In this episode we’re talking with Young Adult author Pam Withers about writing with a co-author, and how that can enhance the writing process and help you ‘get it right’ when writing characters who have a different culture and background than the author does. We touch on different methods of working with co-authors, and what it’s like getting started in indie publishing after being traditionally published through most of a writing career.

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Connect with Pam

• Pam’s website

• Arooj Hayat is Pam’s co-author

Visit our websites

• Crystal Hunt (Non-fiction)
• CJ Hunt (Romance)
• Michele Amitrani (Fiction)
• The Creative Academy for Writers (Community/Resources)

Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 022: Writing Collaboratively with Pam Withers

Pam Withers: Hi I’m Pam Withers and you’re listening to this strategic authorpreneur podcast.

Crystal: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs, I’m Crystal Hunt.

Michele: And I’m Michele Amitrani. We’re here to help you save time, money and energy as you level up your writing career.

Crystal: Welcome to episode 22 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show we’re talking with young adult author Pam Withers about writing a book collaboratively, but first, what have we been up to this week?

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele: Again, for me, there is, there was some reading to be done. And this week I have a book that, some of you might be familiar with. And I, I am comfortable to suggest once again, a bit of a disclaimer, the first time that I see this book and there’s a suspense because I’m not telling you yet the title of this book.

I was like, Oh no, it’s a get rich quick scheme kind of book. And again, I was super wrong. The book that I want to talk to you about today is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. So one of the thing that I really like about this book is more, that is a book about personal achievement, and Napoleon Hill, he says in order to make this book, he had to interview a lot of successful people.

And there are so many things that are interesting in these books, in order to, I think every single person interesting to be successful in life, and I’m not saying just this to be cheap, I’m just saying this because reading this book, really some part more than others, but they resonate with me.

There are a couple of things that I just want to mention. One is the mastermind he speaks about the group of people that can help you achieve an objective. And I think Crystal, this is something we spoke many times. Even in the episode when we interviewed Bonni, you need the community to be able to achieve things faster, if you want to achieve things faster.

And also really you have to have the ability to be, to shape yourself easily and adapt yourself to different kind of situations. So there are so many things here that I value, How to have a specialized knowledge, how to have an imagination that drives you to a certain objective, how to organize and planning for a specific goal. This book is all in that regard, but if you think about that, it’s title on subtitles they’re also present. Like we use them on a, on a daily basis. We talk about planning and imagining a goal and stuff like that. And I think this book is nowadays even more important to read for people that really are interested in making their art a craft that is successful.

So I really think this Think and Grow Rich is useful, could be useful to authors. So I just wanted to mention that and, writerly life, there is one thing that I am starting thinking, for a future project Crystal. And it’s not that much writing in English kind of thing. It’s more like, how do you do I use the stories that I’ve been writing so far into data and market.

So nowadays by the time this episode is going to go live, I will if everything goes well, please, uh, I will have almost seven stories out there. And the seven stories can be actually 14 different products. If I just really will myself to translate them into Italian, but I have to, and you know, this is important.

I have to concede on things. Is it going to be worth the time and the effort? What is your plan? Every single thing that I did for the English market, I need for the English side of things. So I need to do it the same kind of a revaluation for the Italian market. So I feel like I’m a bit, conflicted every single time you embark yourself in a process, and this is going to be a big process, right?

If I want to translate in this case will be 12 different stories or so at the end of the day, Crystal has to gather information and data and take a choice about what to do. And now I’m going to ask you the same question. What have you been up to?

Crystal: Well, after last week was so focused on the business side of things with all the mailing list stuff and doing a bit of a makeover on my onboarding sequence.

I was itching to get back into something a little more creative. So I did a dive into the writing world. So for me, that involves getting up close and personal with my Emotional Wound Thesaurus, which is super reflecting, there you go, you can see it on the YouTube channel now, which is by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

And it’s one of my favorite resources. If you can see the images, if you’re watching on YouTube, you can see, I have a ton of tab markers that I have attached an emotional wound to each of my main characters from all the different books that I’ve written.

Michele: For a second Crystal I asked her, this is a behind the scene, if they were part of the book itself.

