Writing Your First Draft

James Taylor interviews Cathy Fyock and they talk about Writing Your First Draft

In this episode, we cover:

• Writing as a reinvention strategy
• The chunky method of writing
• How to avoid productive procrastination

Resources:

• Official Website - https://www.cathyfyock.com/

For More of Creative Life Podcast By James Taylor

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

James Taylor
Hi, I'm James Taylor business creativity and innovation keynote speaker. And this is the Creative Life, a show dedicated to you the creative. If you're looking for motivation, inspiration and advice, while at home at work or on your daily commute, then this show is for you. Each episode brings you a successful creative, whether that's an author, musician, entrepreneur, perform a designer, or a thought leader. They'll share with you their journey, their successes, their failures, their creative process, and much much more. You'll find Show Notes for this episode as well as free training on creativity over at Jamestaylor.me. Enjoy this episode.

Hi, it's James Taylor here. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Authors Summit. This inspiring virtual summit reveals the secrets of making marketing and monetizing a best selling book. If you would like to access the full video version as well as in depth sessions with over 40 Best Selling authors that I've got a very special offer for you just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yeah, that's right. Over 40 New York Times and Amazon best selling authors, book editors, agents and publishers, sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to write and market your first or next best sellers. So just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, but not before you listen to today's episode.

Hey, there is James Taylor and I'm delighted today to be joined by Cathy Fyock. Cathy is the business book strategist and works with thought leaders and professionals who want to write as a business or career development strategy. She is the author of eight books, including On your mark from first word to first draft in six weeks and blog to book since since beginning of business in 2014. She has helped 130 plus professionals become published authors. It's my great pleasure to have Kathy join us today. So welcome Cathy.

Cathy Fyock
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

James Taylor
So let me see you again. We met up at the National Speakers Association winter conference recently as well as lovely seeing you and, and I know you, you got a chance on things on the Sunday to go up on stage and give give a Prezi. And I felt I felt really sorry for because you had the hardest gig of, I think the entire conference. So everyone else was getting like maybe 20 minutes or 30 minutes. And yourself. I know Deborah God and a number of us we got five minutes to do your thing. So what was that? Like?

Cathy Fyock
Yes, I know. It's crazy. That was crazy. I have never prepared so much for so little time on stage. But it was really a great experience. It really causes you to hone your message. So, so crisp and so sharp. So it was it was a lot of preparation, but it was a lot of fun.

James Taylor
And you said I think the slides were going through automatically as well. So you had to really stay on track. The whole

Cathy Fyock
You had to so yeah, it was it was very challenging and to talk for just five minutes and to make an impact. And the whole thing too, I wanted to make a point of it's important to give your audience members space to hear and process. So I also wanted to work in points of sort of silence and letting the audience process so that was very challenging.

James Taylor
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So sure that what's going on in your world just now?

Cathy Fyock
Well, just really staying busy. There are lots and lots of speakers who want to become authors, or who know they need a new book to position their thought leadership to stay relevant to stay current, to say in the spotlight.

James Taylor
So I guess this is I was talking to a speaker the other day and she is repositioning she, she's a successful speaker, but she's going she's now speaking about a very different thing and kind of repositioning a brand as well. And she was talking about as you were saying, I'm Now starting to think about writing the book, because it's such a big change I need to be positioning myself in a book is a really good way of doing that.

Cathy Fyock
Well, exactly. And that's exactly what I did when I was a human resources professional and consultant and expert, and wanted to reposition myself as a book coach. So I needed to write the book about how to do that. And that was able to position me or reposition me in this whole new space. And that's the power of a book. And that's really I tell a lot of my authors that I work with. That's the power of a book is it allows you to go from here to there seamlessly, because you've written the book on it.

James Taylor
Now today, do movie speakers are watching this just now they're just coming into the world of speaking. Do you still need to have a book I mean, we think of this word, author, you know, you know, authority being an authority and something is it require that you you haven't booked today in the speaking world.

Cathy Fyock
Yes, yes, I continue to hear many of the authors come to me and they say I want to get that keynote role. And I can't become a keynote or unless I'm an author. So it's it's imperative, it's imperative that you have the book Plus, if you are already if you somehow have made it onto the keynote stage, and you don't have a book, you're leaving money on the table. And so a book is a way to gain additional revenue to and then and then many times, you can double your fees triple your fees, because you are now the author.

