145 Ink and Insights with Book Coach, Barbara Boyd

0:00 Well, hello and welcome to Connect, inspire, create. I'm your host, carol Clegg, a progress and mindset business coach, here to help you thrive and flourish and turn those challenges into opportunities for growth. I'm so pleased you're here. Join me for the discussions that I hope will not only encourage you, but also provide the dose of inspiration that you might just need today. This podcast is all about giving you your weekly dose of practical strategies, motivation and insightful conversations designed to boost your business skills, personal growth and happiness. So, whether you're looking to find balance, say goodbye to procrastination, or just in need of a friendly nudge towards your goals, remember we're all on this journey together.

0:52 Well, welcome everybody to today's episode. Our focus is on guiding a writer through the book writing process, from idea through publication, and I am joined by my guest today, barbara Boyd. Hello, barbara, thank you for joining me. Hello, carol, it's nice to be here, thank you. So Barbara coaches nonfiction writers on topics that range from leadership, finance, marketing, human resources, health and wellness a wonderful stretch and then memoirs, and at this stage, as I'm talking to Barbara, she's coached close to over 100 writers and through writing more than 200 books.

1:42 So she was certified by Author Accelerator in January 2021 and drawing on her own experience as a writer and a book coach, she facilitates conversations about ideas and processes and I like the fact, barbara, that you say you take the tough love approach to coaching, because I'm sure that, yeah, there's got to be some boundaries in this area, right, right? So Barbara helps writers clarify and express their ideas and she intuitively encourages clients to improve both the structure of their work and their writing style. But with me, having introduced Barbara to you, I would love to give you the opportunity just to hear from your side.

2:22 If you were meeting somebody for the first time, how would love to give you the opportunity just to hear from your side? If you were meeting somebody for the first time, how would you like to introduce yourself? I describe myself as a nurturer because that's the approach I take to, I think, everything that I do, whether it's working with a client or working in the garden or with my you know, my grandchildren, my husband, my friends that's, that's the way I approach things. So I think for me that's kind of the point of departure. If I'm going to introduce myself, I'm curious about a lot of topics, and so nonfiction is just fascinating to me.

3:05 In terms of my profession, I get the chance to learn a little bit about a lot of topics without having to become an expert or get another degree Right. Yeah, I love that. That certainly is a nice broad topic and just very inspiring that you've got, and I love the nurturing aspects that you know that it filters through all set parts of your life. Now I know that I'm talking to you while you're in Italy and I would just love for you to share a bit of this journey from you know where you started and how and what you're doing in Italy. So I started in the United States. As you can tell from my accent, I grew up in New Jersey.

3:48 At a young age I moved to the West Coast, I lived in San Francisco and worked in high tech and from there I sort of found my way into magazine and book publishing. At a certain point I had not gotten my college degree and decided that I wanted to do that and chose Italian language and literature because that would give me the opportunity to live abroad for a year. And that's what I did, and in a very cliche way, I met my husband. And here I am more than 20 years later. And you know, with the development of the internet and remote working, it's made my work possible to do, you know, from anywhere.

4:35 Most of my clients are in the US, I do have some in Europe, but it's technology today allows us to do like we're doing today. You know you can work from anywhere. And so I've just continued on that publishing journey, going from writing books to then moving into editing and coaching writers. And how's the Italian, by now, after 20 years, must be quite proficient, or no? Yes, no, no, my. Italian is very proficient. Yes, I still make mistakes, but I can understand most things. I can understand a fair amount of dialect as well. I managed to express myself, but I'm not interested in writing books in Italian.

5:18 I was going to ask you do you read books in Italian? I can. I don't very much anymore, but I certainly could. Yeah, and was Florence the city that you went to when you did your immersion? No, where did you go? I went to Pavia. I did not want to go to Florence because during the school year there were about 25,000 English speaking people in Florence and I wanted no part of English-speaking people. Absolutely right. Yeah, there would be no point to it all. So, yeah, immerse yourself where you can really learn the language, and then I believe there's an olive farm involved in your life.