Crystal: They are, they are very color coordinated and fancy. And I used my tiniest handwriting. So they save, they are a part of my whole book, but no, I’ve had several people asking the tabs, come with the book and they do not. That is a custom job of things to add after. The other book that I’ve watched, there’s two other things that I’ve been reading. Cause I tend to have a nonfiction book on the go and a fiction book on the go at all times. And so the book I’ve been reading is Daring Greatly because I have been working through the process, less of this moving to being a full time author. And that’s a little scary not going to lie.

So taking something that you’ve been doing for passion and translating it to a job, always holds risks. I’ve done this twice. Now this is the third time in, this is a different genre, but this is also like my first love genre. So it feels a little riskier even than any of the other times I have done this.

So Brené Brown is always a good one, to talk us through some questions around what exactly we’re afraid of and help kind of a little, give me a little push to go forward with that. And because I’m working on some stories that have some romantic suspense elements, I have been reading a series called the Linear Tactical series by Janie Crouch is the author.

And it is a series of kind of interwoven, romantic suspense that all take place in the same world. And it’s along the same lines, or be comparable to my GND Security series, which is part of the Rivers End world. So just looking at how she handles that, how she pulls all the elements together. I also, I just really like her stories, so.

I’ve really been enjoying that as the fiction side of things. Now, you know how important reviews are in the book world and the podcast world is no different. So if you could please leave us a review wherever you are listening to this, that would be fantastic. And since we are so grateful that you are going to do something nice for us, we’re going to do something nice for you.

About Pam Withers

And we’re going to bring you this interview with Pam Withers, to talk about writing with a co-author. We’re going to hear what Pam has to say, and then we’ll be back at the end to dive into it and digest things a little bit with you.

Crystal: So we are here with Pam Withers, who is a young-adult author of many thrilling and exciting titles. So, you write adventure books primarily, right Pam? I would love if you could tell our audience a little bit about what you write and how you came to be doing those kinds of books.

Pam Withers: Okay, so I have written 21 sports and outdoor adventure books for teens. And the reason that I have that niche is, that is how I mis-spent my youth. I was a whitewater kayaker and a whitewater kayak instructor. I married the Canadian coach and was a whitewater raft guide. I kayaked the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. When my mother and father and older sister lived above the Arctic circle, my mother would travel by dogsled across the river to deliver babies – while expecting me. So I think I get my adventure genes legitimately.

Crystal: You come by it very honestly, yes. And you do a lot of interesting research, I would imagine. I’ve seen pictures of you ziplining over rainforests and doing all kinds of cool stuff over the years.

Pam Withers: That’s my favorite part of writing: the research. To make the writing authentic.

Crystal: And for this current book that we’re going to talk a little bit about today [The Parkour Club], you have a co-author.

Pam Withers: I do. I am very proud of my co-author, Arooj Hayat. The novel is The Parkour Club and it basically mixes adventure, sports and cross-cultural understanding. I couldn’t possibly write a book about cross-cultural understanding without working with somebody who was open-minded and fun and interested in achieving the same goals.

Crystal: And how did you two meet? How did you come to be working together?

Pam Withers: Before I even outlined my book, I knew I needed to work with someone, so I contacted the BC Muslim Society and asked if they could refer me to someone willing to work with me. Although they do this for journalists all the time, it took some guts on my part to make that request. They tapped Arooj because she was a youth leader for her mosque at that time. She and I met in a coffee shop and we just clicked immediately. We’re both extroverts. We are both giggly extroverts with a sense of humor. We both wanted to achieve what this book wanted to achieve (cross-cultural understanding). So we talked with each other to learn from each other. Right from the get-go, it was a perfect match. And I feel very lucky for that.

Crystal: Yeah. That’s like winning the dating lottery in the writing life.

Pam Withers: There you go.

What does co-authoring look like to you?

Crystal: So what did the process of actually co-authoring look like for the two of you? Everyone I’ve ever talked to, who has co-written books, has done it in slightly different ways. So for you two, what did that mean?

Pam Withers: I had roughly outlined the book, so I needed to know she was okay with my rough outline, and then we basically had a three-stage process of collaboration.

First, I would interview her for a particular scene or aspect of the novel. Then I would write a rough draft, and then she would rewrite or edit it — or tell me I couldn’t use a certain word, or inform me that the Arabic word for something was such-and-such.

I want to give you an example. For instance, I had to write a scene where my Muslim character Pearl is getting a hard time in high school for wearing a hijab and for being Muslim. Arooj told me exactly what experiences she’d had, what people had said to her, and how she’d responded. Here’s the paragraph that I wrote accordingly. (The speaker is Bronte, the main character, a Caucasian girl, in the book.)