James Taylor
Now I'm going to use myself as a little bit of a guinea pig for this as well. I am one of those speakers who's been Spin Spin for a little while not not too long, but I know that I need to write a book and I know every All my friends are successful speakers all said when you're going to write that book and I feel so bad about it because they keep if I Scott McCain, who I interviewed recently, Speaker Hall of Fame Inductee, incredible speaker. He said I Tim, what was the one thing you wish you had done? He said, I wish I'd written a book earlier. That was his, you know, in terms of building his thought leadership. So for someone, anyone who's watching this, maybe like myself, who is getting started speaking but doesn't have a book, can you hear me talk about, you know, how do we even start thinking because it feels like it's a, it's a big undertaking writing a book, it feels like a very solid, kind of heavy thing to do.

Cathy Fyock
And it is, and it is, and I can't believe you've escaped a conversation with me about writing your book, James. We're gonna have to have another sidebar conversation about just that. But yeah, it's incredibly important to have that book. And yes, it is a huge undertaking. And I think what makes it so hard, is that a book will always be important, but it will never be urgent. So it's always going to be important but never urgent. And that's why I think we sometimes don't ride it as soon as we should, or when it's really the right time to Get that book out there is it's never urgent but always important. And we tend to work our to do list by what is urgent and not what's important. So that's why I suggest to everyone working on a book that you scheduled time on your calendar, it doesn't go on your to do list. It goes on your calendar.

James Taylor
So I had one of the other guests I had recently he he'd spoken to Zig Ziglar, Zig Ziglar when he was as he was alive and said to him, sit down, sit down. So you're an author. He said, Well, no, I'm not an author. And the person is considered back a bit. What do you mean, I've got your books at home, I read I've read all your books, said no, no. I write three books. I write three pages a day. And at the end of it at some point, someone says you've got a book there and then that's what we published. So he was very much like every day we just even rating every day. We didn't think about it so much as writing a book. He just he was writing he was getting to that daily practice of Writing every day for someone that is maybe wanting to start developing their chops as a writer and kind of developing that skill is a skill. And what's the best way to start unlocking that part of themselves? Well, I

Cathy Fyock
think the whole concept of blog to book is an easy, fast, and almost painless way to create a book. That's the topic of my last book. Because an NSA meeting I had within the course of about 24 hours for people come up to me at a convention and say, cafe. I've been blogging for years, 10 years longer. I have all this great content. I feel like I have enough content for a book. How can I make that happen? And it's absolutely doable, whether you're going to start writing now and at the end of the year, have a book or you've been blogging, you can repurpose that writing for your next book.

James Taylor
I guess you could also do that. If you're more of VloggerFair more YouTube tapers. I mean, I'm tend to I use straight up my cross is going to strange for doing my blog, which is really it's really a vlog, I write it first and then I speak it often to autocue. And then it gets taken away. So I actually have the written words there. But but it's been the video tends to be the key thing, so I could take the video and that that transcript there, and then start reworking that into a book. But I'm thinking I mean, I'm, I'm not most patient of people, is it better to work with a final editor or co writer to help you in that process?

Cathy Fyock
I don't think so. If you're a speaker, you want to really own your thought leadership, you want to own your intellectual property. So I think it's really important as a speaker, and maybe other folks, maybe it's not as important but I think as a speaker, you will get deep, deep knowledge around your area of expertise that will make you a better speaker for having done the book. But once you have this content, what you need to do is just create a strategic plan for That book that is aligned with your business strategy. And you basically say, Okay, here is my concept for this book, this is what I've been writing about for or speaking about, or vlogging about. And what you do is you create your outline, you see where you already have content pieces. And then you just simply write and fill in the gap, who still want to have some important content that you haven't developed

James Taylor
yet. So I was talking to someone the other day, and they had just attended an event by Brian Tracy and Brian had mentioned that he writes a book or he publishes a book every three months now, because he said, the publishers that their attention span is so short, you said you have to continually keep publishing in order staying top of mind so so I'm guessing for some people that are really, really prolific in terms of publishing, they could also perhaps find curators and other people to maybe let's see, if someone's an expert on one particular topic, they could perhaps even find other experts on topic and Korea book together?

Cathy Fyock
Absolutely. So that's possible. In fact, with a book, which was kind of exciting, it's, I was telling an author this the other day, it's sort of like having a blank canvas and you are the artist. So sometimes authors say to me, Well, what goes in the book? Well, I don't know. It's like, it's like an artist saying, Well, what should I What color should I use? What what? What strokes should I use on the canvas? What picture do I want to paint? It's, it's up to you, you're the creator of this of this book. So it can be anything that you want it to be

James Taylor
that you mentioned, workable and thought thought leader, and we hear these different words they, so author, speaker, thought leader, expert, and they can get used interchangeably at different points as well. What How would you define a thought leader what makes a thought leader and imiquimod we can get into like, what it takes to actually become a thought leader.

