Category Archives: Books

Shaping the world

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Who we are, what we do, what we say shapes the world around us. Every pound or dollar we spend feeds someone and starves someone else, through our choices of where to spend, and what to buy. Are we supporting someone who loves their work and their place in the world, or encouraging someone to stay where they are when they would be better to move to something else?

The modern world is about infinite choice and immediate feedback. The cross-section of “likes” on a Facebook post tells us vast amounts about the landscape of our world and our place in it; what we “like” is a feedback loop that shapes what we see. The way we move through a crowded street impacts the way the people we brush against spend the rest of their day; fully, deeply connecting with our family and friends shapes the quality of their lives, and ours.

My working world has been, till now, a world of books; but with the exploration of the last week, a new vista is opening. My work is all about message – my own and my clients’ – and getting that message out into the world. That isn’t changing. The medium, however, is more fluid than it was.

The timescales involved for getting a book written and out into the world, read and integrated and responded to make books a specialised endeavour. They make sense as part of a total package, a body of work with depth and breadth; for immediate impact, however, our choices are wide open: YouTube, blog, social media, conversation, live speaking, workshops, radio interviews, television. If your message is important, then let’s get it out as fast and as clear (and often, as brief) as we can.

I started doing my video writing blog because my publicist suggested blogging more regularly. It seemed to me that blogging daily would mean I did less of my “serious” writing, so I chose video instead. The first few were awful. Then I got a little better. Now, when I look into my handheld iPhone, wherever I happen to be, I sink into a place of connection, look into the lens and let go. I talk about what’s happening, in my work and my life. Life. For me, it’s about taking a snapshot and revealing life, truth, in a soundbite, short but real.

This isn’t stuff that would make it into a novel or a self-help book – not without being refined beyond recognition. It’s immediate, about struggling mid-process, or responding to something in the moment. And in the background, the message of my approach to life comes through – the essence of who I am. Regardless of what I say, that truth comes through.

We might be less guarded, less thoughtful, when we dash off a Facebook comment or a tweet than we would be writing a book. In fact that doesn’t matter. What matters is, do we care, are we loving, do our actions match our words?

In this immediate life, our thoughts are read by those around us; who we are is what shapes our world.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Sustained extreme happiness

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Here’s another excerpt from Easy – Deconstructing the Art of Effortless Creation. It comes after all the stuff about making the practical aspects of life easy: projects, time, possessions, etc, and encapsulates my vision and hope for the deeper side of life…

First edit is complete. Thinking about publication early July.

Chapter 45 Sustained Extreme Happiness

There’s one more chapter I want to add before the end. It doesn’t quite come into the category of making life easy, but it is certainly important for making life worthwhile.

The last few months have been rough ones for me. That thing I alluded to about adding unnecessary complexity to my relationships and emotions has been playing out on a massive scale.

Now, I know that I create whatever I want in life; I choose how I feel, how I respond to the things that happen around me, the circumstances of my life. So for a long time I asked myself: why would I choose grief? Why would I choose pain when I could choose happiness and peace. I know they exist; I know I could create them. So why not?

But somehow, the idea of “happiness” just didn’t attract me. After the intensity of the everyday experience I was creating with my grief, how could mere happiness compare?

In common human experience, there are two experiences we associate with vivid happiness: new love and new babies. All other forms, as far as I could remember, tended to deliver a much milder form. Nothing special. Nothing wildly exciting. And that’s what I craved.

Then I stopped myself. I recognised a semantic pattern, a resignation to something just because it was common in the status quo. I was assuming that just because sustained extreme happiness was not common in the world, I could not create it. But of course I could.

So here I am, having formed the idea of sustained extreme happiness. People I tell about it respond sceptically at best. There’s the caution of someone confronted with mania, fearing the depression which traditionally follows.

But why shouldn’t I create this? We see prolonged grief all the time. I myself have lived it, brilliantly, for months on end. Why not flip the coin, live the other side. The intensity is possible, we all know that; it’s just the flavour that would be different.

