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Episode Transcript

Hey there and welcome to Nothing but the Words. I’m your author coach, Candice L Davis.

I hope your week and your writing are going well.

Years ago, when I was just starting my business, I went to a business retreat for women. Most of us had online businesses and while some of the women had been in business for a decade or more, most were newbies like me.

Back then, I was an avid notetaker at conferences. I felt like I needed to write it all down, which is a rookie mistake, but I was indeed a rookie.

One of the speakers was a life coach, who I later got to know and love, and her whole presentation revolved around one question: “What if it was easy?”

Her philosophy was that we often make things much harder than they have to be.

You want to start a new business, but it seems hard. What if it was easy?

You want to become a certified coach, but it seems like too much work and too much money. What if it was easy?

You want to write a book that will light up your readers and be absolutely transformational for your business, but you don’t know where to start. What if it was easy?

This question is meant to lead your brain to think about what going after your goal would be like if it wasn’t such a big challenge.

It’s a great question to ask because it opens your mind to all the tools and resources that actually could make it easy (or at least easier) to go after what you want and actually get it.

I appreciate that. And I use this question with my coaching clients on occasion.

The fact is that almost anything you want to achieve, someone else has found easy.

I guarantee you can find someone who will tell you running an ultramarathon was easy, raising a teenager was easy, and yes, writing their award-winning, best-selling, client-getting book was easy.

Writing your book can be easy when you define easy as any task that doesn’t present any difficulties you can’t overcome.

That kind of ease is available to you, especially when you have an experienced author coach on your team.

It’s my job to launch my clients over the obstacles that may stand in their way. I’ve done this so many times that I can guarantee there’s not a single obstacle I can’t help you get beyond if you’re willing to show up for your book. And even when that willingness is what’s lacking, I can help you with that too.

But if by easy, you mean you’re looking for an effortless process, you’ve come to the wrong place.

Writing a book isn’t for people who want effortlessness.

There really are times when you get in the flow of writing and it feels effortless. I can coach you to create more and more of those moments.

That effortless flow is available to you.

But writing a book does require effort. It requires exertion. It requires an output of your creative and analytical energies.

What I encourage you to do is to embrace that effort. Learn to love it.

I want to give you an image of what this looks like. This image was inspired by a quote from dancer and choreographer Maurya Kerr and by a coaching session I had with life coach Danielle Vaughn, who hosts the Dare Greatly podcast. Danielle used this metaphor when she coached me on one of my business goals, and it really changed the way I approach my work every day.

Imagine your book is a boulder.

And your job is to push that boulder to a higher plane.

Sometimes you’re pushing it up a steep incline. You have to dig deep and exercise muscles you rarely use.

The effort you put into moving your boulder feels like a lot.

And sometimes you reach plateaus where you can just coast across flat terrain and your boulder almost seems to be self-propelled, but it’s not—you’re still putting in effort to keep it moving.

Sometimes, you’re all by yourself, knees bent, shoulder leaning into it, edging that boulder up there.

And sometimes, you have help: your coach steps in to give you a hand, a supportive friend or partner cheers you on.

No matter how much help you have, that boulder is still yours to push up to that higher plane.

And no matter how few difficulties you encounter along the way, reaching the summit still requires effort.

Effort can seem scary, especially if you have hang-ups around work ethic, perfectionism, or perceived laziness.

But if you can learn to love your boulder, you can learn to love the effort it requires to get it to the top of that long climb.

Love the fact that you have the luxury of making time to write and the privilege of writing in a time and place where you can publish anything you want to say to the world in the form of a book.

Love the fact that, as you write your book, you will wrestle with your own beliefs and have the opportunity to question them, articulate them in a new way, or maybe even change them.

Love the fact that you’re committed to providing value to your readers and that you have the ability to do it—even if that means getting help.

Loving your book and the effort it takes to write it can transform your writing practice and the way it affects your thoughts and feelings.

You don’t have to dread sitting down at your laptop and opening that manuscript document.

Instead, you can approach the effort you’ll pour into writing a meaningful book with the kind of thoughts and feelings that keep you writing even when it gets hard.

That’s all for this episode, my friends.

If you need someone who can help you push that boulder uphill when the boulder feels too heavy and the incline too steep, book a complimentary consultation with me at CandiceLDavis.com/call. Let’s see if author coaching is the right fit for you.

Thanks for listening to Nothing but the Words. I’m Your Author Coach, Candice L Davis. And I’ll see you next time.

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