5:59 There is. My husband has some of his roots in Calabria, in this, which is the sort of toe of Italy, if you think of the boots. Yes, and he inherited land here and we, over the course of the last 20 years or so, have developed that into. It's a hobby farm. We're definitely not professional, professional agriculturalists, but yes, we do have about 120 olive trees and fruit trees and we're also beekeepers. So and just obviously the wonderful benefit of just being in touch with, with nature.

6:42 And yes, yeah, are you fairly close to the little farm or is it's quite a distance to travel? No, no, we live here. Oh, yeah, okay, so you're not commuting some from the city and or something and go perfect. No, so I'd love to ask you if you've ever you know, I, if somebody had to ask me this question, I don't know that I'd be able to answer it, because it's like we're always still finding what we want to do. But if you weren't doing what you were doing now, would there be something else that you would choose to? do? I would have a nursery, a plant nursery. Yes, yes, not a children's. I'm not opposed to a children's nursery, but my skill set's more aligned with a plant nursery.

7:23 Right. Yes, nursery, but my skill set's more aligned with a plant nursery. So, yes, yeah, I think I would do like landscape design or a nursery, something with thing with plants so I know we're here to talk about book coaching and you know learning what that is all about, but you've obviously you shared with me that you have a lifelong love of books and reading and writing. When did that take root for? you, as early as I can remember, I guess, when I could turn a page, when I could sort of, you know, read the words on the page. So, quite, quite young, and it's just continued, I was the kid that always had, you know, a book in her hand. You know, today maybe you see kids with iPads, or or cell phones or kindle maybe right.

8:11 Ideally I get better a kindle, I think, than a tablet, but I wish that the, the kid with the, the book in her hands in the restaurant while the parents were talking. Right, yeah, I've got a lovely photo still of my son when he was young, sort of reading his what was it? Something in the castle in the sky, or castle in something, with this young little face, you know, buried in his book. I know you said what were your favorite books as a child, as a child, my favorite book was called Come Over to my House. It's's I mean, it's a picture book, this is my very first favorite book and it's the story of a little boy who goes around the world and makes friends and it describes the different types of houses where they live.

8:59 So there are people in mud huts, there are people in in straw roofed places and there's one where he slides down a hill of pine needles yeah a lovely introduction to to worldly scenarios right as a young child and then here you are in Italy, so you've started your profession of getting paid to read books. That happened in Italy. So I worked in magazine publishing when I was in San Francisco and then, a few years after I moved here, a friend of mine reached out and said I have a contract to write a For Dummies book for Wiley and I'm overwhelmed, can you help me?

9:48 And that led to a partnership. We worked on several books together and I also made contacts within publishing and wrote other books on my own and also co-authored books with other people, and so that started. I think it was 2008, maybe 2006. What I discovered as I was doing that my role because I was often working with experts my role was editorial and the collaborator, the other the co-author's role was being the subject matter expert. Co-authors role was being the subject matter expert. And that's very similar to what happens in book coaching, because the people with whom I work are experts in their field.

10:31 They're very knowledgeable in their field, but they don't know how to write books. And that's where I come in and so I'm no longer co-authoring. I do some ghostwriting, but the book coaching is really about leading experts through that process, and it is a process. I mean that's true for fiction as well, but I think with nonfiction, using the word formulaic sounds too static. It can be very creative. Static, it can be very creative, but there's a method to getting it done and I think people who are recognized as experts in their field they're established in their profession, there's a reason, they've gotten there and they probably have methods and works within their own field, so they appreciate having something like that to apply to writing a book.

11:22 And just I'm thinking, as you're sharing that with me. You know, from the research point of view, does the coach or the expert in their fields do a lot of the research to support from a nonfiction point of view? In a coaching point situation, the expert is doing that research. So I'll be reading pages with the. Let me step back a second. So the process is to first go through. I use a tool from the Author Accelerator certification called Blueprint for a Book. I also coached Jenny Nash, the founder of Author Accelerator, on writing the Blueprint for Nonfiction. So that process you know a book is, especially with nonfiction, you need a plan and the blueprint is a plan for the book.

