Did your teacher, parent or friends used to get angry with you staring out of the window all the time? Did they accuse you of being ‘away with the fairies’?

Good news!

Daydreaming is a good thing if you are a writer. At least, it has done me no harm. To find out more, please read my January column at The Hague Online, where I am Writer in Residence.

istockphoto

Autumn leaves.

Don’t you just love them?

Nature is such a source of inspiration for me.

So much so that the leaves inspired this month’s column at The Hague Online, where I am writer in residence.

I first ‘met’ Debbie Nicol before the summer, when I was invited to drop in on the Dubai-based, Flamingo Writers’ Circle meeting via Skype. So there I was, sitting at the same table as the other writers, only I was there virtually, on a computer screen! It was amazingly effective. After that session I fixed up a number of personal mentoring sessions with the writers and Debbie was one of them. At that time she already had her first book, Embers of the World, in print, today, its sister publication, Corporate Embers joins it. Later this month, I am off to Dubai, in person this time, to run live workshops and mentoring sessions. This time I will meet Debbie for real.

Debbie says of herself: ‘Being a life-long learner, committed to growing at every possible moment, my natural career was firstly a teacher, evolving into an international trainer, coach and change agent.’

Debbie Nicol

JP

Tell me about your book. What is it about? Can you describe it in just a few sentences? To show that a book has focus it is vital that it can be described briefly and succinctly.

DN

‘Corporate Embers’ is the second book in the series called ‘Embers of the World’, which can be viewed at www.embersoftheworld.com. It is a collection of business-promoting insights for the soul of the corporation, gained from my myriad of experiences as both a customer and a leader across four continents.  ‘Corporate Embers’ encourages leaders to reflect on the consequences of their leadership styles and the customer experience they offer.

JP

Why did you write it?

DN

‘Embers of the World’ was created to encourage people to explore the power of reflection and connection. From there, the individual benefits flow into collective benefits of collaboration and innovation, allowing both individuals and societies to ‘become’ greater than their former selves.

I see today’s leadership is constantly challenged, be it on a grand scale of the recent oil spill, or self leadership on a daily basis.  We all seem to be busy for ‘busy-ness’ sake, and hence are out of touch with ourselves and intuition, where truth lies. Imbalance is evident with corruption, ego, and unethical practices, and hence feeds the need for authority. The opportunity we face is to replace that authority with behaviour that accepts full responsibility to partner in growing an improved, aligned corporate world!

JP

Why do you think needed to be written? What will your book do for other people?

DN

Feedback indicates that each three paragraph story (Memory around the Campfire) and its associated lesson or reflection (Ember) results in the reader connecting with my experiences yet reflecting and connecting with their own.  From this, collaborative learning can emerge as we learn to recognize and share our own experiences, in the hope of us building our own future, and ‘becoming’ collectively.

Ultimately, ‘Corporate Embers’ will assist readers and groups to connect with their intuition, finding truth and developing trust, with ultimate impact upon our choices.

JP

Who do you think will read your book? What made you think that there was a market for it? Now that it’s been out for a while, what proof do you have that you were right?

DN

Corporate Embers will appeal to anyone who wishes to ‘become’ in a corporate environment. The reader may be facing challenges in the workplace, may be wishing to develop self leadership or explore alternative methods to lead teams or may simply be wishing to reflect.

I am rather active in the public speaking arena, and continue to observe how many people are currently in a state of ‘search’. When we search, we learn to connect.

JP

It does not matter how good a book is, or how good your writing is if no one knows about it. What steps have you taken or do you plan to take to promote your book? Are you a speaker or trainer? Do you have a blog? A website? A newsletter? Do you use Facebook, Twitter or other social media tools? What about press releases and sending out review copies and free articles? Have you had any other ideas? Which methods do you think work best and can you give me any examples?

DN

Any Marketing Plan should be outlined before the writing commences – a hard lesson I learnt from my first publication. Ah – you live and learn, so they sayJ

Along with the launch of ‘Corporate Embers’, I’m proud to say I have:

• an amazing ‘Embers’ newsletter (feel free to subscribe through the homepage of www.embersoftheworld.com)
• Embers FB Fanpage (feel free to ‘like’ ‘embers of the world’ on FB)
• Cross-reference to Embers on my LinkedIn account business page (LinkedIn – find ‘business en motion’)
• a digital copy available on the website, with samples in the infrastructure supplied free of charge at www.issuu.com
• re-engaged my PR lady for a 3-6 month period
• booked time with Jo Parfitt for more ideas.

