Badass Is The New Black (Season 6) Episode #22 - How to Start Writing Your Book: Insights from Bestselling Ghostwriter Amelia Forczak

In this week's episode, Krissy Chin welcomes New York Times bestselling ghostwriter Amelia Forczak to explore the world of how to write a book and authorship. With a focus on empowering listeners to embrace their aspirations of becoming authors, Krissy and Amelia delve into the journey from idea to publication, debunking myths and addressing common fears along the way. From overcoming imposter syndrome to discovering the courage to say "yes" to writing a book, they offer invaluable insights and practical tips for aspiring authors. Everyone has a book in them, and this conversation provides the inspiration and guidance needed to take the first steps towards authorship.

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How to Start Writing Your Book: Insights from Bestselling Ghostwriter Amelia Forczak

Let's welcome Amelia Forczak to the podcast. She's a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter and the founder of Pithy Wordsmithery. She is passionate about helping leaders and entrepreneurs build their thought leadership and grow their business.

Amelia has ghostwritten 15 nonfiction books, including nine bestsellers. She has served as a content strategist or editor for many other successful books and bestsellers, including mine. Welcome Amelia to the podcast. I'm so excited that you're here. 

Thanks so much for having me. 

And y'all a little sneak peek here… Amelia's gonna be our June expert for our Access the Experts series, where we bring in an expert each month to dive deep into a training and a topic that you would normally have to pay for and they teach our community for free. Well, it's free for you anyway. Amelia will be teaching how to get started with writing a book. There is in fact a right and a wrong way to do it, trust me I know. I've made the mistakes, so I am very excited to bring her in to dive deeper on this topic on June 12th, 1:00 PM Eastern Time. The link will be below this video and in the show notes, but today I wanna dive into talking about books and the impact that they have on your life and your business and help answer some maybe misconceptions that people have about writing.

So let's dive right in. And Amelia, I wanna know first, what inspired you to become a ghost writer? 

It's funny, I wanted to write books ever since I was a kid. My mom was a librarian and I just grew up around a lot of books. I went to school for journalism and thought about going into newspapers, you know, reporting.

All newspapers were closing when I was graduating college so it just seemed kind of like a bad field to go into. So I decided to go into marketing and so much of marketing is content that it was a really good fit for me. And my CEO ended up getting a book deal and he was like, okay, yeah, this would be great for marketing. I wanna do it, but who's gonna write the book? So I volunteered to write the book and it ended up becoming a New York Times bestseller and I realized like, okay, this is what I wanna do. And so I started my business on the side. I was like 27 at the time and I just went from there. And so I did it once and I realized that it was possible and then I just kept doing it.

I don't know, I'm crazy. I just, I love it. So yeah, it's been a good journey. 

That is such an incredible story. What I love is that he like got this deal then I was like, all right, team, like who's gonna write the book? And you just had the courage to say yes.

Like you had never done it before. You didn't go to school for writing, you know, you were in marketing. And so it's like most people would have just ran as far as they could from that, like put their head down, right? Like don't look at the teacher, they might pick me, right. Kind of thing. 

Yeah.

But you were like, okay, I'll do that. Like, so much courage. 

Yeah. Well it's funny 'cause I had the journalism degree, which is short form content. 

Yes, yes. Okay. 

They train you to fit your content into a certain number of lines. So you are trained then on like having it be very brief and then a book is the opposite. It's like a ton of articles put together. And it's funny because that actually sort of is like how I built the book because I'd been working in marketing there for several years and I'd written a ton of case studies, blog posts, e-blasts, client documents. And so when we started putting the book together, I realized I'd already written like over half the content and I just needed to see if it fit into the outline in a way that made sense.

And by the time I did that, I had written over half the book. So a lot of people don't realize that when they say, oh, I wanna write a book. They think they're starting from scratch. They're actually not. 

Yes, I remember working with you writing mine and that was definitely a tip in going through it is like, take all of the content that you've written and like put it in a document and see how much you have and that was definitely helpful. 