Having seen the vision, I’m certain it’s possible. Having chosen it for myself, and, by contagion, for the people around me, I am sure it’s on its way. There are clear moments of it already, glimpses of how it looks in reality, how it feels, how it is.

I’m eager to see the form it takes longer term, the circumstances of life that form around the central emotional experience. Life is already pretty good here: close relationships, physical expression, beautiful environment, work I love, plenty of time and money, and vibrant good health.

What more is possible? Watch this space.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Article commissioned by Business Matters magazine

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The following is an article shortly to appear in Business Matters magazine – thank you, Paul, for giving me this opportunity.

Your Message, in Your Voice, Delivered to the World

Getting your book written can be fast and easy, and can have a massive positive impact on your business

Corporate social responsibility, a unique way of working, innovative ideas… What is it your ideal client needs to know about your business to become brand loyal, to love working with you, and to know they want to buy from you again and again and again?

Books are a fantastic way to let your customers know all about you. In this world of competing attention, we’re often led to believe a sound bite is all we will get to deliver. If we can’t sum up our value in twenty words or less, we haven’t a hope of being heard.

What if that weren’t true? What if you could get 40-50,000 of your words into the hands of your ideal client, hold their attention for four or five or six hours of their time, and leave them with a full, positive picture of who you are?

Let your customers know you want to make a difference

If things have been operating in the normal way of the world for your business, chances are that your customers think you are motivated primarily by money. You and I know that’s not true, that your motivation goes much deeper than that.

Money is important – very important – but it’s not the most important thing. And chances are that once your customers know what is the most important thing to you, a new bond will be formed, a new trust, a new level of doing business.

You may be asking yourself: Could I really write a book?

Many entrepreneurs are not enormously confident about writing. The creative brain is not always compatible with the confines of spelling and grammar, and that’s completely fine. There are plenty of people who can take care of that – the important thing is that you get your message out, into the world where people can hear it.

Simple book process

Most of my clients are more fluent in conversation, or in public speaking, than in writing. The process of producing their books is easy, outlined here so you can follow it yourself.

Step 1. decide who is your audience, and what difference you want to create in their lives

Step 2. decide what you want to say, in what order, and draw up a detailed plan of headings – have an interested friend or colleague help with this

Step 3. do a series of recorded interviews, where your helper asks you questions about each of the headings; or deliver the material in workshops or speaking events, once again recorded; include lots of stories to make the points come alive

Step 4. have the recordings transcribed

Step 5. have an editor transform the transcripts into correct written grammar, leaving your voice, your choice of words, your way of expressing yourself intact

Step 6. review the text and make any necessary adjustments

Step 7. have the text laid out into book form

Step 8. publish: cover design, print and digital publication

When I work with clients it takes 3-4 days of their time to plan, record and consult through the process. In around six weeks their book is completed, ready to take their full message out into the world.

7 Ways you can use your book to get your message out

1. Give copies of your book to clients and potential clients
2. Have copies on display in your waiting area, for people to read as they wait
3. Get your PR people to generate television and radio interviews to talk about your book
4. Have written and audio excerpts on your website
5. Put excerpts in your newsletter
6. Build a following on Facebook using quotes from the book, and discussion around it; link to excerpts on Twitter
7. Build a marketing campaign around the book

Jennifer Manson is a writer who works with speakers and other experts to get their message into book form easily and quickly. www.theflowwriter.com

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

How I write in Flow – nonfiction

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The process of Flowing nonfiction is slightly different to fiction – at least for me – and much easier.

Creating structure

I find creating a planned structure essential for nonfiction, whereas for fiction, I let my unconscious mind take care of that for me.

Personally, I find seeing structure easy: dividing content into chapters and then points of interest, but if this isn’t you there are some easy processes you can use to clarify the structure of what you want to say – I’ll talk about one of those further down.