“I remember feeling sorry for her three years ago, when she started wearing a hijab. She got a lot of flack from our less-than-enlightened student body. And I kind of respected her for handling the stupid questions and bullying in her own quiet, but assertive way. ‘Do you wear that in the shower?’ ‘No. We remove them when we enter our house.’ ‘Like, your brothers and uncles can see your hair, then?’ ‘If I had brothers or uncles, yes, because they’d be family.’ ‘Why do you dress like that when you’re in the U.S. now?’ ‘For the same reason you wear that cross around your neck and don’t go to school in a bikini: modesty and respect for our faith.’ ‘Oh,’ is how those conversations usually ended. All I really know about Pearl is that she’s wicked smart. I’ve also heard she’s a respected team leader at her mosque.”

So Pearl (and her family) were not only was constantly vetted all through the novel by Arooj, but Pearl was kind of based on a Arooj, which Arooj loves.

Crystal: That’s good. So I’m curious, had you co-written anything before, or was this your first venture into that?

Pam Withers: I have co-authored once before. And that was Jump-Starting Boys, a nonfiction book about getting boys to read. I co-authored that with my older sister, Cynthia Gill, a teacher and therapist. (We both have boys.) We were amazed we were still speaking by the end of writing that book, but it was a really good collaboration. I think the hardest part was that she’s my older sister, but I was kind of the one in charge. She did admit she had a little trouble with me occasionally batting down her, me being the boss while she worked more as a kind of assistant.

Crystal: Yeah. There are a lot of in-built roles that come with being siblings, for sure. I’d say if you can successfully co-write a project with a family member and still be on speaking terms at the end…

Pam Withers: We both had qualms about what it would do to our relationship, but in fact, it brought us closer.

Crystal: And so for that one, what did the co-authoring process look like? Was it different from the way you co-authored the fiction?

Pam Withers: She did more writing than Arooj did. She also outlined chapters that I would write. It depended on the chapter. If the chapter was something that I had pulled together, fine, but if it was something that tapped her particular expertise, she would be much more involved in it. But again, the same way as with Arooj, I would interview her, I would do some writing. She would rewrite it. Then she would do some writing. I would rewrite that. So it went back and forth a lot.

Crystal: So a pretty fluid process. And what did you find in terms of the benefits of doing it that way? What are some of the things you really enjoyed about the process in either of those cases?

Pam Withers: In both cases I felt freer. I felt a big load off my back. Because I didn’t have this fear, especially with The Parkour Club, about offending anyone or not getting it right or, you know, getting something wrong about Islam. I was freer because I had not just backup help, but a co-author. So I didn’t hold back as much. I felt less restrained. And I learned a lot. It widened my horizon. I learned more about co-authoring with Arooj. I felt like my characters were more authentic. There is such a thing as sensitivity readers, but they are really not nearly as involved as a co-author. A sensitivity reader just reads it after you’ve written it and tells you if you might’ve stepped on some toes in terms of cultural appropriation and such. With Arooj, it was much more proactive and a partnership.

Crystal: Yeah, it’s a really nice way to do it as a creator as well – then it’s not just making changes later, but really integrating that reality, that person into the character, if they’re willing. That’s a really cool way to do it.

Pam Withers: I mean, how would I know what kind of comments kids would make about a hijab, whereas she knew that all too well, and remembered it all too well. I want to give you one other example – the difference we had over how we approached the word ‘jihad.’ That word, just like the word ‘gay,’ has been co-opted by the Western media [from its original meaning] and Arooj didn’t want me to use it in the way most Westerners understand it, associated with terrorism and radicalization. So there’s a paragraph (Bronte’s train of thought) that reads:

“I know that mujahideen means people involved in jihad, which can but doesn’t always mean fighting, because jihad also refers to an internal struggle to perform acts of obedience for Allah. And hijrah refers, more or less, to Islam’s golden age—the eighth to thirteenth centuries—which some radicals think is due to be reinstated.”

That’s one paragraph that takes a whole bunch of controversial stuff and boils it down for a teenager reading an adventure book. That’s the type of thing that I could do with Arooj’s help that I never could have done otherwise. And she was very strong about making clear what jihad really means, a goal — not like we’ve warped the word it into.