You know, we have some faithful listeners here on the podcast, some that listen to every single episode, love y'all out there. But they might not be interested in writing a book or at least at this point they're just listening to the episode 'cause they listen every week. So what are some reasons why someone, who hasn't before considered it, might want to consider writing a book?

Yeah, so I heard the stat that 81% of people think they have a book in them. And so most of us have thought about, oh, maybe I should write about my life, or maybe I should write about what I know how to do teaching people about my expertise. And it's always like possibility. But it seems scary and it seems like a lot of work, right? So the thing that holds people back the most is like just being afraid of the project, you know? But I think if people realize that it's not as hard as they think it is, it can open up a lot of doors and be something that seems more exciting than something that feels like it's not really accessible.

Yeah, I mean it was definitely a reason that I wrote a book. I wanted to write it for my business. I wanted something more accessible for my community to be able to get teachings from me. I wanted to be able to say that I was an author. I think before working with you and writing Sell While You Sleep, which I think it's behind me. Oh no, it's over here. If you're watching on YouTube, there it is on my shelf right there. But I think I had like seven different book topics, you know, like maybe I could write a book on this. And it was like whatever I was exploring at the time, I was like, maybe I could write a book on that kind of thing.

And it took time to like come up with it. But I had spoken on stage twice and I was like, maybe I wanna do more of that. And so like, I know being an author is great for that. It's great for being able to increase your rates for your business, get exposure, maybe get on TV or in the media.

So I just wanted to leverage it as, you know, this piece that could position me, you know, higher in this space that I'm in as a thought leader. So for me it was very strategic for the business aspect of it. But I know that you work with people who maybe aren't necessarily writing to boost their business. So tell me a little bit about that.

If someone's like, I don't know, I don't know if I wanna write like for my business per se, but maybe I just wanna like tell my story, tell me more about that. 

Yeah, there are a lot of people who've thought about writing a memoir if they've had really interesting life experiences or just wanna get their thoughts out on paper, because it's therapeutic to write. I work with a lot of people like that too. And I started writing in a journal when I was in middle school and I kept that up for years and years and I'm so glad that I did because it helped me remember a lot of things in my life that I just wouldn't have, you know, captured along the way.

And so I think writing has a lot of value for different reasons, just in terms of being able to share things with your family. A lot of times it's like a legacy piece where, you know, kids, grandkids someday want to know about their family and their lives and what they went through. So legacy is super important. 

And then again, just like it helps you process emotions snd so if you're going through something tough, I think one of the best things you can do is take time to write down your feelings and get it out on paper. And a lot of people also don't realize, like if they're thinking about writing a memoir someday, going back and reliving all these things and writing it down is more difficult than doing it in the moment. And so if you're going through something where you're like, oh, this is a lot, the best thing you can do is write it down right now so that if you ever wanna have a book later, you're thinking about it later, it is so much easier. Right. You're like leaving yourself a trail of breadcrumbs even if the writing's not that good.

Like if you can get there and capture it and get it on paper, you're doing yourself a huge favor. So I always say just like everybody should be writing. 

Yes. Oh, I have not been, I think I had a diary like back in the day, and I've talked about this recently and shared it with friends that like, I think I stopped keeping a diary 'cause I was just scared that other people were gonna read it kind of thing.

So I have like, you know, a diary, to me a diary was like your deepest darkest secrets, right? But then I'm learning more about journaling and using, you know, just free writing to help, like you said, move through emotions and all of that. And I'm actually kind of loving it. 

And, and when you mentioned like a legacy piece to be able to share stories, like my dad has already passed, He was young, I'm young. My kids are so young and I don't even remember all of these stories. Like I have to like kind of go to my mom at this point and I'm like, you know, tell me more about, you know, when he had his soap business or you know, any of that. Or like, I don't know a ton from his childhood. And so it would've been so nice, like if he had written a piece or written a book to like, share some of those stories and just like what he went through. So, you know, I don't know, I I love that. I didn't really think about writing a book just for your family, which could be really good. And then like you said, therapeutic at the same time. 

Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, Krissy. I know that's like I wish I had stories from my grandparents too, honestly. I remember my grandparents being gifted like the tell me a story, like the paper, like analog where they jot down a couple things and my grandma filled out a couple short stories. Now with computers, it's so much easier. You can type so much faster and so it feels like less of a chore to record things for your family. And then the whole privacy thing too, I'm the same way. I think I was always worried that someone was gonna read my journal.

Now I do everything in the Notes app for my phone and I password protect it. And so I don't have that fear anymore. And honestly it's been so freeing because I'm like, if I want someone to read it later they will, but for now it's just for me and I know that no one can get into it. 

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I do everything in my notes app as well. I think if I opened it up, I think it's up to like 3,700 individual notes. Y'all like, it's insane. I always think about like that moment, God forbid, hopefully it's not anytime soon that when I pass and someone like unlocks it, they're gonna be like, whoa, there's a lot in here. Like, I keep track of my dreams now, so like my dreams have a folder in there. So I love just that idea of like, just using something that's accessible, right? Instead of like, oh, having to carry around this pen in this paper. Like you might have used to, had to do that in the past it definitely makes it more accessible to be keeping track of your stories that you may be wanting to put in your book. So I love that tip. I am actually, I'm not a strong reader. I tend to listen to books now just because I'm always doing stuff. So that's how I consume my books. But I also have never felt like I was a strong writer. And so I think that was definitely a fear that I had in writing my book was like, I'm not a writer, how am I gonna write a book? And that was definitely something that you helped me overcome. And instead of actually writing, I voice messaged almost my entire book. And a lot of times when I was driving alone up to the lake, I would, you know, get inspired and I would just be talking into my notes app and having to clean that up later. But that worked well for me. So that's kind of what I love is that there's a lot of different options for getting the words down on paper now. What are some of the other tips that you recommend or like these kind of fears that people have where you've, you know, got ways to overcome that? 

Yeah, I love the talking tip. So I've worked with quite a few authors that have done that because Krissy, you're a great communicator, right? You have all these videos, talking it out is so easy. And so for people who have that as a strength, the talk to text is so simple and it's also so fast.

I started doing that too. And you can get so many words out, like faster than writing it. And sometimes it also helps because you're not judging the words on the paper. I think that happens when you're writing, a lot of times, you write, you look at the sentence and you're like, nah. You go back and you try to edit it and it can take a lot longer because you're constantly kind of like judging yourself and going back. And sometimes it's easier to just get a draft out even if it's not that good, right? Because editing something is easier than having nothing on the page. 

Yes. 

So I think getting content out without like censoring yourself is helpful. I've seen some people, like, this is kind of a weird trick, but you can change the font color and the background color of your page to be the same so that as you're typing, you can't go back and edit yourself. It's like a way to just trick yourself and then you change it later. But I think the key is to just, just go for it, right? Like get the content out, because I think a lot of times it does end up being better than you think it is. 

Yeah, definitely. And what about like, just as you were talking about that, like unique things that just popped into my head of different kinds of books, you know, like I always, like, when I think of a book, I think like, oh, it has to be like this really thick book about this intense topic. Or it's like a, you know, we're talking about nonfiction here, right? Like, or it's a fiction and it's a story and all of that, but there's so many different types of books, like what constitutes a book in the book world to be able to say, like, I wrote a book, like a friend of mine wrote a book and then I was like, oh my gosh, I wanna order it. And it's this book, it's actually a really thick book and like a standard book size, but it's just this book of poetry that she's written and it's like very beautiful. And it like actually goes through this like kind of dark essence in the beginning of like a time in her life and then it moves through to like this lighter, more happy time and it's just these pages of poetry that she would write to like release. And then she published it in a book. So I just think like, it's so different than what I did, but like it's still a book. And she's, she's still an author, so like what are, you know, just some different, different types of books that people can be writing.