In addition, a structured learning process has been built in parallel to the book, which could be introduced across an organization, in either formalized sessions (eg Intuitive Leadership) or simple ‘brown-bag lunch provocations.

The one outstanding difference in marketing my second book is that I am not inviting shops to sell this book.  All major bookstores have the first publication ‘Travelling Embers’, but unfortunately it has been relegated to shelves where I cant even find itL . I will reintroduce the retail choice once my next book is published, along with a small display kit (recycled cardboard that is more vertical than horizontal) which will not take up too much space on a shop’s front counter, but will clearly show off the collective set of Embers resources in an attractive and appealing manner.

JP

How did you publish your book? What was your route to publication?

DN

Self published.  For ‘Corporate Embers’, I simply replicated the process I learnt for ‘Travelling Embers’, from approval to ISBN and beyond.  However this time, I have added digital copies of the book for sale online.

JP

Self-belief can be a big problem for writers. How did you manage to stay confident in your ability and remember that you were good enough to write your book? How did you cope with the days when you thought you could not do it and that it was rubbish?

DN

My scenario is a little different here. The Embers concept was channeled through me.  From the moment I received the message saying ‘You’re going to write a book’ til the moment the last word appeared on my first publication was a period of two weeks.  It quickly grew from one PDF to one book, to a series of books, and now videos, audios and ebooks too.

The book ‘Corporate Embers’ took approximately 2 months to flow, as there seemed to be a lot more re-work on it, for reasons I’m still unsure of.

JP

It’s easy to procrastinate, to blame writers’ block and to put off finishing your project. How did you keep yourself motivated? And how long did it take you to write it? What was your routine?

DN

I believe the above answers this question. However, what I will add here is that nothing flowed until I sat in ‘my chair’. This chair has a full panoramic 270-degree view from the 32^nd floor in my apartment. I also feel great energy in that corner!

Find a place where your message connects with your soul, allowing the book to simply flow!

JP

What was your biggest challenge regarding the writing of your book? How have you overcome that?

DN

Given that the entire concept has flowed throughout the recession, limited financial resources simply slowed my production down. However, when you are focused and passionate, there will always be a way – somehow!

JP

I believe that getting feedback is really important to help you recognise when your writing is really good and to find ways of making it even better. How did you get feedback on your work?

DN

Each book had many pairs of trusted eyes scan it.  I heard their comments and felt their emotion moreso.  When there seemed to be little emotion, I knew that the reflection was not as potent, and hence needed work.  I’ve learnt the truth in the saying ‘Perception is reality’. No matter how much I like one particular Ember, if others don’t connect with it, it must be re-worked.

Additionally, with my life spread across four continents in the last fifteen years, I have lost my ability to edit and/or spell correctly. I was grateful for all the wonderful assistance I received with the editing.

JP

If you were to give advice to someone else who is thinking about writing a book based on their life experience what would be your number one tip?

DN

Listen to your intuition as that’s the barometer of truth!  If it’s the right thing to do, or share, you will know. Your passion will be your greatest friend.

My very last tip!  ‘Embers of the World’ and all associated resources have a message for all to own and to take it to where it needs to be.  Never ‘become’ the message yourself, but rather (quoting Khalil Gibran from ‘The Prophet’) allow the message to become itself! It comes through you, but is not you!

It has taken two years for this day to arrive . . . two long years.

During this time I have developed a series of eight classes, each teaching students how to write their life stories and give them SPICE so that they live again for the reader and leap off the page. Two years during which I have tested every lesson, every handout, every extract and every exercise. It has taken six months to record it all too, so that students can choose whether to read their lessons in a workbook, listen to them on a CD or podcast, or both. Then, there was the video of a live workshop, run a year ago at the Xpat Archive in the Hague and finally the time it took to devise over 200 additional exercise, in the form of JustWrite Inspirational Stickers to ensure students stayed motivated after the program. The design and production took another five months but today, I am here. The Write Your Life Stories home study program has arrived. It can be taken with or without personal feedback, but, as the headline says – the first 50 to sign up will get one piece of homework critiqued absolutely free.

