B is for Book Coach

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for finishing…or not. A few years ago, a client came to me with a beautiful book idea and a not-so-pretty anxiety. Time was getting away from him. - The pain of an unfinished project. - The marketing bros who exploit that pain. - How to heal that pain even before the project is finished. The B is for Book Coach space is one way I crea...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space without obligation. “I guess everyone wants to write a book at some point, right?” I hear this so often it’s hard not to roll my eyes—not at you, the person I’ve probably only just met face to face and am so glad to hear from. But at the messaging that has so heavily influenced our world. - The overwhelming messaging that "you need a...

Welcome back to a special edition of B is for Book Coach . In these episodes, I’m reading through pieces of You Don’t Get to the Ocean by Accident —the workbook version of the early work I do with all of my authors. If you want to follow along or jump ahead, pocket-sized copies are available on Amazon, and every Substack subscriber gets a fillable PDF copy as well. Today, we’re reading from: Your...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for a guided 5 Minute Outline. The most effective nonfiction masterclass I’ve ever experienced was not in a workshop or conference. It wasn’t paywalled behind a subscription fee, and it didn’t end in a sales pitch. It was—and is—the “red dress” scene from the movie The Matrix: https://youtu.be/IJrjcHx9nDA?si=Gp_DzUstvMBJLV0r The brill...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space without intruders. I manage a birthing room like I manage the writer’s room in your head. …maybe I should back up and explain a few things. - Birth as a parallel to writing - Writing rooms as internal spaces - Who gets to be in the space and how it's managed - Recovering your energy after an intrusion Hey, thanks for creating this spa...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for names. I have a unique name. My very first self-branded copy was this: Hey, there! I'm Brannan. You can call me B. You're also likely to call me Brannon, Branan, Brennan, Brandon, Brandy, Brenda, Britney, Brianna...​​ You can call me anything, as long as you call me when you're stuck. It’s true that I’ve been called all of those t...

Welcome to a special edition of B is for Book Coach . In these episodes, I’m going to read through pieces of You Don’t Get to the Ocean by Accident —the workbook version of the early work I do with all of my authors. If you want to follow along or jump ahead, pocket-sized copies are available on Amazon, and every Substack subscriber gets a fillable PDF copy as well. Today, we’re reading from: The...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for a Guided 5 Minute Outline. I often hear that a 5 minute outline recording or episode helped someone, followed quickly by the acknowledgement that it took 15 minutes or more to get through. I think my record 5 minute outline was 45 minutes long. The thing is, the “5 minutes” part of the outline isn’t a gimmick that never comes thro...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for patterns. If you don’t have a teenager in your house, you might not have jumped onto the KPop Demon Hunters bandwagon yet. It’s an animated movie about (surprise!) a KPop girl group who hunts demons. Pretty straightforward setup, if you're open to a vital message delivered like a musical punch to the gut. - Patterns that we tend t...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for resistance. The other day, a colleague posted a thread on LinkedIn about certain things that aren’t as scary as we were led to believe they’d be when we were kids in the ‘90s. Quicksand. Razorblades in Halloween candy. Spontaneous combustion. I’d like to submit to the record: Resistance . - The fear of resistance - The reality of...

Welcome to a special edition of B is for Book Coach . In these episodes, I’m going to read through pieces of You Don’t Get to the Ocean by Accident —the workbook version of the early work I do with all of my authors. Today, we’re reading from: Ethos and Process. To get the rest of the workbook right away, look for You Don’t Get to the Ocean by Accident on Amazon , or subscribe on Substack to get a...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . I’m B, midwife of big ideas and book development partner for writers and non-writers alike. And for the next few minutes, you are my author. Today, we’re making space for a magical Guided 5 Minute Outline. These exercises are usually pointed toward one specific kind of content, but this one is about remembering who you are. You can reach your people. It doesn’...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . I’m B, midwife of big ideas and book development partner for writers and non-writers alike. And for the next few minutes, you are my author. Today, we’re making space for balance. Can a multipassionate, purpose-first change-maker find a routine so balanced that they’re actually satisfied? - The myth and misunderstanding of balance - The vulnerability of being...

Welcome to a special edition of B is for Book Coach . In these episodes, I’m going to read through pieces of You Don’t Get to the Ocean by Accident —the workbook version of the early work I do with all of my authors. If you want to follow along or jump ahead, pocket-sized copies are available on Amazon, and every Substack subscribe r gets a fillable PDF copy as well. Today, we’re reading from: the...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for perspective. A few weeks ago, one of my teenagers wanted to spend the day “body-doubling” at the library to make progress on the last of her eighth grade school work. I took the opportunity to get my own stack of tasks done, but not before I stepped inside to grab a book that one of my authors referenced as a complementary title....

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for a simplified 5 Minute Outline. Over the past few months, I’ve been in the trenches of articulating the Clarity Spectrum—a new set of book categories based on what the author intends to create for a reader. In that process, I realized something key: The 5 Minute Outline revolves around just two questions. The two questions in the qu...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for genre . At roughly the midpoint shift of my career to this point, I made my way into the Story Grid universe. If you’re not familiar, “the Story Grid” is a story nerd’s dream, plotting entire fiction works onto spreadsheets to see how the arcs take shape. - Content genres vs sales genres - The shape of story that we play out all t...

Once upon a time, and somehow just yesterday, I hosted a season or two of another podcast. The theme was parenting, but through the lens of the “young witch” archetype in literature. And we did it all in a weekend, holed up in an AirBnB in Memphis, TN, with stacks of books all around us and the rain quietly falling outside. Witches or no, that work was magical. One of the stories we centered on ca...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. I'm B, midwife of big ideas and book development partner for nonfiction writers and non-writers alike. For the next few minutes, you are my author. And today, we’re making space for vulnerability. Think about your favorite books. What are those books about? If you sit with that question for a minute, you might come up with a long-ish answer about the depth that...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for a special guided 5 Minute Outline. And this time, we're not going to outline anything at all. There’s nothing wrong with producing things, of course. Making something tangible out of the intangible is magic, by definition. But there’s a difference between alchemy and sleight of hand—and a true flow state is never an illusion. There...

In the board game Candyland , who remembers getting stuck in the Molasses Swamp for ages and ages until you finally drew a double color? It's very possible that my family or friends or even I had made up some kind of masochistic house rule in order to make the game more difficult. But it seems so clear in my mind: if you were stuck in the Molasses Swamp, you were stuck -stuck. I would love to hear...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space, for beginnings . I won't tell you that beginnings aren't important. The entire writing world can't be wrong (can they?). But neither will I spend time on how they are important. You already know. And that's the problem. - The pitfalls of the pressure to get first lines right - Why they're actually hard, and why that's ok - Permission...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for more. digging. We often face down the topics we're writing about while we're writing them. I don't mean “yes I'm writing this so of course I'm thinking about it.” I mean ordering pizza while stressed out during the last push of your book about healthy eating. Overworking while writing about the dangers of overwork. Hitting a new se...

Welcome to B is for Book Coach. I'm B, midwife of big ideas and book development partner for writers and non writers alike, and today, we’re making space for a guided 5 Minute Outline . Before I finalized this exercise and decided to go ahead with the episode, I looked for any insights Robin Wall Kimmerer had already given about her process of writing Braiding Sweetgrass. If there were contradicti...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for digging . Confession time: I do not think of myself as a writer. An editor, yes. A story nerd, definitely. A creator, sometimes. An operations director, once. A mom, a doula, a midwife-in-another-life, a bit of an herbalist, a bog witch? Sure. I know I'm an excellent ghost writer. I do not think of myself as a writer . I see somet...