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 both going well.

So I just got back from another retreat, y’all.

This time it was a life-and-business-retreat, not a writer’s retreat, but it was so good.

If you’re sensing a theme here, yes, I do love retreats. So much so that I’m trying to figure out how to safely host one this year.

In this most recent retreat, we met at a beautiful, spacious beach house in St. Augustine, Florida.

We arrived on Friday. Some of us went out to dinner, and most of us stayed up way too late laughing and talking and drinking wine.

We all know each other from an online mastermind group, so it was great to connect face to face.

Then, on Saturday, our coach, Rachel Luna and her generous friend Shannan Munson, coached us all day long on whatever we wanted to bring up.

Rachel handled life, mindset, and business coaching, while Shannan focused on business strategy.

I know one day may not sound like a lot, but when I tell you there were so many breakthroughs that day.

After Rachel coached me, I came home and had an important but difficult conversation with my husband, which I’m 100% sure permanently leveled up our marriage.

If you don’t know Rachel and Shannan, I highly recommend you follow them on Instagram. Rachel is @irachelluna and Shannon is @shannanmunson. That’s Shannon with 2 As, no Os.

What made the coaching so powerful and resulted in so many breakthroughs for the seven or eight women in attendance was that Rachel and Shannan each coached from her superpower.

Rachel has an ability to deftly hone in on the issues behind the issues, peel back the layers just enough to get you moving, and know exactly when to stop. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking business or personal, but let’s face it: business is personal.

And Shannan can parse your least articulate vision for your business and help you figure out the next steps to make that vision a reality.

Here’s the thing. I’m sure they each have other superpowers. These are just their coaching superpowers.

And by the same token, while I’m sure you have other superpowers, I’m equally sure you have a writing superpower too.

You just have to identify it.

If you don’t consider yourself a writer, stay with me and let me explain.

Writing is more than putting words on the page.

Your writing superpower could be storytelling.

If you’re the kind of person who’s constantly telling stories that make people want to hear more, then this is likely you.

If people have heard your story and told you that you should write a book, or your storytelling posts on social media get tons of engagement, or you find yourself telling a story when you could really have just explained the facts, storytelling is probably your superpower.

A lot of speakers fall into this category.

If you’re a lover of words and you consider every comma placement when you’re writing, then language is probably your superpower.

You’re willing to revise over and over until you get the wording just right—sometimes to your own detriment.

This superpower means readers will underline sentences in your book just because they love how they sound.

If you spend what you know is too much time writing and revising emails or social media posts, language may be your jam.

The third superpower you might have is process. That could be anything from the way you plan and structure your book to the way you teach your principles or create systems where there are none.

That superpower makes you ideally suited to write books that teach people things, but you can really apply this superpower, and all of them actually, to any kind of book you choose to write.

Your writing superpower might be your voice.

Some of the most successful books in recent years have been written by authors who weren’t the world’s greatest writers, but they had a unique way of saying things, and readers loved it.

And the last writing superpower on this list that you might have is a combination of resilience and perseverance and coachability.

I’ve coached clients who didn’t recognize any of the others writing superpowers in themselves.

They didn’t think they were great storytellers.

As far as they were concerned, their facility with language was unimpressive.

And as for process, they struggled to create a coherent outline for their book.

The processes they wanted to teach only made sense to them, and they had to figure out how to clarify them and explain them in writing.

But with resilience and perseverance and coachability, they were unstoppable, and they wrote great books—some of them even bestselling.

Really think about which superpower you want to claim.

The secret is to know you don’t have to be born with it. You can develop any writing superpower you want to have.

Some will take more effort than others, depending on your experience, but they’re all available to you.

Most important of all, that unstoppable combination of resilience and perseverance and coachability is available to you right now. Today.

Make a decision that you will take whatever knocks come while you write your book and keep getting up. You will recover and come back stronger.

Make a decision that you will not get distracted or give up. Instead, choose to persevere.

And make a decision to remain coachable throughout the writing and publishing processes.

It doesn’t matter if you choose to self-publish or you’ve got a deal with a traditional publisher.

Your best book will be produced when you seek professional feedback, weigh it based on your own standards and goals, and judiciously apply the criticism that can make your writing even better.

It’s all available to you. Find your superpower. And write your book.

That’s all for this week’s episode, my friend.

For more writing tips and inspiration, follow me on Instagram @candiceldavis.

Thanks for listening to Nothing but the Words, I’m your author coach Candice L Davis, and I’ll see you next time.