So, there you are. It’s ready. I’m relieved and excited and very thankful for the support I have received from The Xpat Archive, designers Kim Molyneaux and Creationbooth, editors Carolyn Vines and Linda March, Sam, Josh and Ian Parfitt, the recording engineers and all those students who agreed to have their work included in the program. Thank you all.

To find out more and have a free taste please click here to visit the Write Your Life Stories page in the Home Study section of this website.

STOP PRESS. ONLY 15 LEFT AT SPECIAL PRICE!!

It’s January, traditionally the month we pledge to do new things. Writers should never tire of trying new styles and methods and so here, to spur you on, are 11 ideas for you, as seen in my January column at The Hague Online, where I am writer in residence.

Are you going to try something new today?

Read the full article here.

As summer gives way to autumn and children go back to school, or off to university, it’s a time of change. For the writer, times of change are huge sources of inspiration. Read my September column at The Hague Online, where I am Writer in Residence, to find out why.

It must be 20 years since I first discovered the words of Natalie Goldberg. In fact, her Writing Down the Bones was the first book on writing I ever bought. It blew me away. Here was a woman who was making a very nice living doing something that to many would be classed as sheer indulgence. She would go and sit in a café, ‘meet at the page’ and just ‘go’. She’d write about whatever popped into her head, inspired by the scene around her or the thoughts in her head. One sentence from her book has stayed with me ever since. It is a sentence that I add to many of my handouts. It is a sentence that makes my stomach do a little flip every time I read it out loud. Here’s what she says:

‘Begin to write in the dumb, awkward way an animal cries out in pain, and there you will find your intelligence, your words, your voice.’

Every time I look at a piece of my writing and think there is something missing I remember this phrase. The best writing should resonate not only with the reader, but with you, the writer. The best writing is emotive. I learned this to my cost last year. Let me tell you the story:

Just over two years ago I decided it was time I wrote a novel, I’d had an idea mooching around in my head for a while and recognised that it was no good leaving it there. I had to put it on the page. So, I started writing. I was quickly ‘in the flow’ and wrote 98,000 words. It was about an expat wife, a bit like me, who found herself in Dubai, just like me, and who wanted to retain her professional identity against all odds, just like me. I knew the topic well. I had been there, done that, got the tee shirt and written the books too. With titles under my belt including Career in Your Suitcase, Find Your Passion and Expat Entrepreneur, I reckoned I had the subject matter sussed. But after months of writing I received some feedback on my work and was told in no uncertain terms that I had got it badly wrong. You see, the thing is, I knew so much about the subject that I had inadvertently written a non-fiction book all over again instead of a novel.

My wonderful mentor, and much-published novelist, Anita Burgh took me to one side and said: “What happened to your poetry and your lyricism, Jo? Where did you go? It’s a story, remember?”

Well, I’m not sure where I had been, but at that moment I knew the place I had to go was back to the drawing board. I binned my 98,000 words and started again, this time from a place of pain. This time I got right inside the head of my main characters and felt their emotions not for them, but with them. In doing so, I was forced to drop my ‘portable career expert’ status and simply start telling the story. In short, I did what Goldberg had been telling me to do for years. To be vulnerable. To be awkward. To feel exposed.

I finished my novel in January, and immediately after, as some of you know, I published my first volume of poetry, A Moving Landscape. Buoyed up by the feeling of relief and freedom that I had gained from writing my novel, I was confident enough to go one step further and show the world my poems too.

I’m with Goldberg. Your best writing and your writer’s voice are to be found when you find your words not in the pen or keyboard but in your heart, your gut, your soul. If you find it a struggle to expose yourself in this way and perhaps consider it too scary, then I suggest you try writing a poem. In my experience, poetry is written from that place of pain, and when you write it, somehow you give yourself permission to be vulnerable.

It’s July. Chances are you will be taking a holiday sometime soon. My challenge to you is that you take a beautiful notebook along with you and practise writing from the soul. You never know, you may not just find your voice, you may find yourself too.