Yeah. So that's interesting. What, like, basically how long does it have to be to be a book? I tend to think that it just needs to have a spine. So if it has a spine and there, you know, there are words on the spine that feels like a book. If it has like the staples on the end, that feels like a little shorter to me. It feels like something else. And there are books like that too. But generally if you're doing a book for, you know, for adults, having a spine there is kind of what you're going for. And so that's like a hundred pages and there are a ton of ways that you can spread content out to get to a hundred pages.

You know, I've worked with an author for an entrepreneurship book where he had 17,000 words and that was, I think it ended up being like 130 pages, but he had a bunch of images, you know, so he had a, a drawing at the beginning of every chapter and he also had key takeaways that were on their own page and it spread it out a lot and it was a good read.

I don't think people are looking to read something super hefty, you know, like a lot of people say like, I wanna be able to read it on a flight. And so shorter books are great and it's, I think it's better to not like feel the pressure that you need to write something long and you let the content be the length that you want it to be. And then from there in layout we can make it seem longer or shorter, you know, do any of the things to make it be more of what you feel like you want. 

Yes, I agree with shorter books are better, but I think that was a fear that I had, like how am I gonna come up with that much content to be like a thick book?

And yeah. But then there's these other, and I think about like the books that I love and most, a lot of them are business or self-help books that I'm mostly reading now, but it is like, some of the ones with like basically barely a spine, you know, it's like that short book that I can like, and the the font was big, like probably to get it there, right? But it was like such an easy read and so consumable and I talk about it all the time, or I recommend it all the time. Like it doesn't have to be, you know, like a 300 or 400 page book to be a book and be impactful, right? Like, I think that's really all what we're going for, like impactful, whether it's making an impact on your business and the person that's gonna read it to, to support them and support your business or for your family to get those stories that you're trying to capture or, you know, whatever it is. Like it doesn't have to be massive to be able to do that.

Yeah. It definitely doesn't, books are trending shorter.

I just saw stats come out on that where in the past like 10 or 12 years, I'm trying to think, it's gone down to, I wanna say like 230 pages or two 40 or something, or it, it's gone down I think like 30 or 40 pages on average in the past, I don't know, a decade. That's not an exact quote, but it was like a downward trend for sure. And I think people are, you know, there's more distractions. People are busier, they wanna have shorter books. So, I think yeah, going for something shorter is easier, more manageable. And just to give context on that, so I do like a, it's called the Authors Club and we have a live writing session for two hours every other week.

One of the members in the club did the talk to text for two hours, and in that time she spoke 10,000 words. 

Wow. 

So as I just mentioned that one book that I did on entrepreneurship was 17,000 words. And so that's really not that long. So if you're able to get that content out and talk, like it's very manageable. 

Oh my God, I love that. Yeah, when we were talking, so if you're new to the book space, you basically talk about books length in words, right? 

Yeah.

Instead of pages. So it was always, when we were first talking, you were like, Krissy, I want your book to be like 30,000 words. And so I'm thinking, oh my gosh, that sounds like so much. Well, she would've had written a third of the book, you know, in, in two hours time. I think my book ended up being like 45,000 about that for the words and to give, like, again, then it's based on like the font size and then the pictures and images. But my book's about like just over 200 pages with like a normal size font and not too many pictures in there.

But I wish that now that I know books and like the length, like in words and like what it took and kind of that I wish every book, like I could open it up and it could say how many words it is because now I'm like, okay, it's, you know, 400 pages, but how many words, like maybe your font is big or you know, whatever. How many words? 

I wonder that, I wonder that all the time. That's totally my thought. When I get a book, I'm like, how many words is it? Because some, some are longer, like memoirs tend to be longer, fiction's longer, but the business books and stuff are on the shorter end. 

Yeah. So maybe we can make that a thing.

Yeah, that'd be great. 

With all of the information in the very beginning about like the publishing and all that, we could be like word count, like what's your word count? Only the deep authors will y'all, when you start writing your book, trust me, you'll be wanting to know how many words. 

I love this, I love this conversation just kind of around like just for the audience to start thinking like a book should be in your future, whether you've thought about it in the past or this episode is the first time you're thinking about a book, and I think Amelia, you'd probably agree that like everyone should write a book and then it's a matter of determining what is your book going to be about. 