Cathy Fyock
I believe a thought leader is that individual who is leading the charge in some new area. Now, it could be an area that's been explored like leadership, but it's exploring it in a new way. It's putting on a new lens, a new perspective, perhaps it's using a different metaphor, a different analogy. It's using your own spin on that topic. So it's going where no one has gone before, in a unique and individual sort of way

James Taylor
that bring up a point on I'm looking at my my library of books. And I think that's the one particular topic. I think, it feels like every book has been written on that topic, where can I fit into that topic? It seems people written better, more concise, or more expansive, than than I could ever do. You know, is that a common thing you find with some of your clients that they just just feel overwhelmed because if you're that someone's already done it maybe better than them?

Cathy Fyock
Absolutely. So I say to them though, in response, let's take leadership. Have we solved all the leader ship issues in the world today? I hardly think so. No, no. So we're always looking for a different way to approach that topic. It's still important. We haven't gotten all the answers. No one has sort of codified that in a way that really makes sense for everybody. So perhaps your view of leadership is that new slice is that new way of looking at it, that's going to make sense maybe not to everybody, but it makes it make sense to somebody or to a certain industry or, or a niche. So that's what I tell my authors is you definitely have a story to tell. But it's figuring out where you have your area of expertise and then how can you present that in a way that is unique and solves a problem. Your client or your reader has

James Taylor
as someone can start writing this book, putting it together. And I knew there's multiple stages and periods of time in this company to go through all different stages of the book use, yes, you can go through, but it feels like a lot of times, authors I've spoken to, especially first time authors, they get to the end of having the book ready. And they're so exhausted from the the process of actually writing and getting editing and everything in the book, that they then fall flat on the marketing part. And so when someone's going to going into you mentioned strategies earlier on, when someone's thinking about the strategy should have taken that step back and think about the the totality of what this book means for them in their career and for the the readers and people that are looking to serve in that way. How should you be thinking about the marketing piece?

Cathy Fyock
Well, definitely you need to start thinking about marketing when you start writing the book or even ideally, before you start writing the book. And part of that is about building your tribe who are the individuals that find you work really intriguing, really interesting really write out a spot on and, and then writing blogs and articles and other pieces of writing that will create that energy around your topic and that connection. So and here's the thing that a lot of authors think is they have to write new content, say the book is done. And now they need to think about blogging and getting articles out there. I'm all about repurposing. So what, what pieces of the book can you extract as excerpted pieces, or as pieces that are perhaps of interest because of something that's happening in the news or it's a seasonal issue, or it's that time of year. So thinking about repurposing writing, either excerpting it in chunks or repurposing, writing and getting it out there? It doesn't mean new work, it just means thinking more. Speak, being smarter and not necessarily working harder. I guess you

James Taylor
can also do some news jacking there. If you see a news piece of news, some something happening in the news, you can if it relates to your topic, and you have a chapter where you can release that you can repurpose some of that content, you know, push out there, stop talking to some journalists and try and get a featured.

Cathy Fyock
Absolutely. So yeah, it's it's being aware of what is in the news, what are the trends? What are the issues? And then always be looking at your topic and saying, How does my topic connect to that topic? And how can I write a little blog piece that does link to that because that will keep my topic fresh and relevant.

James Taylor
Now, one of the books I bought recently was by thick you're involved in behind the scenes on this book as well as Louis creamer agreement. Yeah. And it was a it was, I think his book, more business, I think was the name of the book. Yes, yeah. Yes. It was a great book. Really. hypervisor for speakers is a fantastic book on marketing and building your speaking. Now talk me through a process like that, because there's someone you know that you could argue that's quite a that's a very narrow type of audience you wrote that book for. So that was, you know, with practice aim speakers, and I and it's really aimed at people who want to be professional, as opposed to those ones just speak because they have a message and did not bother about being paid for it as well. So I'd be fascinated to author like that with the process that you can go through in identifying that tribe and thinking about that tribe and how that relates to the book that ends up going and kind of being published.

