Your Words Unleashed

Send us Fan Mail Today's episode is inspired by a recent breakthrough I had with one of my writing coaching clients. Incidentally, she’s an article writer and not a book writer, although it doesn't really matter for our purposes.  But I want to talk about why you need to do less, both in actual practice, as well as on a mental level. In other words, I'm going to try to convince you...

Send us Fan Mail Today I’m going to talk about something that I believe is a really important part of good scholarly writing. And that is the power of storytelling. I'll discuss how you can harness the power of storytelling in your own writing, regardless of the subject matter.   I’m also going to read a few pages from my first book to illustrate some of these points. And I’ll give you some t...

Send us Fan Mail I don’t need to tell you how heavy things are feeling across the globe right now. Like most of you, I've been watching disaster unfold in Israel and Gaza from a privileged position of security and safety. In this era of the 24-hour news cycle and the ability to document and share our every movement in real-time, we’ve been flooded with images of human beings much like ourselv...

Send us Fan Mail The scholarly book proposal is truly an art form that is very difficult to master. It's THE most important part of getting a book contract. And yet there’s so much conflicting information out there that it can be hard for people to write one in a way that truly puts their best foot forward. On today’s episode, I talk about the top 5 most common mistakes I see scholarly author...

Send us Fan Mail I've made it to my 40th episode! In fact, podcasting is not something I ever seriously considered before I created my coaching business less than two years ago. It blows me away that I’ve reached this milestone. So this week I want to share with you my reflections about podcasting and the four main lessons it has for YOUR scholarly writing projects. Support the show Check out...

Send us Fan Mail Today I’m going to go in-depth about one of the very best and most important things you can possibly do to improve your book. And this is to host a manuscript workshop! If you’ve never heard of these before, they’re like a best-kept secret in academia. These are essentially a half-or-full day event where you discuss a draft of your book with other experts in your field before you...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is focused on something that plagues many of us: procrastination! A lot of the guidance out there on dealing with procrastination is not that useful. This is because it often tends to put all procrastinators into one camp based solely on their avoidance of taking action in a timely way. They don’t address the varied reasons WHY people put things off. This episode desc...

Send us Fan Mail If you want to keep your own mental, physical, and emotional health and well-being at the forefront this semester, this means SAYING NO to things that do not serve you. This episode helps listeners figure out what to say 'yes' and 'no' to and how to do so with grace and dignity. I give four different strategies to help you figure out what to prioritize in your...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s episode will be focused on how you can consciously design your courses to help you attain your own goals. I’ll talk about why you need to drop your standards when it comes to teaching. I’ll also share some critical questions to ask yourself as you’re planning your courses, along with some different strategies for how you can use teaching to enhance your own research and wr...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I talk about why academics have such a hard time getting straight to the point in their writing and offer suggestions on how to change it.  Remember, it's up to YOU as the author to tell the audience what to focus on, not put the responsibility on them to figure out! For step-by-step support for your writing projects apply for Leslie's Your Words Unleash...

Send us Fan Mail Learn what my most successful clients do to make sure they make progress on their writing. No. Matter. What. For step-by-step support for your writing projects apply for Leslie's Your Words Unleashed Six-Month Program . Support the show Check out Leslie's website at www. YourWordsUnleashed.com ! The three ways Leslie can help you with coaching & developmental editing...

Send us Fan Mail This past academic year has been a beast! Since summer’s just beginning, here’s your chance to take stock of the past school year. This episode will help you reflect on what’s been working well for you, what hasn’t, and what you want to change so you can create a more satisfying and sustainable life and career. For step-by-step support for your writing projects apply for Leslie&ap...

Send us Fan Mail Summer is around the corner and you know you need to do something major to reclaim the parts of yourself you have lost this past academic year. You want to take advantage of this time out of the classroom to push your projects forward so that you can start the fall semester in a calm and confident place. The problem with all of this planning is that many of you are likely burnt ou...

Send us Fan Mail How do you know if you're truly burnt out? In this episode (and the next), I delve into this topic and what you can do about it. Although this term seems like it’s everywhere, in this episode I define what it is and how to know if you actually are burnt out. I define the 3 main qualities of burnout and list the 7 characteristics of a high burnout organization so you can figur...

Send us Fan Mail A lot of the authors I work with are junior scholars very early on in their careers, and their book will be the primary stepping stone to their dream job or to achieving tenure. Others are quite established scholars, some of whom already have tenure and who have spent the majority of their careers focused on publishing journal articles.  They’ve become really good at article writi...

Send us Fan Mail If you’re like me, you’re constantly try to find ways to get more efficient at things so you can cram more into your day and feel some sense of control over your life! It’s so easy to lose momentum with your writing when things gets too hectic. On today’s episode I’m going to be talking about a different, and potentially better, way to think about time and how we can release ourse...

Send us Fan Mail This episode talks about something that strikes fear into the heart of many introvert academics: promoting your own book! Although your press will do some amount of marketing of your book, the brunt of promotion is primarily on YOU. So this episode addresses how to reframe the fear of self-promotion, followed by 6 different effective strategies for letting people know about your n...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode I talk about something that can have a major positive impact on your work, your writing process. and the amount of writing you are able to produce. And that is the power of “priming” your mind. Priming basically refers to how being exposed to one stimulus can affect your reaction to another stimulus later on. In essence, your mind is constantly storing information...

Send us Fan Mail Well, the time has come for me to talk about one of the—if not THE—most important part of getting a scholarly book contract.   And that is the book proposal!  A couple of weeks ago, I did a workshop for faculty at Rutgers University on this topic, and it was amazing how many questions people had about it.   This is also an area that I work with my clients in a very hands-on way.  ...

Send us Fan Mail One of the biggest challenges my clients face is figuring out how to write during semesters when they are also teaching. It’s not just a matter of trying to fit writing into their schedules—which is a huge challenge in and of itself. But it’s also about the difficulty of balancing the short-term, hard deadlines of teaching with the longer-term, seemingly lower stakes deadlines tha...

Send us Fan Mail In today's episode I clear up the question: should you submit your materials for review to more than one press at the same time? I talk about whether you should meet with multiple editors at the same time. I also go into detail about the process of simultaneous review--what the ethics are and the three main points to keep in mind if you want to go down this path. Ultimately,...

Send us Fan Mail Today I’m going to be re-releasing one of my favorite podcast episodes, which helps you set clear and sustainable boundaries with your job. It is based on an exercise I call “Semester Absolutes” that is best to do at the very beginning of your semester before things get overly hectic and you start just saying yes to everything. Trust me, if you set your limits ahead of time and th...

Send us Fan Mail Right now, I’m visiting my family in California, so I’ve decided to re-release the very first episode of my podcast.  It also happens to be my most listened-to episode of all time.  For those of you who started tuning in later, I introduce myself and explain why I became a book writing coach. I also talk about how your thoughts and mindset influence your writing and give you an ex...

Send us Fan Mail This episode will give you some questions that will help you process the roller-coaster of 2022 in all its glory and reflect on everything you’ve accomplished! You can get reacquainted with your own priorities and the things you value, and bring them front and center again moving forward.  By the end of the year, we forget so much of what happened, especially since we’re all still...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s episode is inspired by a lively webinar I participated in recently called “How Writing Coaches Get Unstuck” that helped kick off Academic Writing Month for Sage Publishing. The webinar featured myself, Michelle Boyd, and Cathy Mazak. We’re all writing coaches and published authors and were also there to celebrate the publication of Michelle’s wonderful new book with Sage,...