Who is the audience, and what do they want?

The first thing is to know who I want to write for, and how I want their lives to change as a result. It’s an easy question to answer, and in answering it, I clarify my direction.

Creating the document

Then there is the mechanical process of creating a document for the book, with chapter headings, sub headings and point by point headings. I put all these in italics, and appropriate heading styles, and get the word processor to create a contents page automatically.

Filling in the blanks

Writing from here is very, very easy. Any time I have a gap in my schedule, and time to write a little bit, I scan down through the headings to see what I feel like writing today. It works really well if the headings are in small, bite-sized chunks, so lots of them. Then I can write that small piece, turn off the italics, and either go on to another one or come back tomorrow.

The first time I wrote a book in this way, I didn’t even realise I had finished. I came back to it to write some more, and there were no more italic headings, I had done them all!

If writing isn’t your Flow

If writing isn’t easy for you, think about what is.

  • Could you record a short audio for each heading, and get it transcribed and edited?
  • Could you get someone to interview you, creating questions for each of the headings, and speak your content in conversation to a fascinated listener? These questions can make thought-provoking headings in the text, often more engaging than a factual heading.
  • Have you already recorded the content in workshops or speaking?
  • Do you have a series of blog posts you could adapt?

Or is it the size of the task that daunts you, in which case just having it divided into small sections may be all you need to make it possible to write.

An easy way to plan

If you tend to think big picture, and three-dimensionally, with ideas connecting in many different directions, an easy way to create a structure and order to your book is to get a pile of blank cards and write a point on each, in whatever order they occur to you, until you have everything you can think of down.

Then shuffle them up, go through them and divide them into piles of related ideas. Five to twelve chapters is usually about right, so group or separate the piles until you are in that range. Think of chapter headings that will appeal to your target audience.

Divide and divide

Then take each pile and divide that up again into logical groupings. Think of more subheadings – and consider the use of questions again for these, to engage the reader’s thinking.

The last step is to put the cards in order, then type the headings into your document, and get started on Flowing your content, step-by-step.

Good luck, and if you have any questions, please ask!

Would you like some help?

Email jennifermanson444 @ gmail.com.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

How I write in Flow – fiction

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People often ask me about my writing process, how it is so easy for me; so it seems a good idea to describe how writing works for me.

The process has evolved over time, refining and simplifying, until it is very, very easy, very consistent, with just one or two small provisos about sitting down and getting on with it, no matter how I feel on the day.

Most often it’s exhilarating, sometimes it’s not

Perhaps that has been the big key, the big element to my consistency of Flow – ignoring how I feel in any given moment, not waiting for the moments of inspiration, just trusting they will come once I get the keyboard under my hands. Most often it’s exhilarating, exciting, energising. Sometimes it’s not. But we’ll get to that…

I work with clients mostly on non-fiction works, taking their message and getting it out to a wider audience in book form. Most of my own big projects have been novels, however, so let’s look at how those have worked for me.

Going off-piste

I started writing when I was six and I’ve always known it was what I wanted to do. Then at around 15 I went off-piste, into the wilderness of science and IT, through the wilds of small business, writing always in my spare time, but generally just distracting myself from what I knew in my heart I needed to do. It was a momentous, but at the time insignificant day, when I promised myself that whatever else I did, I would take at least five minutes a day to follow my passion.

Five minutes a day

So I did just that. Every day (or almost, I wasn’t fanatical about it, just felt a strong tug in my heart at the end of the day if I had missed) I sat down at my computer, document open, and let out whatever came through my fingers. Most days I had no idea what I would write; but I always knew something would come. Sometimes I would hear the words before I started to type; sometimes my fingers would begin to move and the words formed on the screen, coming from a deeper part of myself than conscious mind. But they always came.

I used to plan my novels, but then I’d sit down and write something different; so I gave up planning and trusted the creative process, the single creative arc that happens when you reconnect with a project every day.