Cathy Fyock
Well, it's interesting. Lewis was actually one of those four people who came up to me at the conference who said, I've been blogging for four years or 10 years. I don't even know how long it was. And she said, I know I have enough content for a book, I need a book, but I don't know how to get there, and can you help me and that's when I thought, Oh, yes, I can help you. And I should write a book about how to do that. So I help Lois though on her book, and she did. To have wonderful content, she wanted to just really add a couple of pieces. So it was a process of going through seeing what she had, creating an outline, seeing what pieces were missing, having her write those, those specific chunks of narrative, and then looking for a way to organize the material so that it made sense. And what we did was looking at sort of the different phases of becoming a speaker, and sort of what is the branding and the issues up front about who you are and what your messages and who you're for, and then how to make the sales call, how to target the right audiences, and the sort of that sequence of, of going through. So we organize the book content that way, and, and then just organize her blog post accordingly. We also needed to take out some redundancies there, because in a blog, you can repeat that same message, something that you really feel strongly about. You know, if you have something out there in January, you can have that same message or a version of it in July or August. But in a book, it's just too much it's redundant. So we had to edit out some content, and then make sure it was evergreen. What I found in almost every authors blog content is there's a sense of immediacy in blog content. I saw this yesterday or this happened to me this week. And so I'm going to reflect on that. So we have to make those pieces evergreen so that it it has that evergreen field because we want to books content to be relevant for five or more years.

James Taylor
What about those many speakers, the kind of stock in traders stories we trade in, we use stories, that's one of the things we doing on stage. Whereas maybe like trainers that much better tend to use the more processes action you do this then then this as well. And I'm thinking about someone like, obviously met named James, great speaker. And she talks a lot about conceptual models using visual representations of what you're trying to get at. So if someone's just been writing, writing blog posts, but maybe haven't, and the they haven't necessarily been showing the ABCs of something and maybe telling a story or maybe the opposite of telling a story, how do you then take that information and then wrap around it? stuff that people can actually remember those? You know, that the Stephen Covey's the the grids and all the other things that we actually remember? They were because I felt like a lot of these books. I remember my retention is probably this this much, but I do remember graphics, I remember conceptual models. So do you work with with authors on that as well?

Cathy Fyock
Absolutely. For example, I worked with an author who had an amazing story. He went from couch potato. He lost 130 pounds and became an Iron Man. And so it's like his story of how he did that. Which is a fabulous story. But when I was talking with Mark, I said, I think you want to do something more than just tell the story. I think you probably want to give some folks some, it's a What do we do? What are the steps? What is the process? So I had him think through what are the steps? And he goes, Well, that's interesting. I've been sort of thinking about these six principles or pillars. I said, Great. So let's, let's identify what those are. And then let's dissect your story and see if we can't insert that into these different pillars, if you will. And he was able then to create his book, he was able to create his keynote. And in fact, I just saw him give his keynote last week and it was awesome,

James Taylor
fantastic. And that reminds that reminds me a little bit of this. One of our other guests, Peter Cook, who's from thought leaders, business school, partner with Matt church, amazing speaker from from Australia. I remember them telling me that they do. They do this thing called pink sheets. And I think Gina Anderson is one of our other guests. She's talked about his Pink Sheets, which is a one pager just because a lot of the time speakers when they're, they could have a number of years into their career. And then they actually looked into what intellectual property do you have? And or do you have to write a book now, but all you have to give a training and like, I don't know, what do I have, I don't have anything. So one of the things that they remember they teaches is, is having stories is having but processes is having some kind of visual represented representation, maybe a mantra, beginner chivari whoever is guessing this is great, like mantras having mantras as well. So you so you've got you've kind of got all these different things in place. And then they were saying is then easy. You can if you're continually adding to this Nick ethicon Pink Sheets, but if you have some form of continually adding to these things, that could be a chapter in a book that can be you know, 10 minutes in a talk that could be a three hour pass. Have a workshop. But unless you write it down and have it in some kind of written form, then isn't it is just gonna go go and etha.

Cathy Fyock
Exactly. So stories are wonderful. And that's what people remember. But in order to organize you your book, you probably need to think about, well, what are the three lessons are? What are the morals of the story? Or what are the steps that get you to the other side of the pain or the problem that you're having. So that's what I typically do will help folks understand what those keys are, because that is really the heart of what it is to be a thought leader is to have it boiled down from this wonderful story with a great message that's very inspirational to Okay, so how can I apply that? So it's those steps, the process the model, that is what creates a thought leader.

