Sometimes you feel more than you want to feel.
You hear a voice that sends a pulsing sensation through your body, into all the right places and all the wrong places.
Right because it responds to the call of desire, and wrong because you know it is pointless having these feelings because they will not be recipricated.
Sometimes you feel on top of the world and everything is going in the direction you want to go in, and then sometimes you’re feeling as though you are a train wreck just waiting for impact.
Sometimes you want to be alone, and yet at the same time you want people around, but not too close, just close enough.
Sometimes you are standing in the wings of the stage you are about to walk onto and your excitement turns to absolute fear and dread, when just moments before you were more excited than child tanked up on sugar.
Sometimes you want to run from your feelings, but you know deep down inside of you that if you do not face these feelings they will return time and time again.
Many times during a call with a client I have seen the rollercoaster journey they are on with regards to the publication of their book and the words they have written. They are excited but in equal measure they are afraid.
What if no one reads the book?
What if someone spots a spelling mistake or a grammar mistake?
What if those who read it don’t like it?
What if my friends and family stop speaking with me?
What if it damages my business or my career?
All these ‘what ifs’ we get to play with, explore and call them out into the open.
So what if others don’t like what we have written!
Being true to ourselves instead of people pleasing and shutting ourselves down, playing small and hiding who we truly are is not going to help anyone, especially not us.
We were born to notice things and respond to them in a certain way.
We were all born to experience different aspects of the world we live in so we could share our thoughts, emotions and ideas with the world, whether that is the world of our community on a local scale, or even on a grand global scale.
Our journeys are not just lessons for us, but for those around us. We have been gifted these experiences and emotions to lean into, to make sense of, and even if we cannot make sense of them by ourselves, there is always someone who is more experienced than us who will be willing to help us.
When I first started out as an author, having been a writer for a variety of business magazines and newspapers, food magazines as a food critic, and as a copywriter for websites and promotional material, I ended up with a publishing company who I would not wish upon anyone.
It was a lonely experience, and once they had my book on their library they were not interested in promoting my book, or helping me in any way shape or form. They saw me as a cash cow and anytime I enquired about my book, the response would come with a request for money just to answer my question.
Trying to get my book back from them took over three years, and once I got my book back from them and started promoting it myself outside of the stringent conditions laid out in the contracts with the previous company, I made more money in one week than I had made in a whole year with the publishing company.
Through trial and error, training course after training course, business coach after business coach through the years, I learnt how to run a successful business. I learnt about step changes, brand expansion, leadership, marketing and I brought all of that expertise and experience into the promotion and selling of my books.
And then I started learning from 7 figure authors, learning their strategies, learning how to market to a mass market audience, and then tailoring it for my own audience and genre.
Now the thing is most author coaches, self publishing courses out there are for fiction, self help and business books. All have their value and some of them I would highly recommend.
But when you are the author of books on human rights, social justice, trauma and abuse, the rules of engagement change; and not just a little bit either. The foundations are of course the same, as is true for any kind of business.
Sales is sales is sales. Marketing is marketing is marketing.
But the fundamental difference when writing books about rape, domestic violence and political corruption is that many of your readers will not be leaving public reviews because they are genuinely afraid of someone finding out they have read a book on the specific topic.
Then there is the aspect of people not wanting to read a real life story of rape and domestic abuse, preferring to read a thriller of bodies being chopped up and left in a parking lot for Jack Reacher to find on one of his many nomadic walks around the US.
Many people don’t pick up a book to learn about the true life crimes, or a motivational memoir because they are too caught up in living their own painful existence of pain so picking up the vampire love story is the perfect escape for them.
Sometimes it gets frustrating and you wonder why it is worth writing books on the issues that matter, but how can you not? How can you not speak your truth, or write the book that is going to birth itself through you one way or another?
To not write the book is not really an option, because if you don’t write it, it will take over your thoughts, distracting you on a daily basis and driving you nuts in the process.
I get it. 16 books in, I get it more than most, and ten years into the life of being an author, I have learnt many lessons on how to promote and sell my books.
Combine this knowledge with 23 years of entrepreneurship and coaching leaders and top executives, whilst working in cultural diversity, community cohesion and regional regeneration and you can guarantee the coaching my clients will get a top class coach who is willing to take them to the depths of those ‘sometimes emotions’.
Those sometimes emotions are their to guide us, like the compass and night sky at sea has guided me and many a sailor for centuries.
Standing in the mirror to face those emotions, to ask ourselves the difficult questions, and to stop avoiding them is the power of being an author of books in the realm of human rights, social justice and corruption.
So if you are someone who knows they have to share the knowledge you have learnt, the experiences you have lived through and shine a light on issues of a corrupt nature, then send me a message and let’s see how I can support you on your author journey.
It may be 1:1 coaching with a tailored programme over 6, 9 or 12 months. It may be a distance learning course with a few sessions with me personally, or a group coaching call.
It may just be you reading my books and finding inspiration and coaching from those.
Whatever you are looking for, just know that my team and I are here to help you on your journey, and if we do not currently have something available to you, we’ll see if someone in our network can help you.
You are not alone on this author journey, so reach out.
And remember, those sometimes moments can be the most empowering moments of your life.
With love, as always,
Dawn