B is for Book Coach

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for nuance . I am not anti-AI. I am anti-inefficient-use-of-AI. Some of you will be happy to see this. Some of you will be disappointed. Some of you will have no idea what to think. This is a sticky topic that only seems to be more polarizing as time goes on. So I also want you to know right up front that I do not feel polarized about...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for heroism. We need to talk about writing. We need to talk about what writing really is. We need to talk about the things we have been made to believe writing is. And we need to talk about it frequently, because too many of us are falling into the gaps between those two places. - The Hero's Journey of writing, and the threshold guard...

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: Divin...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for posture. All posture is much more complex than it seems—in your body and your book. - The mechanics of physical posture- The parallels in book posture- How to look closer at the posture you hold as an author, your reader holds when arriving to your book, and the space the book holds for you both - The pain that doing this might cr...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for words that belong. For the past several months, I’ve been working with the incredible Hussein al-Baiaty over at Rising Authors to get my new website up and running. But the website was just the output. What we were really spending all that time on was what the website should contain. Not should as in “supposed to.” Should as in “b...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for connection. You and your experience are worth witnessing. This is a true statement, no matter who you are or what your experience is. You matter. Your story matters. Choosing to share any part of yourself—from ideas to lived experience to insights—is a generous gift that holds intrinsic value whether or not it creates a return. An...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for noticing. Hear directly from my friend and author about the experience of writing his last book, with clips of a conversation recorded a month into post-publish territory—a month into borrowed time, according to the prognosis he’d been given, and only a few months before he passed away. Before we go any further, I want you to know...

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: Using...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for the mess. Do you remember the old Reese’s candy campaign, “There’s no wrong way to eat a Reese’s”? In retrospect, this was probably meant to counter KitKat’s “break me off a piece of that KitKat bar” methodology. KitKat might not be my favorite candy, but their approach makes sense. Simplicity is appealing. So when I talk about si...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for the future . In this month’s subscriber update , I said something that might need a bit more explanation. I said that “community is the future of books.” And I meant it. - Why we're looking tot he future of books - What I mean by community - What books can actually create - How to make that happen Enjoying this space? It takes all...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for publishing . Humans have always told stories. From campfires to city centers, wherever someone would listen (and occasionally when no one would), someone else was ready to share. This made written language a radical technology, allowing a single person to be heard far beyond and long after they spoke. We carved, we scribed, and ev...

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: Table...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for weirdness . Raise your hand if you’ve heard yourself say any of the following things about your book: I don’t know if it’s the RIGHT way to do it, but…there it is… It’s a little bit of X and a little bit Y… It’s complicated. It’s complex. It’s weird. Can I tell you a secret? All the best books are. - Why we're good with weird - Wh...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for constraints . We’ve been talking a lot about releasing external obligations, and for good reason. Especially now, at the start of the year, they’re loud , they’re pushy, and they’re often unrelated to what we actually want and need. But I find that internal pressure is much more difficult to release. - Unhelpful brain stories - Th...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for relief . A well-respected leader in a niche industry sent out an email recently that had me yelling and drawing out charts like I had missed my calling as a sports commentator. The same message hit a friend of mine via a podcast just days before, and my authors tell me they hear it all the time. It’s everywhere. - The sales messag...

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: Reima...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for a guided 5 Minute Outline. - Why I don't believe in writer's block - One kind of block many of us do face - 5 Minute Outline ( If you’re new to 5 Minute Outlines, you can click through to an introduction .) - What are you going to do with this book? - Why are you writing ? - What might feel unshareable? - What will it take for you...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for growth . One year and one month of posting on Substack has taught me that when you’re in the right place, you can create one year and one month of content. That’s it. And it’s everything. - What I've learned about growth in the content space - What I've learned about myself in the content space - What it takes to grow beyond the c...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for mobility . I have hyper mobile joints—or, as we might have called it in the ‘90s, “stupid human tricks.” Without any real awareness of this imbalance, I couldn’t put any intention toward rectifying it. So my body did what bodies do best: it contorted itself, according to its overriding command to survive at all costs. This came to...

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. When you are writing for something more than the transaction of it all, the bigness of the work is twofold. There’s the complexity of constructing a book, and then there’s the complexity of leading change in your corner of the world. So when I say “start with the small,” I don’t mean that we’re going to...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for momentum . From time to time, I have to pause to look up definitions of very basic words, because I’ve realized my neurodivergent self isn’t using them quite the same way dominant society does. - Checking our definitions around productivity - Checking our assumptions around our own productivity - Checking the societal expectations...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for weeds . Do you remember last spring, when I landed in the middle of a tangled mess of roots in my garden bed—one that I decided could serve as a metaphor for my life ? It started with an attempt to clear surface level weeds from a garden bed tucked alongside my house, journeyed through the pit of despair that was the realization t...

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. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been immersed in Anne Frank’s world. It started because Alice Hoffman, author of Practical Magic, is one of my favorite authors, and I needed a new audiobook to listen to at night. Her most recent, When We Flew Away , happened to be a fictionalized prequel to Anne Frank’s di...