James Taylor
So let's go to some quickfire questions for us. Now, Kathy, let's talk about what to Do you use it, you know, as an author as a writer? What is that that software that you use to to do your writing? Or is there any particular online tool or resource you find very useful for yourself as a, as an author and also as a speaker,

Cathy Fyock
many of my clients and and I use word I mean, pretty basic. And what I like about word is that we don't have to learn it. Some of the other software that's out there is great. And I've heard wonderful things about Scrivener and some other some other apps, but here's the thing, we know, word. And what I found with a lot of authors, it's, oh, I think I'm gonna buy this new, whatever. And I'm gonna need to learn that so it becomes productive procrastination. In other words, putting off what you should really do. It's like, Oh, I can justify it because I'm doing something. I'm learning something. But I'm really putting off what's most important, which is writing my book. So I say stick with what you know. I think we're It is very functional. And especially if you have this sense of I need to get my book done. Do it in Word.

James Taylor
I know that there's some writers who will do that first draft just getting out of their head by just writing it on the page and then they will then go and put it on to a to a document in editing I remembering the children's author Roald Dahl, who I was big, big fan of and Roald Dahl always. He always sharpened six pencils, HB pencils before he would grit and grit into write. And he knew he'd done a day's writing. When those eight pencils were blunt. That was the that was the stage right? It was a very easy way without having to count words like banette blunt that's me I can I can go and have my lunch. And what about when it comes to a book because you're an author, but is there a particular book you find you think especially for speakers is very useful for them to read?

Cathy Fyock
Well, I love Stephen King's on writing. I think it's one of the best and it What it does is let you know that while writing may be hard for you, it's hard really for everybody. And it takes a certain amount of discipline to get it done. And so that to me is is reassuring to know that even the best writers even the most prolific writers, have a process and have a discipline about their work and what about in your speak of buying what is it that buying that you carry with you to all of your your speaking engagements, you never leave the home or the office without what's in that bag? Well, usually I carry my books with me because I think an author should always carry their book, I have at least one copy. And I also wear my my button which is asked me about my book. And I wear this to all engagements. because inevitably, if I wear that on the plane, I'm selling a book on the plane or because somebody's gonna say, Oh, well tell me about your book. And I've also got new stickers that I put on the back My phone. So yeah, so I really, really love that. So, but definitely carry your books with us as a speaker and an author. Always have your books with you.

James Taylor
There's definitely something you feel there when you meet a speaker and they give you that book and it feel they instantly there's an authority that comes with that. I know they talked about the book as a business card that has been overused as a phrase. And obviously, you don't want to write a bad book, you want to write a good book that you're proud of as well. But having that book you're proud of you're happy to get over there just feels and I think the why so recently, I'm a huge fan of what how he did it was phillium Jones, who had the book and it was it was not a big book, it's 80 something pages or something. Yeah, so they just yet

Cathy Fyock
always have your book whether you have it with you and and give it away. I think giving away your book is maybe one of the best strategies to because it creates new fans it builds your tribe and It is a great calling card, people will not throw a book away. They may or may not read it, but the impact of having a book and they may give it to someone else, and they may read it. And so lots of good things can come from that. So Kathy,

James Taylor
I want you to imagine tomorrow morning, you wake up, and you have to start from scratch. So you have all the skills you have acquired as an author and as a speaker, but no one knows you, you know, no one, what would you do? How would you restart things?

Cathy Fyock
I'd write a book. Which is really how I reinvented myself because I was a human resources consultant in my former life. And one day I decided I needed to reinvent myself. So I put the business plan together. And I wrote the book about how to write the book. So I think anytime someone is thinking, Okay, so now what's next, if you see the path that you want to go and you have some expertise there, then perhaps the the strength strategy is to write the book because it's it's a great way of establishing your credibility, your visibility, to expand your impact, and get some media coverage too. So it's all good stuff.

James Taylor
Cathy if people want to reach out to you and maybe learn more about your services and your speaking and your things you have going on, where's the best place to go and do that?

Cathy Fyock
It's CathyFyockcom. That's it. C A T H Y F Y O C K

James Taylor
Cathy's a pleasure speaking to you. As always, I love when we get a chance to meet up and, and chat as well. Thanks so much for coming on today. And I wish you all the best with your next book, as well.

Cathy Fyock
Thank you so much.

James Taylor
If you're interested in living a more creative life, then I'd love to invite you to join me as I share some of the most successful strategies and techniques that high performing creatives use. I put them all together in a free downloadable ebook that you can get by going to jamestaylor.me. That's jamestaylor.me. To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity.

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