Tama Kieves

Day 25: October Journaling Adventure with The Joy of Writing Journal

October 25, 2021 by Lisa Tener

Welcome to Day 25 on the journey through The Joy of Writing Journal.

Today we explore some of our quirky personality traits and how they help us as writers. The truth is, I just realized that, while I wrote my Day 25 list of quirky traits, I never answered the prompt about how these traits might contribute to my writing and my voice as a writer.

I ask myself aloud, if my first attempt is to type this into my blog as a post, can it even qualify as my journal? Then I remember, there are not many rules in journaling. We make them up as we go. So call it what you will, but I am calling this my journal excerpt for today:

I love to read fiction, but I’m not so sure I can write fiction! I’m not a keen observer of people. I often take things at face value and don’t dig deeper. I don’t really understand plot. I think I’d have to go back to school for that one.

My gifts include playfulness, rhythm, love of words, a deep connection with nature. I’m kinesthetic by nature. I experience my truth and knowledge in an energetic way. Sometimes that’s hard to translate into writing but sometimes it provides for adroit symbolism.

What’s come naturally to me is to write in self-help and how-to genres—I can dig into my life for short memoirish anecdotes and draw lessons from them. And exercises—prompts, questions, experiences, movement-oriented and creative exercises—all come to me with ease.

My writing coach, Tama Kieves, tells me that the things that come easily to us, we take for granted. We often place more value on what we lack.

Lisa Tener Creativity — Celebrate your quirkiness, or as Morgana Rae once said to me, “Let Your Freak Flag Fly.”

So, today, I’m thinking about these gifts that I do have—gifts that come from my quirky kinesthetic way of being and connecting, from my communion and my natural internal communication with nature, from the rhythm and world play that come organically to me—and I am feeling grateful for them.

These gifts helped make The Joy of Writing Journal the uncommon book that it is. A book that I hope engages you in unique and effective ways that help turn on your creativity and free you in your journaling, your writing and your joy.

I hope you will take this opportunity to let go of looking at what you lack as a writer and seeing what makes you uniquely you as a journaler, writer and person.

Your Turn

Share an excerpt from your Day 25 romp through The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day. Looking for the exact journal list and prompt? You can get them here.

If this exercise is challenging for you, don’t feel badly. It was the last exercise I completed—more than a month after I finished the rest of the book.

Sometimes it isn’t easy to acknowledge our idiosyncrasies or our gifts. Give yourself permission to play. Or ask a friend for help with this one. Ask them to make the list and give you feedback to help you with the prompt. Then journal, explore and see what you learn about yourself.

In the comments, feel free to share a few of your quirky traits and how they support your journaling, your writing, your personal growth or other aspects of being a person, creative by nature.

7 Benefits to Growing Author Platform Before You Write Your Book

September 13, 2018 by Lisa Tener

I am a book proposal nerd. I just love sitting out on my deck and digging in, occasionally looking up to see a monarch butterfly or two glide along the wind currents, or a hawk circle above.

I love reading about book ideas, feeling the author’s passion for her or his subject and especially adding new creative ideas to help them make the book even more resonant for their readers and more attractive to publishers.

The biggest flaw I see in most proposals is that the author’s platform isn’t quite there yet. Often, I can suggest a few ideas specific to their book to help in growing author platform now.

Sometimes aspiring authors find the advice about growing author platform frustrating:

“I’m writing the book to grow my platform. Why do I need a publisher once I already have a platform?”
“I want to reach people now with my book. I don’t want to wait another year or two for growing author platform.”
“I don’t know how to grow my platform.”
“I tried and didn’t get anywhere.”
“Who’s going to want to endorse my book and write a foreword, or help promote my book when I don’t even have a book written?”

These are all great questions. Chicken? Egg? Where to start?

The truth is, though, that whether you self publish or traditionally publish, your platform as an author is how you’ll reach readers. You NEED a platform to reach them (unless you have a very niche publisher who already reaches your exact target market, a quite unusual situation).

7 Benefits to Growing Author Platform Now!

Instead of bumming out. Rejoice in the benefits to growing author platform ahead of time. You’ll be able to:

1. Write a Better Book: By engaging with your audience ahead of time, you’ll get to test out your ideas and improve upon them. Not only that, but working on your author platform can give you lots of extra practice writing. Says Christopher Littlefield, “After Lisa’s book proposal class, I took a break to focus on growing my author platform. I finally started my newsletter—just emailed my 20th issue!—and wrote several articles for other websites, like Thrive Global and LinkedIn. All that practice is improving my writing of the proposal and the book. And now people find me online, not just by knowing my website.

