Naima B. Robert – Advice for Muslim Writers about Writers Block!
AI: Summary ©
A book coach is offering a series of coaching tips to their premium clients. They encourage them to reframe and ask themselves if they have writer's block, to ask themselves if they have it, and to talk it out. The coaching process involves going back to brainstorming, writing, and discussing the topic of the book.
AI: Summary ©
I'm trying sis. I am trying to write
my book but the words just aren't coming.
Sound familiar?
Sounds like the dreaded writer's block if you
ask me and it's something that I've heard
so many times since I started coaching writers
all over the world. So what is writer's
block and what can you do about it?
Well, my name is Naima B Robert and
I'm an award winning author of almost 30
books for children, teens and adults. And I
happen to be a book coach and I'm
on a mission to help create 2 122
Muslim authors by the end of the year.
So in this series,
I'm offering you some of the coaching
that I offer
my premium clients.
So let's have a chat about writer's block.
Everyone's heard about it. Many of you who
may have experienced it before. And when it
comes to working on a book,
you know, that feeling of just feeling
like there's a blockage
is very, very real. So when I have
a weekly coaching call with my clients and
one of them says, you know, I feel
like I'm blocked. Just the words are not
coming. I don't know what to do about
it.
I always invite them to reframe because writer's
block is something that everybody accepts as a
reality. Right? I personally
on the side of challenging that notion
because Seth Godin was the one I believe
who said, you know, everybody's going on about
writer's block, but have you ever had speaker's
block?
Most of us don't feel so comfortable saying
that we've had speaker's block because we all
pretty much have thoughts. We have ideas. We
have opinions. We have something to say.
When it comes to writer's block for some
reason,
we get stuck. So what I say to
my clients is firstly,
reframe.
Ask
yourself, do I have writer's block? If I
was speaking, if I was sharing this story
verbally, would I not know what to say?
The answer is usually
no. I would know exactly what I want
to say. That's why I'm writing the book.
So what I say to them is okay,
talk it out. After you've done the reframe,
you've kind of asked yourself that challenging question.
Say, is this really writer's block or is
there just a resistance coming from somewhere?
Reframe that, ask yourself, you know, if this
was a speaking, would I know what I
wanted to say? The answer is yes. Talk
it out. In our program, we share certain
tips with our clients on how they can
use talk to text, where they can speak
the words into their phone and it will
type it for them, but talk it out.
Don't stop when you think you have writer's
block.
Move to audio,
record your voice saying whatever it is that
you want to say, Alright? And make up
your word count that way. That's one of
the tricks that we use in our program.
It's helped many of our authors get to
where they want to get to when it
comes to their word count. Right? So talk
it out. And also
remember that a lot of the time losing
track of what is it you were
saying can be
a hint that your planning
is perhaps not detailed enough.
We get all our clients to plan their
books right at the start to do the
heavy lifting
before they start writing.
But if your chapter headings are very vague
and you haven't broken down each chapter into
subheadings and included the topics that you're going
to cover in each chapter
In your planning stage, you may find that
basically you just don't have enough planning for
that chapter. You haven't done enough brainstorming.
You haven't done enough of the heavy lifting
to get to that chapter and be super
clear on what exactly you want to say
in this chapter.
So that is another thing that you could
do. If you know what you want to
say, talk it out. If you really genuinely
are at a loss as to what am
I supposed to be saying here, doing here,
you need to go back to the brainstorming
stage. You need to give yourself a fresh
sheet of paper, you know, a fresh whiteboard
and literally do a brain dump and get
all your ideas on this particular topic. Just
dump them out. Okay. Have a look at
what you've got and start grouping it into
compartments. That make sense.
Put that into a list and then go
back to your writing and start to write
the things on the list. Make the points
on the list, share the experiences on the
list, tell the stories on the list and
take them off as you go along. That's
the process that works for my clients but
tell me what you think. Let me know
in the comments
what was useful for you and if you
would like to be one those 222 Muslim
authors that we celebrate at the end of
the year,
simply comment apply on this video and we'll
send you information on how you can work
with us. I hope that was useful
and I will see you on the next
one. And don't forget your book is your
legacy.
So let's get it right.