agent to find a publisher, then the publishing decision moves to the publisher. 

It then falls into the production pipeline and the publisher will decide when they hit publish. Let’s be clear about that. The publisher will decide when it fits into their publishing schedule and their publishing timeline. They decide when the books go to press, when pre-orders go up and when they go on sale. Your job is to turn up and do all the interviews, write the blog posts and go where you’re told to go and also of course create your own opportunities to promote your book. 

So, if you’re going down the traditional route, the question you really want to ask yourself is, when is the book ready to query? 

Query-ready is different to publish-ready

The decision to query is different to the decision to publish. I have not yet heard of an author – particularly a debut author – presenting a book to an agent and hearing the publisher say, ‘Yes, great! We’re going to go with that and you don’t need to make any changes. It’s all good.’ 

You need your book to be query-ready, which means your book is as good as you can make it, either entirely on your own or perhaps with feedback from a writing group you’ve been collaborating with or with help from a writing coach with whom you’ve been working. 

Upon sending the agent or publisher your query-ready manuscript, they are then going to say to you, ‘We love your book and really want to take it on. However, here are the changes we want to see,’ and you, as the author, get to decide whether to accept that offer and go ahead and publish with them or reject them and say, ‘No, I don’t want to make those changes. That’s not in keeping with my vision for the book.’ 

I went off on a bit of a tangent there but I want you to understand the difference between deciding when your book is going to be query-ready and when a publisher is going to decide it is publish-ready. 

Self-publishing, indie-publishing and hybrid-publishing

Things are different if you decide to go with self-publishing, indie-publishing or even hybrid publishing. With a hybrid publisher, you can take advantage of their in-house expertise but you’ll pay up front for it and then you collect more of the royalties on the back of that. 

Alternatively, if you’re going to be indie-publishing, you’ll be responsible for the up-front fees to put it all together, including the book cover and everything else you need to do before hitting publish. But if you are going to be an indie author and, to a degree, a hybrid author, you get to decide when to hit publish. 

As the author, creator, businessperson and authorpreneur, you get to make that choice but you have to decide whether to publish after one, two, three or more revisions. Or maybe you are not happy to publish until you’ve got some feedback from some beta readers. 

Perhaps you’re going to go a step further and have your manuscript professionally evaluated. You can then take on board those comments and make any changes recommended that you agree with and then hit publish.

There is no perfect book

I’m just going to add a little addendum here for those perfectionists out there, and you know who you are. There’s a difference between being publish-ready and being perfect. I often argue how there is no perfect book and I always default to Stephen King on this. 

Stephen King is one of the greatest, most popular and most successful living authors of our generation. Thousands of people give him 5-star reviews and proclaim he is the master of what he does but, equally, there are thousands of people who will give him a 1-star review and say, ‘I don’t get what the fuss is.’

Even after he’s been writing for forty, fifty years, he still hasn’t written the perfect book because there is no such thing as the perfect book. 

So, for you perfectionists out there, just hear that. There is no such thing as a perfect book. If you continue to pursue perfection, you’re going to get nowhere. Your book’s never going to get finished, so you’ll never query and you’ll never publish. 

Each book you write will be better than the one before it

You need to get to a point where you are happy with your book and where you feel that this is the best you are able to do at this moment in time, given where you are in your writing life and your experience of long form storytelling. Remember, your second book is going to be better than your first one. 

The third book is going to be better than that. The fourth book is going to continue to get better and better and better. So, for you perfectionists, please try and put that to one side and know your book’s never going to be perfect but you are going to improve with every book you write, whether or not you publish it. 

Knowing when to hit publish

Okay, back to knowing when to hit publish. As I’ve already mentioned, it depends if you’re going down the traditional or indie route. If you’re going down the traditional route, that’s going to be dependent on your publisher, even in a small press, because they’ve got their schedule and will want to put it in a timeline and a pipeline in which to maximise your book’s release. 

If you’re going with a hybrid publisher, you have more of a say because you’re going to be doing the vast majority of the promotion yourself. 

If you’re going fully indie, it is totally up to you. You get to decide when you are ready to hit publish. Everything is in your hands which, of course, is a double-edged sword. Like anything, there’s pros and cons and you’ve got to determine which is the right path for you and also the right path for your book. 

Watch the Launch Pad interview

If you watch the Launch Pad interview we did, you’ll see we talk about how there is no one route to publishing and how, in the last two years, things have shifted from being what is the right thing for each writer to what’s the right thing for each book. 

Every project can be done differently now, it’s not just a one and done deal, you’re not just indie or just trad, you can be a mixture of both and that is super-exciting. 

I hope that helps with knowing when to hit publish and how it works. 

Emma xx 

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!