2. Get to Know What Your Readers Truly Want: You may think you know what you want, but whether you are speaking, blogging, teaching, podcasting, consulting or writing articles to grow your platform, you’ll learn from their comments and questions what most interests them. Dr. Craig Malkin was writing a relationship book, but it’s his post about Narcissism that went viral and resulted in the book that garnered a 6-figure book deal with HarperCollins—Rethinking Narcissism.

3. Make Money Now: I always encourage writers to have a business plan for how your platform building and book promotion will create income for you. Rather than pouring money into it, you want your platform building and book writing to be a self-sustaining project—one that creates abundance. Beth Suereth of Caregiving Pathways started working with me on her proposal, then shifted her primary focus to platform buliding early on in the process. After parlaying her platform building into multiple income streams, Beth quit her job to focus full time on the work she’s passionate about.

Beth says, “Platform building felt overwhelming at first, but it has paid off already. I learned how to network with my primary audience on Twitter, and I tweet about their efforts in addition to my own work. As a result, a well-known nonprofit organization connected with me — via Twitter — to offer me a consulting opportunity. I also now teach part of a course I took for the credential and networking it offers. I tweet about the course and the presentations I’ll be giving at the director’s conference, and she retweets many of my posts to her 30,000 followers! In addition, just yesterday I discovered my name on a blog post from earlier this year titled 50 Aging Influencers You May Not Have Heard Of.” In the background, Beth’s been working on her proposal here and there and just sent me a rough draft today.

And Christopher Littlefield, mentioned earlier, said that by finally creating a newsletter, as part of his platform building plan, four people have read the newsletter and reached out to him with business opportunities.

4. Give Yourself the Gift of Time: The sooner you start, the more time you have to build momentum. This means more potential readers (and book buyers) as well as less pressure to try to build all at once—which is more stressful and harder to pull off. I’ve seen several authors wait to start growing their platform until their proposal was done; they were disappointed about how long it took to grow their platform afterwards. Others who work on platform ahead of time and while writing the proposal often find themselves ready to pitch once they’ve written the proposal—a more satisfying position to be in.

After our initial work together, Dr. Stephen Snyder took my advice and spent several years working on his author platform before completing and submitting his book proposal. His diligence resulted in a 6-figure offer with St. Martin’s Press!

5. Enjoy the Exponential Effects of a Supportive Network. As you help others along the way, they’ll help you. New York City sex and relationship therapist Stephen Snyder MD, author of the acclaimed new book Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship shares how supporting a colleague of his led to even more substantial support from her down the road. While you don’t want to do all your good deeds expecting something in return, you will find that the good turns you do others will come back to you manyfold. In Dr. Snyder’s case, he attended a book talk given be one of his medical colleagues, Catherine Birndorf, who’d just co-written The Nine Rooms of Happiness. Since Dr. Snyder liked the book, he wrote an article about it on his website, and a few months later the author gave his name to a producer on the Today Show who invited him to do a segment. While in this case, his book was already out, I’ve seen similar situations with aspiring authors who were still working on their books.

6. Meet Your Idols, Paper Mentors and Other Cool People: As you work on platform building, you may finally meet a bestselling author you have admired from the distance or be introduced to new people who inspire you greatly. While teaching a workshop for the International Coach Federation, I met my coach, Tama Kieves, a great advocate for trusting my muse and honoring my creative instincts. In the spirit of platform building for my next book, I made it a goal to be interviewed on some podcasts. On one podcast, I met Laura Berman Fortgang, whose books I had read joyously when I first decided to become a writing coach. Unbeknownst to me, Laura was guest co-hosting the show and I got to tell her how much her books had meant to me!

growing author platform - zender at Harvard course — Dr. James Zender and other participants at Harvard Medical School’s Publishing Course. He will return this time as a speaker in 2019

7. Reach (and Help) More People Even Before Your Book Comes Out: I encouraged Dr. James Zender to pitch a blog to Psychology Today online and to apply for speaking opportunities as part of his platform building. He wrote me this week to share that over 300 people have signed up for his lecture on chronic pain from the mind body perspective, which takes place Friday at the Michigan Brain Injury Association fall conference. He has also been invited to speak at Harvard Medical School’s CME publishing course in 2019 and other venues. And his Psychology Today blog, The New Normal, reaches hundreds of thousands.