12:10 But the approach is often sort of like creating a business. You need to think about who your audience is. Why are you doing this? What are your goals for this book? How does the book fit into the ecosystem of everything you do? Because an expert who's writing a book, typically the goal is to establish themselves as the recognized knowledge expert in that field. You know they're sharing their knowledge with a specific audience. So you have to think about those pieces of it before you start writing the book so that you can create a book that satisfies the expectations of all three of those things Right.

12:52 And then I go through an outlining process. I am a firm believer in creating an outline. That doesn't mean it's set in stone, but it gives you some guardrails and a direction to decide what goes in the book and what doesn't. And in terms of research, the risk for an expert is that they have knowledge bias and the benefit to working with a coach who is not an expert in their field. I can say you know. Some supporting evidence here would be helpful. Or can you go a little bit deeper on the topic? What other people are saying, so that you're giving your reader, you know, a fully rounded set of information?

13:39 Because, yeah, as you share that, it makes me sort of think. You know, you can put on the hat of the consumer next to being the coach and you know, would this be enough? Is this enough to attract you to want to be reading this book? I'd love to ask you for some advice. If somebody um is stuck, if they've already moved into and they have this partial manuscript and I'm sure they hit the wall and they get blocked and it's you know, send me off to the cabin somewhere to try and move this along. Do you have any advice to offer somebody who's already stepped into it but they're stuck, I think? when people are stuck, it's because one it can be. What are you afraid of? Because you have to determine. Is being stuck really about not knowing how to move forward in whatever you're writing, or is it just a matter of?

14:25 Or are you stuck for a different reason and that you know for something, that you're trying to prove something, or you know. So, going back to, why are you writing this book? First and foremost, it's important to why are you doing this? And I mean that's true for any. Ok, let me step back and look why am I doing this? If I were to let it go and not do it, how would I feel? A lot of times I've had, I had a client in particular who was struggling and struggling and like why are you doing this? And the answer was because everyone tells me I should write a book. But do you want to write a book? Writing a book is really hard.

15:07 It takes a lot of time. No, you don't have to do it. Just because you should write a book doesn't mean that you have to write a book. So asking yourself why am I doing this is, I think, the first thing to working through that block. If the block is truly technical, if it's a matter of saying I have written to this point and I really don't know how to go forward, at that point I like to ask the writer to do sort of reverse engineer. I use a tool called the outcome outline, which requires identifying each step along the arc of transformation.

15:52 Because even in nonfiction in fiction as well, but also in nonfiction you're taking the reader on a journey. They're starting at one point, they're going through a transformation and they get to the next point. So when you've hit a wall, going back and sort of analyzing everything you've written so far and see where that's breaking down, If the writer hasn't created an outline before starting to write, it's probably a good idea, even if you've written 40 or 50,000 words, to go back and create an outline. It will take far less time to create an outline that goes from beginning to end than to keep spinning your wheels and writing forward not knowing where you're going.

16:34 So those are the two things that I say. First, asking, why are you writing this? To see, kind of do that internal check. Is this a me problem? If it's not, if all the things are in line, yes, I'm writing this and I have good reasons and I'm convinced that I want to be writing this book. Then, looking at it technically what's not working with the manuscript, what's not working with the words I've written so far? And this, to me, would be a perfect place where you would step in with somebody who was already halfway through something or a quarter way. Easier to step in at the beginning. But I have taken on clients who've already written 30 or 40,000 words.

17:19 Sometimes they've written all of those words and thrown them away and they want to start over. I'm sorry for the writers who've gone through that frustration. But, yes, I can pick up with them at the beginning or pick up. But preferably at the beginning. So I know I wanted to just touch briefly on the memoir situation and as far as even solopreneurs or woman entrepreneurs and recognizing that you mentioned here that writing can help experts recognize their accomplishments and help them overcome imposter syndrome and develop a positive mindset, I'd love to just unpack that a little bit. What does that look like with writing a memoir and dealing with the mindset around that?