Crystal: I think that’s an interesting topic. With everything that’s going in the world right now in terms of broadening our writing world and understanding diversity and making connections with people from different cultures to make sure that we really do have a varied representation that represents it’s our real life, getting it right has never been more important. And also I think being brave enough to get it wrong while we’re learning. You mentioned you had to be brave to step outside and ask for help, and to make that approach and look for somebody who was willing to partner, and I think that’s a really important message for all the writers out there: There are people everywhere who are looking to make those connections and help us understand how things really work, and the ways we have gotten things wrong in the past. So in asking, we really open up a lot of doors.

I think that’s a really important thing, just to highlight that we aren’t going to get it all right but that doesn’t mean we don’t try. And so, taking those first steps and really learning together is really, really important. Were there any challenges you came across in the co-writing (besides those two different situations that you had to get clever about overcoming)?

Pam Withers: My biggest challenge was Arooj getting pregnant and doing a PhD and running a small business, all while helping me write this book! I mean, she was just doing everything at once. So getting hold of her when I really needed to get hold of her was sometimes a challenge. I had to kind of just grit my teeth and wait for her!

Sometimes when you’re ‘in the zone’ on the writing, and you really, really need your partner to be there that moment, you just have to be more flexible than usual. So that was the biggest thing: her busy schedule. And then, you know, the little things like about the word jihad. I said, “But this is how people understand it.” She said, “No, you can’t use it like that.” I said, “Well, what if I define it — you know, within a paragraph — and then kind of use it like that?” And she said, “Okay.” So we had to compromise, we had to talk, we had to negotiate, but we got it there.

Crystal: So communication is basically the solution to all things — communication, and scheduling. And I think that is something to highlight for people as well. If you’re out there thinking about collaborating with someone,  just knowing how your schedules and agendas and your priorities mesh is really important.

If you have a deadline or if you are really set on a specific routine, then the way you choose to collaborate might be impacted by that. So there are a couple of examples of folks who have worked together in completely different time zones on opposite sides of the world, which works really well because one of them would write a chapter and then the person would wake up in their morning and read it and write something and then the next person would be waking up. So you can really make some fast progress. But if it is a consultation-in-every-stage kind of thing, then you do want to be aware of what you’re both committing to and how that’s going to work.

Do you have any other pro tips to offer folks who are thinking about co-authoring — something of what you’ve learned that might help them?

Pam Withers: I think that you might want to work together a bit before you decide to formally be co-authors, because it’s so important to get somebody that you click with, and somebody who’s going to be okay with the back-and-forth.

You don’t want someone who’s my-way-or-the-highway, and you cannot be my-way-or-the-highway yourself. I think that’s what’s most important.

Crystal: And for this latest book, you ventured into the world of indie publishing. Was that your first foray into these waters?

Pam Withers: Actually, it was my second. Out of my 21 books, I have self-published two. One of them was Paintball Island. I had to self-publish it because my publisher didn’t like it.

Crystal: Oh.

Pam Withers: But, you know, in fairness it was one of my weaker creations. I did do a lot of rewriting before I self-published it. I’d like to think that maybe the publisher wishes I had done that the first round and then it wouldn’t have gotten rejected. The Parkour Club was simply too edgy to be published traditionally. I guess it’s just too edgy to want to bridge cross-cultural divides. 🙂 You certainly can get into sticky territory when you’re talking about Islam and jihad and whatever, but again, I hope it does so well that anybody who turned it down feels badly that they turned it down. 🙂 That’s my goal.

I think if you need to self-publish, then self-publish. I’ve published 21 books, so I already have an audience out there to piggyback on, and that helps; you’ve already got a name, so it’s going to do better for publicity than if you were doing it as a number one.

Crystal: As far as the new publishing venture you’ve had, is there anything you learned along the way that was surprising, or that you hadn’t had to tackle so much in the traditional publishing world?

Pam Withers: Absolutely everything! It was complete Greek to me, and when I first started looking into self-publishing, I found sums quoted between $4,000 and $7,000 to do the whole package deal. I didn’t have that kind of money, and I wasn’t about to spend that. So I managed to find an outfit called The Creative Academy (you!), and I absolutely would not have gotten through self-publishing without that helping hand and knowledge, and it kept the costs way down below other places. It was a minuscule cost compared with those $7,000 packages.

Just so listeners know, Crystal here is not paying me to do this, but absolutely, she is your person for being walked through the indie process. It’s not for the faint of heart and it’s not for someone who doesn’t know how to do it.