Just Added: “What if I Don’t Want to Write More?”

I just received a detailed email from a reader of this blog who said she wants to write her book, but not much more writing. I decided to add to the post so that everyone can benefit from my answer:

Question 1: She asked about using Facebook Groups or Pages.
My answer: Be careful with Facebook. The rules change all the time. You could put tons of energy and time into your group or page, only to find that no one will see it without advertising. And with a book, that investment in ads may not make sense financially. So, I would not make Facebook my primary media for reaching people — Ideally, you should lead people back to your website. In my recent interview with Rusty Shelton, he suggests quizzes. One of the great things about a quiz is that it is automatic. So, you can provide value to your participants without putting much time in once the quiz is developed.

If you are going to use Facebook, focus on groups (at least at the moment, until Facebook changes something again). With a page, you have to pay to get seen but when you post to a group, members will be notified automatically.

Another popular medium for reaching potential readers is podcasting. If you’re hesitant to write, you can try that.

Question 2: She also asked whether sending a newsletter out once a month is often enough.

My answer: Once a month is better than not at all, or every other month! So, do what you can, rather than strive for perfection.

However, if you are going to send a newsletter once a month, I recommend you use it to share a blog post, podcast or video and then just have a short introduction and link to its appearance on your website. Why? It will help you get found on search engines like Google.

If you send a newsletter, it’s “one and done,” but if you put it on your blog or website, it adds to the relevant content on your blog–something search engines like Google LOVE. So, you’ll increase the chances of people finding you when searching the internet for relevant terms.

Question 3: ‘If I start a Facebook Page, how do I protect my title?”
My answer: You can’t copyright a title. If you think someone may use it, just use a different name for your Facebook Group (preferred) or Page. Perhaps use your name. That way, if you write additional books, you can continue to use the same Facebook Group.

Now, Here’s My Question for You

Readers, have you found that working on your platform changed your book, helped your business, opened doors or was just plain exciting? Share your story about growing author platform as a comment below. Thanks!

5 Authors Share the Quirky Workplace Skills That Make Them Successful in their Creative Writing Careers

February 15, 2015 by Lisa Tener

While writing a post for Writer’s Digest on 12 Workplace Skills to Apply to Your Creative Writing Career, I thought about how we often dismiss our previous jobs as irrelevant to our current life as writers. Yet, many of our best assets are skills we learned in those “irrelevant” jobs.

Serving as Executive Director of the wonderful nonprofit organization Hospitality Homes taught me most of what I know about Marketing and PR. I learned everything from how to write a press release to how to interview someone about their compelling life experience to how to be informative—and even entertaining, I hope—during a TV or radio interview. Are these skills the modern author needs? A resounding “yes.”
A very brief stint in sales at AT&T taught me how to make a phone call or ask for an opportunity when feeling intimidated—something most authors have to do whether asking to interview a favorite author for a blog or writing a proposal for a coveted speaking gig.
Teaching is a useful skill for any writer to reach her audience and help them get a deeper feel for her work. I learned to teach in an unlikely job—while writing computer code for internal departments at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) in San Francisco. Creating and teaching classes was one of my favorite aspects of an otherwise techie job.

I began to wonder about my colleagues and writer friends. What were some of their unique job skills that informed their creative writing careers? I asked self-help authors Tama Kieves and Dr. Randy Kamen, memoirist Kimber Simpkins and YA author Padma Venkatraman about their quirky workplace skills… Click Here to Tweet this.

Tama Kieves, Best-selling Author of Inspired & Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life’s Work! was an attorney before she became an author and speaker. She relates her legal experiences directly to writing skills: “As a lawyer, I had to craft an argument, a clean line of reasoning. I took all the relevant case law and positioned it point by point, making it seem as though this was the only logical conclusion. In writing creative self-help books, I’ve used that same kind of structure. It allows me to romp all over the place in free writing. Then I use my “relevance meter,” slice and dice (oh so painful) and fashion a structure that makes it seem as the book just fell together in perfect order. I turn my creative chaos into joyous coherence. I guess the logic that helped me be a well-paid attorney also helps me be wildly creative as a writer, yet effective as a messenger and teacher.”

