My Lesson? 

1. FIND A MODEL

 Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. There are books and dissertations, extant or existing literature that can serve as a model for you to reach your goals. Do you like the layout of a certain book and the way it flows? Great! Use that same model. Not their content, but their strategy for relaying their content.

2. GET A PLAN, CREATE DEADLINES, AND STICK TO THEM🗺️📄📌

Now that the pilot study was completed and approved, I needed to figure out a plan for moving forward. I had to map out milestones for the next five months during the last half of pregnancy and giving birth. I submitted my IRB (Internal Review Board) proposal and waited on approval. Doctoral students aren’t allowed to contact participants until they are approved, but that doesn’t stop anyone from doing background research, collecting emails, and googling phone numbers. I also started gathering research during this time for the literature review, which is one of the first sections or chapters that have to be written early on. 

3. Reading is inevitably a part of writing so that’s what I did. I read everything I could get my hands on.📚🤓

I wrote my literature review and methods chapters so I could submit them and get feedback on them to my dissertation chair and committee once approved. Based on the literature review, I wrote my interview questions for the semi-structured interviews I would conduct. This way, as soon as I got IRB approval to begin research with human subjects, I could submit drafts of those chapters to my dissertation chair and committee for review while I got busy interviewing, transcribing, and analyzing my results.

After approval, I conducted research within weeks and started writing enough chapters that would garner me a month-long break while I gave birth, bonded with the baby, and healed from delivery. In the meantime, my committee had enough material to keep them busy during that time.

Once that month was over, I was back on track, writing.

1. CHOOSE A SOLID TEAM OF ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNERS AND READERS👩🏽‍👯

Speaking of dissertation committee members, many doctoral students feel a bit helpless when it comes to choosing dissertation committee members. Most programs require three people and one of them usually includes a chairperson that the department chooses for the student. Based on my research interest, the department chose my chair and I got to pick the other two participants. 

They had plenty of suggestions for who the other two could be, but I wanted to do my due diligence. I found out that students could choose two committee members who didn’t work at the university. Woooorrrd? I chose two “sistas'' from other universities to sit on my committee. One of them was a former professor whom I deeply admired. I knew she would “get” my work. The other was a scholar who had lots of writing experience and knowledge in the subject matter. They both said yes and I believe to this day that assembling my dream team made all the difference in completing the research and writing. 

During our process throughout the year, we would have regular meetings and the roles of these women varied but each one played a major part in completing the dissertation. The chair kept us on task and on a topic most of the time. My former professor would call me randomly to keep me on my toes. At the time, her pop-up phone calls would often jar my nerves, but now looking back I have so much gratitude for her “all up in your kool-aid” approach”. Those impromptu check-ins challenged my thinking and my writing.

The other committee member ended up losing her sister and adopting her nephew at the time, so her input wasn’t as consistent as the professor’s, but what I learned from choosing a solid team is that they will never drop you from their sights and they are people who are committed to seeing you through to the finish line. She was one of those people. All these years later, I still marvel at her dedication to seeing me through all that she was enduring; she never quit and to this day she is still one of my biggest supporters. 

Accountability partners and readers can come in different forms. One form can be a group of beta readers that you recruit to voluntarily read your work and provide feedback. Another could be an accountability partner(s), such as a writing buddy with whom you check in once a month and report on what writing you’ve completed during that time. From my doctoral experience, all these years later, I still have an accountability partner in my fellow colleague and writer, Suzanne Cope. She and I were the only two women in our cohort to graduate “on time” and we vowed way back when to continue to be each other’s accountability partners. Every month, we still report on what writing we’ve accomplished and we cheer each other on.

Writing groups are another way to accomplish this✍🏾. You can find free writing groups that host write-ins like my monthly Coffee & Composition writing group or other paid writing groups that offer a little more support with greater frequency and feedback.

Writing coaches are also great for accountability and one-on-one attention 

Writing coaches gently nudge their client writers to complete weekly or monthly tasks, and give “homework” and feedback on writing.

2. SCHEDULE YOUR WRITING AND COMMIT TO WRITING FOR 15 MINUTES⏰🗓️📆

Working full-time, doing research, and preparing for a new addition to my family equaled a full plate. My cup was running over. I needed time to write and I needed a plan for how I was going to write consistently and continuously even when the baby was born. 