Crystal: Yeah, I think that’s where The Creative Academy came from, and where a lot of our writers’ groups really come from. We’re trying to make sure that people know that there are options and different ways to do it.

You can have a very professional product without paying the equivalent to the down payment on a car, for that experience. So, definitely check the resources we’ve collected up as much as we can, to help make sure that everybody has all the options they could imagine. And if people are interested in connecting with you or learning more about your books, where can they find you?

Pam Withers: www.pamwithers.com. Everything is there. I also have book trailers for all my books. I have a couple of readings on video, and I’m very pleased that Arooj did a reading from the book. So, Arooj and I continue to stay in touch and have fun. I actually just made a quilt for her baby.

Crystal: Lovely. And we’ve got a couple more minutes, so I’m curious to talk a little bit about book trailers, because that is something that people are also interested in. Where did you get those made? What was your approach to that?

Book trailers

Pam Withers: The first one I had professionally made by Craig McNichol, who is writer Sylvia McNichol’s son. But I didn’t want to pay that out for every book trailer. So I started taking some courses online, and basically settled on Spark Adobe. Spark Adobe kind of walks you through it. It’s maybe a little restricted for people who want to do really fancy things, but it’s really easy to understand for people who are doing a first-time simple book trailer. So it was a series of slides with music and a little bit of plot, to get people wanting to read the book.

I’ve done all my book trailers with Spark Adobe, using free pictures from Unsplash.com, but in some cases also buying pictures from photo stock sites, or video. So, for instance, my Stowaway trailer is probably my best one because that was done professionally. But the other thing is you can do a sort-of book trailer and then hand it to Craig and he pretties it up and makes it professional. He has been a great help to me.

Crystal: That’s a nice option, kind of compiling the bones of a thing, a bit like your research notes or a rough draft, and then having it polished up — is a great way to compromise it in the middle there. Yeah. Nice. Well, we will put links to all the resources that have mentioned, and links to Pam’s books and also some of her trailers.

So you can check out all the good stuff there in the show notes. So be sure to check that out. And we will look forward to hearing all about your next book.

Pam Withers: Thank you, Crystal.

Post interview discussion

Michele: So we are back and once again, there were so much that Pam said, and that was a very insightful, very interesting, very useful. There are a couple of things that I just going to deep, deeper.

When she was working of, she was talking about their process of working collaboratively with the Arooj she gave us a couple of example, there was one time when there was a problem with a specific concept with the word, the word Jihad and I think that was a very interesting example, because, Pam didn’t really know everything about that concept. And there was a specific scene that could have gone wrong without the sustain, the support of the co-author Arooj. I really think this cannot be stressed enough if you are collaborating with another author that has a specific, who is more than a sensibility reader, way more than that, you should be able and you should be feeling free to ask her or him what do they think about this add? Um, and the example that Pam provided, I think it nailed it, because we now know that there are different meanings to the word jihad one is negative, yes but there are other meaning, one is more neutral kind of thing. And there was, Arooj was like, you can’t just use that concept in that way, because that’s a very Western way.

So I just thought Crystal and correct me if you think I’m wrong, that it’s very important for us, especially if you’re doing a co-authoring a project to ask the other people: What do you think, does this make sense to you?

Crystal: Yeah, I think there’s a certain amount of fear right now about trying to write.

Anything other than your own experience and so being able to fact check things and talk to someone who that is their learned experience, it is their culture, their life, their history, and get it right and so there is a lot of power and a lot of opportunity to learn as writers and as people ourselves as well.

When we are researching for a book we’re educating ourselves, it’s not just a matter of learning the definitions of things or the basic pieces of that. We’re also learning how to collaborate and how to work together and to understand other human beings in a way that is so important for being a good person in general, and for helping contribute to positive change in the world.

And we have a huge, I think, opportunity as writers and responsibility to do that right where we can and to really put ourselves first in the line of learners. Right? And grow as we go. And so I think it is a very cool opportunity to make sure that your story worlds can be reflective of the reality around you.

Working with a coauthor is the perfect opportunity for that because you really do get that ongoing collaborative process. And it’s not like you’ve written it all out and then sent it to someone who’s like, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope. Uh, which I think can be very intimidating for writers. Sometimes they just kind of back away from the whole process and just leave things as they are, because then it’s, it’s less challenging, less threatening, less scary when you do get it wrong.

