Who Believes In Your Book Before You Have Anything to Show For It?
One of the most powerful things I do as a book coach is to take my clients’ books seriously. I strive to imagine their book in the world — to see it on the shelf, to determine which other books it will be in “conversation” with, to picture the kinds of people who will sit and spend time with it and press it into friends’ hands.
It’s powerful because many times, writers have kept their dream of writing to themselves for a very long time — often an entire lifetime. They don’t want anyone to know how much they want to write or how much they want their writing to make an impact. Simply letting someone else into that dream is a risk — and an act of hope.
It is no less powerful, however, when a writer does have people championing them.
I am working with a writer now whom I shall call Kathryn. She is a child of divorce, and she shared with me that her grandfather was like a dad to her after her own dad abandoned her. “He raised me,” she said.
She shared this, because her grandfather died this week and on the day we were talking, she had just attended his funeral — by Zoom. Because that is what our world is like right now.
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “Do you want to move our call so you can have time to process all this?”
She said no.
“I’m the writer in the family,” she explained, “the one everyone goes to when they need something written. My grandpa wanted me to succeed. He was always saying, ‘You should write a book, where’s my book?’ I was working on the Blueprint for my book while sitting next to him as he died. It is exactly what I want to be doing right now.”
The Blueprint is the series of steps I have designed to help a writer lay a firm foundation for their book. It is the heart of what I teach in my book coach training and certification courses. It is a set of tools a writer uses when they are ready to stop talking about writing a book and commit to actually doing it.
This writer was ready.
She has made the commitment — to herself, to her grandpa, to other people in her life who support her and are cheering for her, and to me.
I do not enter this circle of support lightly. I feel the heavy burden of responsibility. It has a bit to do with this writer’s actual goals of landing an agent and a traditional book deal, but mostly it has to do with helping her honor her grandpa’s faith in her.