18:00 So in memoir and I think it was Danny Shapiro who said this originally we know what happened. We write memoir to figure out what it meant, what I find often happens for people who are writing memoir. It's easy to write I did this, I did this, he said that, she said this and get all those events down on the page. And sometimes that's where people need to begin. But then going back and layering in, what did that event mean? How did I change? How did I grow? What did I learn? What did I keep banging my head against until it took me four, five, six times to learn that lesson? There's also, of course, a part of thinking about the reader. How does my experience reflect what the reader might be going through, and how can that be a comfort, something for them to learn, depending on what the goals are there?

18:53 I think the hard thing about memoir is we have thousands of moments in our lives in a given day. We could pick any small thing to write about. Which of those events do we include in memoir and which get left out? Which ones, pieced together, create a story? and yeah, as you're sharing that, I'm thinking it's what inspires the reader, because we read to be inspired, to learn to listen to someone's story. But we don't need this sort of long tumbling on without something grabbing us and then us, you know, being able to walk away from it new knowledge, new inspiration.

19:35 But yeah, well, barbara, this has been wonderful. I would just love to find out for people that are listening to this episode. I know that you are only taking new clients on next year, but there's a long process to writing a book. So there's an offer that you have. I'd love to just hear a little bit more that somebody could book a call with you, yes. So the different offerings that I have are all on my website, I think at this point, because I am in the very fortunate position of not accepting clients until January of next year accepting clients until January of next year a discovery call or a clarity call it can be set up and scheduled on my website, barbarajboydcom.

20:19 That encompasses doing a short, a mini blueprint about the idea that someone has, and then we have a phone call, a video call like this, for about 45 minutes to talk about what those next steps might be. What's challenging? Where do I see gaps? Where do I see problems? You know, just it's, it's a mini coaching call based on on where someone is at the time in the process. It does take time to write a book and there, you know, and for people who are working full time, it's also a matter of making a plan to fit the writing time into your schedule, and so many of us are booked out far into the future.

21:02 If you start thinking about it now, maybe by January you're ready to really say okay, I know I can dedicate four hours a week, six hours a week, whatever that number might be, to writing a book. On the one hand, I've had a few clients early this year where I've said I can't take anyone. They're like, oh okay, I'm ready to go now, and I've referred them to other people I know who are book coaches. But for someone who's just thinking about it and thinking, yeah, january sounds like a good time for me to start. Now is a good time to have those initial calls to get the wheels spinning. Yeah, that sounds so wise because you said there's so much planning to go into it.

21:43 And then also that asking the why. I'm sure that through that call, you discover a little more about the why and if this is really what you want to be doing, well, that's wonderful. I'm going to make sure to have your website, and then people can also connect with you on LinkedIn, so I'll put your profile in the show notes. So, thank you, barbara. Thanks for sharing. Thank you, carol, it's been lovely. Thank you for listening today. If our conversation has sparked some inspiration for you, or you could just somebody comes to mind that you think of they need to listen to this episode, I ask you, please, to go ahead and share it with others.

22:27 And today I encourage you embrace your own unique way of connecting, inspiring or creating, and let it bring a sense of joy into your world. In my role as a coach, I love to work with women, business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and help them explore fresh ways to focus on their projects, find the right tools for accountability and learn how to build on their projects. Find the right tools for accountability and learn how to build a positive mindset which, in turn, allows for more empathy, not only for yourself but for others and situations. With my personalized accountability and progress coaching, which I combine with the powerful positive intelligence program, you will find ways to shift into an overall happier space.

23:10 If you would like to take the complimentary saboteur assessment, I offer a follow-up complimentary coaching session to help you explore your results. Do take a note of the link in the show notes or visit my site carolcleggcom. Until the next time, thanks for listening.