But I think if you have that opportunity in your creative process to really work with somebody like that and Pam mentioned that, you know, a lot of the character was really informed by Arooj and that they’re their talks and the experiences that they shared helped to build that story the way it was built.

And like when you do kids’ books and you have an illustrator and an author, The author may have an idea of the story, but the illustrator brings a whole another level and layer of meaning to it. And you end up with something exponentially more powerful than you would have with just a story on its own.

And I think the opportunities when you’re working collaboratively are similar, that, that it really does open up a whole another world for you in terms of leveling up that way and the potential of that work to reach additional readers and audiences and to land in a, in a really positive, authentic way.

Michele: Yeah. And I think what you mentioned, connects with the other thing that I wanted to say about knowing that, there is, Pam would say knowing what kind of co author you’re willing to, you know, collaborate with, it’s important for you to understand, to know that person, because she said she had a few, challenges with Arooj, because she was a very busy person and all that kind of thing.

So she gives a very good suggestion, I think for people that want to work with another author, you have to connect with this other person, because you are going to spend a lot of time with him or her. And it can be challenging if you don’t like him or her if there is something wrong with the way you conceptualize the story or think of a story, I think like it’s both at the same time, an act of trust on the other person, but how can you trust the person if you don’t know that person, right Crystal? So I know that you are co-authoring different things. With Eileen Cook is one of the, of the things. But for many years, I’ve been, have you been here, Eileen? Like you trust her, like, you know, her. So I think that suggestion was very insightful, very important. Know the person you’re working with and if you want to a working agreement could be something good for the both of you.

You don’t want somebody that doesn’t have a spirit of collaboration. That’s basically the, 5 cents that I’m going to give you here. And that’s the lesson that I took out from the interview. What do you think of that Crystal?

Crystal: Yeah, I think it really, it’s not about how long you’ve known a person. It’s about how well you talk about the parameters of the project and how well you understand each other, which doesn’t mean you have to know everything about the person’s history.

I mean, our podcast is a good example of this. This is a collaborative project. We didn’t actually know each other that well, when we started doing the podcast, we’ve gotten to know each other through the course of doing this. And I think that’s fine. But what we did know at the beginning was that we have values that are in alignment and that we wanted to provide the same things for our audience.

We have similar ways of being in the world in terms of trying to be a nice person and being generous with what we know and all of these things. I think you have to know the fundamental pieces of the person you’re working with, you don’t necessarily have to have a long history, but there are definitely a bunch of things that you need to talk about before you embark on a creative project.

And a lot of that involves brainstorming about how it’s going to fall apart, actually, so that you can have, you can have the hard conversations before you get into the middle of it all. And you can make sure that everybody’s on the same page about how is remuneration or royalties or payment going to work for everybody who is doing which jobs of the past project you need a working agreement of who owns which pieces of the intellectual property, right?

What happens if an agent comes in, wants to buy it up indie project you’re doing, if you are ending it. You know, who’s doing that part and who’s tracking the royalties and how often will people get paid and what are the systems you use and, and in the creative side of things, how does that work?

Cause I think I’ve done probably six or seven different time types of collaborative writing projects over the years. And my husband and I have coauthored some books, which is always a good test of how much you really like each other, but we’re still married. So we’re doing well. And, but it’s a very different process, you know, with him and I, I would draft everything, just sort of dumped my brain onto the page and he would go through and polish it all and you know, really be analytical about the bits and pieces and the structure and reorganize everything and kinda make sense out of it all. And then I would go back through and, and kind of do a final polish and that worked great with our creative Academy books, Donna, Eileen, and I each have our roles, roles in the development process and so we brainstorm together we give developmental feedback, but there we each wrote our own book and we kind of rotated them around the circle so that everybody went through each of the books. But there it’s a completely different kind of thing, depending on what it is you’re working on. So it’s just, it is really important to have those conversations important enough that I, I actually have a whole book called Write with Co-Authors that we’re working on within the Creative Academy Series, which will hopefully help you with all of this.

It’s not going to be out until either late this year, early next year, most likely, but, it is underway complete with templates and all of the guides and questions for those, those hard conversations to have before you dive in. So make sure you’re on our mailing list. We will definitely keep you posted around that.

If you want to get notified when that book is ready. Now, your favourite part of the episode, the curious jar strikes again. Yeah,

How do you get yourself to do the things that scare you?