And so that's what I'm excited to dive into also in the Access the Experts training is to help people also come up with their book topic. Because like I said, like I had probably, I started writing seven different books, right? Testing it all out. And then you had this process of like helping me figure out like what should the book really be about? And it was incredibly helpful and really like focused. And so instead of like having all of these ideas, it was like, okay, yes, that makes sense. This is what the topic should be. And that was really what kickstarted to like, okay, I've got a topic now I can move forward and start writing. And until that point it was just sort of like, yeah, I wanna be an author, like someday maybe, we'll see, kind of thing. But like once I had that topic, I was like, all right, let's do this thing. 

So I'm excited to dive into that in the Access the Experts and then you're gonna be talking more about the right way to getting started writing a book and how to avoid the common mistakes that all new authors make. And it costs them a lot of time and money and frustration and headaches and all other things. So I'm really excited for you to come dive in more. Again, that's June 12th at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. 

And you mentioned the Authors Club here, and we will talk more about that because that's definitely one thing that I found I really needed was support. And I'm glad that, you know, I hired you and your team to support me in the process. Amelia didn't ghostwrite my book, I did write it, but her and her team supported me and I really needed that support and that accountability. And I mean, it's like in stupid affordable y'all. So like if you're even thinking about writing a book, like it is a no brainer. We will talk more about the Authors Club and the Access the Experts once we do this deep dive training. 

Amelia, thank you so much for being here. Is there any other little nugget of wisdom that you wanna give our listeners from now until the time I think it'll be a couple weeks until they get more from you on June 12th in the Access the Experts training.

Get instant, lifetime access to our Access the Experts training with Amelia Forcazk.

Yeah, I think that people always struggle with imposter syndrome when it comes to writing a book. Like everyone, whether they're CEOs or they just, you know, the most successful people when I talk with them about writing a book, they always wonder if they can do it. And so if you're feeling like that, that is how everyone feels. Just so you know. And I think it's just a matter of getting past it. So…

Yes, a hundred percent. And I can vouch for that feeling of like, can I write a book? Like am I smart enough to write a book? Am I good enough to write a book? Like, will anyone read the book? Like 

Yes they will. Yes, you are. Everyone listening… Yes.

Yes, yes and yes. So I love that. Whether you're, you know, feeling confident or not about writing a book, please use the link below this video or in the show notes, sign up for the Access the Experts training. It is free to come live. So we will be there in the flesh. And Amelia's just gonna dive even deeper.

Amelia, thank you so much for coming here. Share with the audience where they can connect with you more in the interim of getting more from you. 

Yeah, so you can find me @pithywordsmithery.com and we're on all the social platforms too. So Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, we have a bunch of resources there and I'm super excited for the training. Thank you for having me, Krissy. 

Yes, this has been incredible. Y'all please connect with Amelia, reach out to her and if you listen to this episode or if you have a question about book writing or anything like that and you're watching on YouTube, please put that in the comments. We would love to address those questions in the Access the Experts training. So this is like your way of getting some coaching from Amelia.

So put those questions in the comments below, or you can always email them to me or DM them to us and we will save them for the Access the Experts training. 

Amelia, thank you for being here. Everyone, thank you for listening. Don't forget to follow the podcast or subscribe to the YouTube channel and we'll see you next week. 

Until then, go take some imperfect action.

Get instant, lifetime access to our Access the Experts training with Amelia Forcazk HERE.

Important Links:

• Amelia Forczak
• Pithy Wordsmithery
• Access the Experts
• 10 Simple Steps to Start Writing Your Book 
• Author's Club
• https://www.instagram.com/pithy_wordsmithery/
•  https://www.facebook.com/pithywordsmithery
•  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameliaforczak/

About Amelia Forczak

Amelia Forczak is a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter and the Founder of Pithy Wordsmithery. She is passionate about helping leaders and entrepreneurs build their thought leadership and grow their businesses. Amelia has ghostwritten 15 nonfiction books, including nine bestsellers. She has served as a content strategist or editor for many other successful books and bestsellers.