I asked Tama about a workplace skill she did not have that she had to learn once she became a writer. Tama says, “I had to ditch the ‘billable hour,’ the idea that I could produce something like clockwork. My muse took off her watch, kicked off her shoes, and wanted to walk barefoot in a park in the middle of the day. I had to unlearn my old idea of productivity, showing measurable results immediately. The more I set myself free and wandered off the clock, the more I nabbed spectacular outcomes, moments of genius, connecting dots I didn’t know needed to be connected. I came to understand that relaxing and not forcing myself to work helped me unlock a level of brilliance I could never have tapped in any other way.”

Kimber Simpkins, recent winner of a 2014 Silver Nautilus Award for her memoir, Full: How one woman found yoga, eased her inner hunger, and started loving herself, is also a former attorney. “The longest paper I’d ever written before my book was a 110 page writing requirement in law school, filled with endless footnotes gathered from weeks in the library. I put that fact on replay whenever the thought, “I can’t possibly write a book” popped up.

“The biggest lesson from lawyering,” says Kimber, was the ability to pretend I knew what I was doing no matter how far out of my comfort zone I’d ventured—a useful skill in marshaling the arrogance to author a memoir, but one I had to later unlearn to write from authenticity instead of false authority.”

Dr. Randy Kamen, Huffington Post blogger and author of the bestselling self-help book Behind the Therapy Door, was most recently a full-time therapist. However, what she calls, “the best job of my entire life,” occurred two decades earlier as Assistant Professor in Behavioral Medicine at the Goldman School of Graduate Dentistry. “I worked with international students (post doctoral level) spanning the globe— from China, Bali, Africa, Central America, everywhere. I got to travel the world without moving. Working with international students required both empathy and compassion.

Dr. Kamen writes about those skills now and she also practices compassion with herself. By practicing self-compassion, Dr. Kamen says, ” I feel more confident; I can go deeper in examining issues I write about.

Dr. Kamen also credits the communication skills she learned while teaching at the school of Dentistry with supporting her writing career. “I know how to listen to the needs of an organization for a speaking or teaching gig. I’m able to tailor a program and rethink my ideas with theirs in mind. This helps me go deeper and be fresh, respond to the organization’s need in my blog posts, speaking and teaching.” Recently, Dr. Kamen received a request from Arianna Huffington to join her on a panel in NYC exploring gratitude. She read me the letter and pointed out that she had already begun to explore her current ideas about gratitude in light of the specific focus of the panel, rather than just stick to any past script or ideas about gratitude that she had taught before.

Padma Ventatrama is the author of three multi-award winning novels, the most recent, A Time to Dance, receiving five starred reviews. I asked her how her workplace skills—in the lab, in the remote Andamans Islands, and onboard a research vessel—have contributed to her current work as a full time novelist. Our conversation was a bit longer than the others and I reproduce it here in its entirety:

Lisa: You were an oceanographer before you became a novelist. What’s one skill you learned in previous job—one you never would have thought in a million years would come in handy—that’s been very valuable to you as an author? Can you say why and how it’s been useful?

Padma: I loved mathematics – and that’s what led me to oceanography. People often think that mathematics and language are two opposite ends of a spectrum. But I think that much of mathematics is about pattern, which is why mathematics and music are intimately related. And language, at its best, is music. It sings. To me, an elegant equation is like a beautiful sentence. I think my years of doing mathematics, unexpectedly, helped hone my ears to the cadence of language, to patterns of sound.

Lisa: What other skills specific to being an oceanographer have come in handy and how?

Padma: Oceanographers often speak about their work to other scientists. I now speak to audiences about my books and I think the degree of comfort I have with public speaking was something I gained over the years during scientific presentations.

award winning book — Island’s End was inspired by Padma’s time in the Andamans Islands.

Lisa: How about when your workplace was in the remote islands of the Andamans? Anything transferable about skills used in that unusual workplace?

Padma: On the Andamans, I was quite isolated for long periods of time. I also didn’t have access to i-phones, my phones, your phones, or anybody phones; blackberries or any other kind of electronic fruit. I spent a lot of time thinking, meditating, enjoying solitude. As a writer, my days are filled with silence and solitude—and I was sure that I’d not only survive but thrive in this aspect of a writer’s life, given how I learned to love it while on the Andamans.