Michele: It’s beautiful. Like I didn’t see it there. And then in one second, it’s just the first, like it’s the first character, the main character of the story is in front of your face.

Crystal: Tell me when to stop.

Michele: Stop, stop.

Crystal: Okay, a red one. That’s a good match with today’s book. It is how do you get yourself to do the things that scare you?

Michele: You want to know my answer? I put two things, deadlines and accountability people. One of these is the person I’m talking with. She’s one of my accountability buddy, when I need to.

So if I’m scared of a project though, one good thing is that, I know that it’s important to me because if I, it’s not scary, it’s not important, in my books and the way I fight, the scariness, the fear, is just also asking myself the question, like, how much will I regret this if I not shipping it, what’s the cost?

Sso real example, a 12 by 20, my challenge of writing 12 short stories, which are getting longer and longer one that each month for a year for this 2020, it’s the fear that I use to beat the fear which is basically: I am so scared that if I can put, I’m going to show you, you see those guys over there? 12 of those on that, cork board for the people that are not seeing yet, it today’s a corkboard and every single time I published one of my stories, I put the sticker with the name of the story there. If I don’t do that at the end of the year, I will be, I think that it would be a lesser soul than I am today.

So that’s the fear that I have to be a lesser soul lesser person that I could be if I finished this project. And I don’t want to sound dramatic, but it’s really how I feel. It’s a challenge, at least the challenge. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s like I beat, I try to beat the fear with more fear, which is genuinely good.

It’s not good for your stress level and if he wants to relax and stuff, but I think you can do some kind burst on a year by year. Maybe I’m going to take five years off. I’ll do it after that. No, that’s a lie. I’m never going to do that, but that’s the answer to my question now, it’s your turn.

Crystal: I think I usually beat the fear by breaking things down into small chunks.

So there’s this philosophy that talks about things being mountains. You know, when you think about writing a book is kind of a giant mountain, especially if it’s not something you’ve done a lot. And it’s the same idea as climbing up that giant mountain, you got to break it down into pieces, you know, first you’re gonna pack your, your backpack with things that you need. And then you’re gonna get in your car and drive to the bottom of the mountain. And then you’re gonna just walk up the trail and check things out. And it’s the same thing with writing stuff and things that really scare you. Part of it is if there are steps to be taken, to get you from here to there, first figure out what those steps are.

And then only focus on what the next step is, and then only focus on what the next step is. And eventually you’re going to look up and realize you’re at the top. And then you’re going to have to do jump off when it’s something like publishing you, you know, you, you make the book, you edit the book, you do all of these steps suddenly, now there’s the clip of the publishing and sitting in front of you when you just leap.

So I think when it comes to that kind of thing, there’s no real easy way around that you just have to do it. And so there is to myself, I always say, there’s always another book. Like if I get this wrong, I’ll try again, it’s just like everything else in my life. I am definitely not perfect at first go every time, but man, I’m stubborn and I will keep on trying and I will keep on figuring things out and trying something different and so I just tell myself, this is just how it is for now. And I can always change it later, I can always go back to it. Of course you don’t often end up doing that. You often end up realizing that actually what you did was pretty good. You just have to be brave enough to put it out there into the world. So break it down and then just jump, just close your eyes and jump. Those are the two, two pieces of advice.

Michele: And I didn’t want to be overly dramatic. And I’m very happy that you feel in the park.

Crystal: No, no. When it comes to overcoming fear, it’s all about the drama. I think you got to go big or go home. Now, we want to know what you do to get over the fear. So if you can drop in the comments underneath this episode, wherever you are watching or listening to it, tell us.

What you’re afraid of in the publishing world and also what you do to get over? That that would be great. And if you would like to send us a curious jar question, you can send it to ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com

Michele: And as always for show notes, links to resources that we mentioned, and for coupons and discount on the tools we love, please visit us at strategicauthorepreneur.com.

Crystal: You are definitely not going to want to miss the next episode, because we are going to bust out our voice. We have robots of our voice, just FYI, which is really freaking cool. So we are going to have some fun with our robot voice doubles, and we are going to be talking all about harnessing the power of your voice in different contexts for authors.

So I’m pretty excited about that discussion and I think you’re going to want to find out all about it. So, definitely make sure you’re subscribed and we will see you next week.

Michele: See you next week. Bye bye.

Crystal: Bye.