I’m a morning person so the best times for me were first thing in the morning. I scheduled 15-minute blocks of time. Notice I said scheduled. I literally made appointments with myself to write in 15-minute increments. If you don’t schedule and protect that block of time, you will allow intruders to take over that time - doctor’s appointments, work meetings, family obligations, laundry, staring at the refrigerator, the rabbit hole of reels on Instagram, literally anything. You’ll allow any and everything to eat up your day and then huff in disgust that you just don’t have the time to write.

I have the most energy first thing in the morning, so I committed to writing first thing in the morning for 15 minutes. If I went over 15 minutes and wrote for 30 minutes or an hour, wonderful. If not, no big deal; I kept the commitment to myself and my writing for 15 minutes. No feelings of shame are necessary. Even when the baby was born I kept that same schedule. Most times that meant writing with a baby attached to my breast and resting him on a Boppy nurse pillow at my desk, while I typed directly over his body. Yes, I did.

3. KEEP A WRITING JOURNAL📖📗✍🏾

Keeping a journal just for my writing helped me stay on track and monitor my progress. This isn’t a journal for long soliloquies about your feelings. This is just a journal to jot down what you did in your writing each day and what you need to complete for the next day. Every day at the end of the 15 minutes, I jotted down what I worked on and what I wanted or needed to complete for the next day. Sometimes all I had the opportunity to do in that 15 minutes was skim over an article or two. That’s okay. Research is needed for the writing process and I counted that toward my writing goals; whatever was helping me push the needle forward counted as writing.

4. HIRE HELP FOR SUPPORT IN AREAS WHERE YOU MIGHT BE WEAK👩🏾‍💻

So, I love substantive, developmental editing. Absolutely love it with every fiber of my being. Formatting and line editing? Not so much. I revised my work as much as I could and of course, I had a whole team helping me do the developmental editing that was needed. But line editing and formatting, I admit, were not my forte. On top of that, I was new to APA formatting at the time and kept confusing it with MLA; so much so that I would joke about creating a new format: MAPA. I thought it was hilarious.  My advisors didn’t appreciate my humor, so I found a group of Harvard grads who loved line editing as much as I loved developmental editing. I paid them to do line editing. I had enough stress. And as far as I was concerned, the major layout and writing were complete. It just needed a little sprucing and pruning. Some of the best money I ever spent.

Following this process allowed me the opportunity to write about the leadership of women in my community. Women like Yeyefini Efunbolade who is an Ifa priestess, author, teacher, herbalist, and healer. Women like Gaia Budhai who is credited with bringing yoga to Miami’s South Beach, and Catherine Roach Conner, a two-time cancer survivor, speaker, teacher, and health and exercise coach for Baptist Hospital Cancer Institute. 

As I completed my research and writing about their lives, more women requested my services to ghostwrite their stories or to help support them in writing their own stories through coaching and editing. Women like Rochelle Gapere, Esq.,  Rev. Dr. Sharon Ellis Davis, and Rev. Dr. Kim Davis:

This is the power of purposeful writing and purposeful planning.

Purposeful writing doesn’t happen alone on the struggle bus. It happens when we: 

1. Create intention

2. When we create a roadmap

3. When we have support

4. When we have a plan

5. When we schedule a time to write.

Did my story resonate with you?  If you’re feeling called to write a purposeful book to jumpstart -or enhance- your new speaking or coaching business, but you just aren’t quite sure where or how to start - or need a bit of guidance to get started -  I gotcha. I’ve created a 90-minute workshop where I walk you through exactly what I do with my clients to support them in planning and following through on their writing goals. 

By the end of our time together, you’ll have a strategy for narrowing the scope of your book topic, tools for identifying your target audience, resources, tips for finding and utilizing writing models, and help with creating an outline for your book to get you started. 

This workshop is for aspiring women authors who are:

• Educators

• Corporate professionals

• Entrepreneurs

• Solopreneurs

• Students

• Spiritual leaders

And any woman who is driven to inspire other women, especially those whose stories often sit in the margins. Now more than ever, it is important to center ourselves and our stories.

If you can relate, join me, on June 29th at 7 pm ET. If you’d like to register but can’t make it to the live workshop, the recording will be available for a limited time. 

Focus on Your Focus Workshop Outline:

1. Introductions

2. Making it Matter- What Readers Want

3. Client Highlights 

4. First Steps - Identifying writing models

5. Writing exercises

   i. Narrow the Scope of Your Book Topic

   ii. Identify Your Target Audience

6. Feedback

7. Chapter outlines