Latest / The Daily Writer / Life is a Process of Revision | DWC Member Spotlight: Jennifer Harshman

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Life is a Process of Revision | DWC Member Spotlight: Jennifer Harshman · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: For more resources, including your free Daily Writer Starter Kit, visit DailyWriterLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: For newer writers, one of the most surprising elements of the writing craft is how much editing and revision it takes to produce excellent work.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, until you get into writing as a serious hobby or career, it might seem like writing should just come out clean and ready to publish.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's how a lot of people think of writing, and therefore they get frustrated when they sit down and produce a first draft of something and it's not necessarily all that great.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: But experienced writers know that this isn't the case at all.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Effective writing doesn't happen by accident.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: First you create a rough draft, then you do a solid first draft, and then a second or third or a final draft, and these drafts can vary depending on the project, of course, and how complex they are and how many people are involved and how many drafts it takes and all that.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: As writers, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to revise and change our writing, but we rarely reflect on how our writing changes us.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: The author John Irving said, half my life is an act of revision.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now he was talking about the actual act of revising your writing, but I think there's a deeper truth here.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: The time that we spend in editing doesn't just revise our writing, it also revises us.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as we grow and develop our craft, we change, we grow, we become a new and hopefully better version of ourselves.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is scary and a little bit intimidating, but it's important to stay open to change.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: If we don't change, neither does our writing.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like a bottle of fine wine, we should become better and more nuanced the older that we get.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: So here's today's challenge.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Think about a change that you're going through right now.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: What would it feel like to be open to the possibilities it could bring you rather than just being frustrated about it?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Something to think about, for sure.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: A big thank you to today's sponsor, the new book, Monetize Your Book with a Course, your guide to quickly creating a profitable and impactful course from your book, written by my good friend Lucas Marino.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, most authors stop when they've written, published, and marketed their book, but there's one final step, which is creating a course to build an additional stream of income and help your reader engage at a deeper level.
• 2:33
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• 2:48
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• 2:57
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• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a copy of it myself.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fantastic book, so make sure to grab that.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, before we wrap up this episode, I want to bring you another mini interview with one of our Daily Rider Club members.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: You've probably seen me doing a few of these the last couple of weeks, and it's so much fun to introduce you to these amazing authors, editors, ghostwriters, uh, people doing all kinds of things around writing who are part of our amazing Daily Writer Club.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to introduce you to my good friend Jennifer Harshman, who describes herself as an upbeat overcomer.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And my goodness, I really love that description.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't we all be better in life if we could be upbeat overcomers who don't just overcome our challenges, but who remain upbeat and so positive in the process?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that really describes the kind of person that Jennifer is.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I think is interesting about Jennifer is that she taught herself to read and write when she was three years old, and she hasn't stopped consuming nearly 20,000 books, editing hundreds of books, and earning plenty of nicknames in the process.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Most recently, the nickname The Book Baker, which is kind of like her alter ego, and it's this really fun persona where she teaches people how to create a book and do it, doing it through the lens of baking.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, she released a book not too long ago called Your Book Bakery Making It Easy to Write a Book.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can find Jennifer at Harshmanservices.com and Your Bookbakery.com.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Jennifer is not only a gifted editor, she's also a wonderful author and a great interview guest as well.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: So excited to bring this to you.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my conversation with Jennifer Harshman.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Jennifer, welcome back to the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Good to have you back as always.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start out this way.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about what it is that you do and what kind of what kind of books you write and and what you do in the book world.
• 4:43
  unknown: Okay.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So recently I've been given the moniker of the book baker because I help people to write their nonfiction books.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I use the metaphor that writing a helpful nonfiction book is very similar to baking a cake.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can follow the recipe to bake a cake, then you can write a book.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I like making it fun and easy.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um I've I've done all sorts of things over the years, Kent.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've written all sorts of things.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, mostly I write nonfiction books that are helpful to people.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you work with a lot of writers, and you've done you've been in this world for a really long time, and you've probably seen just about every conceivable problem there is to have with books and the things that that can trip people up and problems they have and and reasons that people don't write their books.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, what advice could you give newer writers on some ways to get started and get their book done and take action?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, one thing that I would say is a lot of what you believe about writing a book is not true.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: We set up so many mental roadblocks and we think it's really complicated or it's going to take a really long time, and I have to take time off from work or my family, and I just can't do that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I have seen people write their book in two minutes per day.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So pick something simple, have a recipe to follow, and then carve out some time in your schedule for it.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it does not have to be huge, it can be small increments.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then as you get to where you're enjoying it, like, oh hey, that two minutes was really easy.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna make it five, and then do that for a week or so, and now I'm gonna make it 10.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And before you know it, you'll be really making progress.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: So let's extrapolate this out a little bit.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: How many words do you think somebody can realistically write in five minutes a day?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say you you sit down, you kind of get in the mode, you know, you're back in your story or whatever you're working on.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: What what kind of words per minute could people expect in five minutes?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, most people can type about 50 words per minute.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you're looking at a page a day.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: In just five minutes.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's crazy.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I I assume it would be even more if you just dictate it and you have your phone transcribe it.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: People can talk faster than they can type.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So let's assume if you could do 250 words a day, and if let's say if you didn't take any days off, um and a full-length book is let's let's just throw out 30,000 words, a shorter full-length book, I guess.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's 120 days to write a full-length book.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, basically 30 days in a month times four.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think my math is correct.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody's gonna write me back and be like, your math is all messed up, but isn't that crazy?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like literally in five minutes a day, you could write three books a year, really, if you wanted to.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's really crazy.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you do editing also.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we've worked together on lots of different things over the years.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what are some tips that you would give people for working with an editor?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, you've seen it all, you've encountered every type of book imaginable there is.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, are there maybe two or three tips that you would give people for how to make the best use out of that editor and author relationship?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love that question.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one thing that I would say is don't try to make your Microsoft Word document look like a book.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that a lot of people do.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um, some people will put it into kind of a template or whatever, which is fine.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but just be simple with it.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So set your headings using the ribbon and pick one font that's easy for you to read.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it's easy for you to read, it's probably going to be easy for your editor to read.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And know that later down the road in a process after this one will come all of the fancy things and making it look like a book and picking the fonts that you like.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for now, just be very simple and just write the words.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Man, that's really good advice.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's really really good advice.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's so easy to get hung up and and stuck and feel like you got to make everything perfect.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: But if you just sit down and just do it, it doesn't take that long.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not, it's not hard if you just sit down and you stop getting in your own way.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: In essence, which I've done many times.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think I think pretty much everybody does that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's kind of part of the game.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, where can people find find out more about your editing services and your books and the book baker and all the cool things that you're doing, Jennifer?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: They can find me at your bookbakery.com.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I am also on Facebook by my name, Jennifer Harshman.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I also have a page for the bookbaker and your book bakery.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a small TikTok channel.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you've been doing TikTok for a while, which I really admire.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like I did it for a while and I totally fell off the wagon.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just was like, I don't have time for this.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you've really stuck with it.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: How has it been making videos for TikTok?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Have you enjoyed that?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have enjoyed it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a lot of fun.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I do a couple of different things.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm doing the book bakery related things, I have a whisk and I wear my um baker's tote and white apron.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I have that kind of persona or character.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when I'm doing other things, I don't have that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So um I have a couple of different types of you know, buckets for content there.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love that persona.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of fun.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's really fun.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks so much, Jennifer.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you and your skills and your friendship.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so glad that you could take a few minutes out today to do this mini interview.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks again.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jennifer.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Again, you can check out her site at harshmanservices.com and also go to your bookbakery.com.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: As always, thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.