Lisa: What’s one skill you learned as an oceanographer you expect you will never need to use again?

Padma: I had to work in the laboratory and sometimes trouble shoot when scientific instruments didn’t work. I hope I’ll never need to do any of that again – and I doubt I’ll use those skills as a writer.

Lisa: What’s a workplace skill you did not have that you had to learn once you became a novelist?

Padma: Publicity and marketing are skills I am still learning as a novelist. Scientists do, to some degree, have to “sell” their work – when they’re interviewing or submitting a proposal to ask for funding, but it’s very different, in my opinion, from the sort of self-promotion that the world unfortunately expects authors to do today.

Lisa: What kinds of skills do you need to have when you are working on a research vessel and you are the only woman on board? Anything transferable to your current work?”

book cover a time to dance — The unique voice and form of A Time to Dance demonstrates Padma’s willingness to take risks.

Padma: Being the only female, the only person of color, and a chief scientist aboard a research vessel taught me to rely on myself and find courage within. As a writer, I use that same strength and it helps me to be brave—in terms of constantly pushing myself to experiment with new forms, themes and genres. It helps me ignore trends and go with whatever inspires me. Don’t get me wrong. I deeply value every starred review, every award and honor I’ve received. It is immensely important and helps me continue to move forward. Then again, I don’t ever google myself, which is quite different from every other author I’ve met. Having learnt to rely on myself, I am not tempted to see how my book is doing in terms of sales. Instead, I work incredibly hard to achieve the best I can, without worrying how others might receive it or how they’re reacting. Although, ultimately, few things encourage me more than a sincere expression of admiration for my work, someone showing me my words have moved and touched their soul.”

Dear Reader: What quirky—or otherwise—workplace skills do you use in your creative writing career? What skills did you need to learn? Share your experiences as a comment on this post! Feel free to ask questions of our authors as well.

Meet Me in New England: Join Me for a Short Workshop or Two!

March 22, 2013 by Lisa Tener

Book writing coach Lisa Tener — Your Book Coach

I love teaching in-person workshops–there’s a chemistry that happens when we get together in the flesh and connect as writers. And I so enjoy the opportunity to meet people from my blog and newsletter community in person.

As a book writing teacher, I know that sometimes people aren’t quite ready for an 8 week book writing course, but it may be perfect timing for an inexpensive shorter immersion in writing. I love to help these writers, too, and this spring I have several ways you can get a taste for what I do and put a toe in the water about your book:

March 23: Meet Your Muse at IGNITE (Wakefield, RI on March 23): If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me talk about connecting with your “muse.” I love helping writers more deeply access that creative archetype within. Tomorrow, I’m one of a dozen or so speakers at IGNITE, the short version of TED-type talks (“Enlighten us, but make it quick.”). The line up will be inspiring and I promise to get you in touch with your muse!

April 16: Do You Need a Brand Building Book? 5 Secrets to Start Writing and Make an Impact: Newport Interactive Marketers: Newport, RI.

April 22 : Write That Book! at ICF New England: Join me for the afternoon presentation Write That Book! Get Started with the Right Book and Grow Your Coaching Business and Tama Kieves for the evening program: Inspired & Unstoppable: Wildly Succeed in Your Life’s Work. Sponsored by the International Coach Federation (ICF) New England Chapter; event takes place in Westboro MA

June 20-22: Ocean State Summer Writing Conference at URI: It’s not too early to plan for summer writing conferences. Join me for this favorite June 20-22. I’ll be on a panel about new opportunities in publishing (more info soon).

I hope to see you this Spring for some writing and fun! Feel free to tell me what other courses you’d like to see in the future, too.

Day 25: October Journaling Adventure with The Joy of Writing Journal

Your Turn

7 Benefits to Growing Author Platform Before You Write Your Book

7 Benefits to Growing Author Platform Now!

Just Added: “What if I Don’t Want to Write More?”

Now, Here’s My Question for You

5 Authors Share the Quirky Workplace Skills That Make Them Successful in their Creative Writing Careers

Meet Me in New England: Join Me for a Short Workshop or Two!

Write a Book

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