Jo

Don’t forget to scroll down to the Writers’ Resources section in this month’s Inspirer See the Workshop Diary for brief details. To catch the news when it happens please sign up to my blog. For a summary of what I’ve been writing about see the On the blog section of this newsletter.

With warm wishes
Jo Parfitt

A Place of Pain

It must be 20 years since I first discovered the words of Natalie Goldberg. In fact, her Writing Down the Bones was the first book on writing I ever bought. It blew me away. Here was a woman who was making a very nice living doing something that to many would be classed as sheer indulgence. She would go and sit in a café, ‘meet at the page’ and just ‘go’. She’d write about whatever popped into her head, inspired by the scene around her or the thoughts in her head. One sentence from her book has stayed with me ever since. It is a sentence that I add to many of my handouts. It is a sentence that makes my stomach do a little flip every time I read it out loud. Here’s what she says:

‘Begin to write in the dumb, awkward way an animal cries out in pain, and there you will find your intelligence, your words, your voice.’

Every time I look at a piece of my writing and think there is something missing I remember this phrase. The best writing should resonate not only with the reader, but with you, the writer. The best writing is emotive. I learned this to my cost last year. Let me tell you the story:

Just over two years ago I decided it was time I wrote a novel, I’d had an idea mooching around in my head for a while and recognised that it was no good leaving it there. I had to put it on the page. So, I started writing. I was quickly ‘in the flow’ and wrote 98,000 words. It was about an expat wife, a bit like me, who found herself in Dubai, just like me, and who wanted to retain her professional identity against all odds, just like me. I knew the topic well. I had been there, done that, got the tee shirt and written the books too. With titles under my belt including Career in Your Suitcase, Find Your Passion and Expat Entrepreneur, I reckoned I had the subject matter sussed. But after months of writing I received some feedback on my work and was told in no uncertain terms that I had got it badly wrong. You see, the thing is, I knew so much about the subject that I had inadvertently written a non-fiction book all over again instead of a novel.

My wonderful mentor, and much-published novelist, Anita Burgh took me to one side and said: “What happened to your poetry and your lyricism, Jo? Where did you go? It’s a story, remember?”

Well, I’m not sure where I had been, but at that moment I knew the place I had to go was back to the drawing board. I binned my 98,000 words and started again, this time from a place of pain. This time I got right inside the head of my main characters and felt their emotions not for them, but with them. In doing so, I was forced to drop my ‘portable career expert’ status and simply start telling the story. In short, I did what Goldberg had been telling me to do for years. To be vulnerable. To be awkward. To feel exposed.

I finished my novel in January, and immediately after, as some of you know, I published my first volume of poetry, A Moving Landscape. Buoyed up by the feeling of relief and freedom that I had gained from writing my novel, I was confident enough to go one step further and show the world my poems too.

I’m with Goldberg. Your best writing and your writer’s voice are to be found when you find your words not in the pen or keyboard but in your heart, your gut, your soul. If you find it a struggle to expose yourself in this way and perhaps consider it too scary, then I suggest you try writing a poem. In my experience, poetry is written from that place of pain, and when you write it, somehow you give yourself permission to be vulnerable.

It’s July. Chances are you will be taking a holiday sometime soon. My challenge to you is that you take a beautiful notebook along with you and practise writing from the soul. You never know, you may not just find your voice, you may find yourself too.

Jo

Books need a wow factor! Find out how to make your book come alive by writing effective anecdotes and case studies. Come and be inspired and empowered when I’m the guest speaker at Storyville in WC2 from 7-9 pm on 29th. Just £15. Details at http://www.thebig-leap.com/storyville.phtml

Could you, should you, write a book?

If this is a question that you often ask yourself, then maybe it’s time to find out. On 9th July I’m running a Special Interest Group workshop for the European Professional Women’s network in Amsterdam. It will cover topics including:

• what makes a book sell?
• what is a wow factor?
• could I really write a book?
• what book would make me the most money?
• how can a book help me raise my fees?

So, if you need to be inspired, informed and supported hurry and grab your place on this free workshop. led by me, Jo Parfitt, from 7-9pm at the Renaissance Hotel in Amsterdam.

Places are limited and the link is here http://europeanpwn-amsterdam.net/workshops/publish-your-book