B is for Book Coach

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...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for frogging. As a process-knitter, the product at the end just feels like a bonus compared to the process of the knitting itself. And I believe in the power of process-writing. - What "frogging" means in knitting and in writing - How to cut the melodrama around cutting content - What you need to enjoy the process of writing Hey, you....

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach . Today, we’re making space for community. Braiding Sweetgrass is both an ecology book told through an Indigenous lens and a book of Indigenous wisdom focused on ecological topics. And if you're like me and catching up on all of the incredible reads that made waves while you were barely treading water—I highly recommend moving this one to the top of your list. I...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for a special guided 5 minute outline. Before we get into this week’s episode, I want you to understand that these outlines might take 5 minutes to map, but they represent a lifetime of your mastery. This is true more of memoir than any other nonfiction sub-genre. So when I say that we’re going to reverse-engineer Hannah Gadsby’s book...

Welcome back to B is for Book coach. I’m B, a book development partner for non-fiction non-writers, and today, we’re making space for rule-breaking. - A bit of a credit to journalism and its rules first - How "non-writer" writing is different - One rule in particular that I break all the time - How to follow the spirit of a rule rather than the letter of the law Subscribe to B is for Book Coach on...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for knowing. The writing world is full of ways to find out what's wrong with your work. From critique groups to beta readers to manuscript evaluations, you'll never have to wonder whether there's something more you can change. But what happens when the beta readers themselves are wrong? When the critique group or evaluation picks you a...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for pelicans. The work of writing tends to happen during quiet pockets of time, on Zoom calls over huge distances, and in the otherwise secluded spaces we create for it. This is not new. In fact, today's post centers around a letter that Maxwell Perkins wrote to a would-be author in the middle of World War II. - Perkins' advice about b...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for a guided 5 Minute Outline. When I introduced you to the 5 Minute Outline , we practiced with the outline for an entire book and the promise that we’d return for more specific exercises over time. Today, we’re going to zoom in to outline a single chapter that’s primarily driven by storytelling. Get free weekly book coaching right in...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re creating space for your completed book . There are so many variables to a writing project, based on everything from the complexity of your topic to how close it is to the chest to how many times you’ve articulated it (or not) in the past. The key is to surface those variables and chart your course with them in mind. And we can’t chart a course with...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re creating space for human connection . I’m asked almost daily whether AI will make a person’s writing process easier. While I do have thoughts about how to (and how not to) use AI for books, there’s another conversation I’m much more interested in having. It’s not whether or not to use the technology, but how its existence underscores bigger problem...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re creating space for context . This year, I made it a point to bring reading back into my daily routine. A month or so ago, I finally finished a book I’ve had on my shelf for literal years now: The Girl with All the Gifts. And a moment between the protagonist and villain caught my eye. - Why some content is hard to distill - The stories we tell ourse...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re creating space for a 5 Minute Outline. In five, one-minute long segments, I will give you prompts and tell you where to write them down. You will write for the duration of that minute, allowing any and everything to come to the surface. No stopping. No editing. No judging. Before we begin, get a chapter in mind that you’d like to draft, then pause...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re creating space for questions . When do I know I have a book worth writing? When can we stop mapping and start writing? When is it done enough to give it to you for editing? When do I know it’s ready to share? - The truth about these questions and who can answer them - Tapping into your authorial audacity - What to do when you disagree with your edi...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re creating space for turning points. You might already be using "younger you" as a target reader. It’s the persona you can get closest to, and you almost undoubtedly learned or experienced the topic of your book before deciding to write it. “Younger you” is an excellent way to think about your most heavily impacted reader. But consider getting even m...

Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re creating space for core messages. - Naming the resistance the reader is facing - Noticing when you keep writing to the same type of resistance - Embracing your core message as an author Get free weekly book coaching right in your inbox, or upgrade your coaching access to include calls, office hours, and workshops. Get full access to B is for Book C...