No jugdement…

And here’s the thing: I had no judgement about how much I wrote on any one day, as long as I reconnected with the story. Some days it was one sentence, and that was enough to reconnect. Most days, however, I would look up and see an hour had gone by, there were 1500 more words on the word count, and the story had significantly progressed. Most days. Some days not. And that was okay.

I also had no judgement on the quality of the writing, just kept going, head down, every day, and this turned out to be the game-changer, the thing that allowed the Flow to really accelerate. More about that later, too…

Building momentum

An interesting thing happens when I write in this way, every day, reconnecting… the story becomes part of me, sitting in the background of my life with the characters continuing off-stage lives. I get drawn in, caught up, and the story builds momentum, to the point that once the final act climax is in sight, it takes me over, and in a two day rush the last 10,000 words appear at speed – that has been my experience for each of my novels so far, and that time is such a buzz, such an expressive, creative joy, it’s almost worth engaging in the process for that alone.

The single creative arc

So what about when the story is complete? Where does the book go from there? There were two things I discovered once I started to write in this consistent way: first, that even though there were days when the writing seemed to flow and it felt great, and other times it was the opposite, when I looked back, there was no difference in the quality of writing at all! This astounded me, and it was immensely freeing. It meant I could keep going, with no judgement, day to day, just trusting the process.

The other thing was that when I reconnected to the story daily, there was very little editing required. The story structure was perfect, I just needed to change a word or sentence here or there to make the writing more elegant; the story as a whole needed no change.

So editing became a simple task, I’d do what I could myself and then hand it over to a professional editor for a last run through, engage my team of selfless proof readers and be ready to publish.

Last tips

Robert McKee’s Story: Even though I’d been writing my whole life, my craft as a writer took a significant leap when I read Robert McKee’s Story, a comprehensive study of the structure of satisfying, successful stories through history. I also attended his workshop in New York, delivering the same content – an enormously valuable experience.

Painting myself into a corner: If at any time I felt the story was flagging, I would paint myself into a creative corner, have a character do or say something surprising, that I would then have to explain and incorporate into the wider story. This creative pressure produced some of my best moments as a writer.

Find my novels online

You can find my novels online at bookdepository.co.uk, amazon.com or search Jennifer Manson on any ebook site; or have a look at my author page.

And now, non-fiction – see the next post.

Would you like some help?

If you’d like some support and guidance to start, or to move a project along, email jennifermanson444 @ gmail.com.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Adventure – managing the gaps in the action

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One of the things about adventure is that while the action, when described, sounds exciting, a lot of the time there’s pretty much nothing going on at all.

Joan of Arc waited around for a year for Robert de Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs, to give her the men-at-arms she was commanded to wait for before presenting herself to the Dauphin, the King – and by any and all standards, hers was a fairly exciting life.

We’re used to our stories being distilled down to their essence – a 22 minute sitcom; a 90 minute movie – that’s the most effective way for us to consider those stories, and integrate their relevance into our lives.

The trouble with that is, we get to thinking that action happens in a continuous stream, one event after another, with no waiting, uncertain, perhaps doubting, in between.

I tend to take my action in the inspired form: I get a clear sense of what is needed, and whether it delights me or fills me with dread, the result is the same – I do it. That’s the easy part. More challenging are those times when the voice inside me, clear as a bell, tells me “there’s nothing to do, do nothing”, or simply goes quiet and I’m left twiddling my thumbs, a menace to myself and others, searching for something to fill the time.

I’m getting better at it. Sometimes, now, I can go easy on myself: stare out the window at the glorious view; listen to music; watch a film. And at other times? Well, let’s just say I’m working on it, masterpiece in progress, hoping the artist, whoever that might be, can repair the chisel damage that happens when I have a go at sculpting life myself.

To generate greatness, significant actions are few and far between – that’s what I’m learning – and the less I keep myself busy, or thinking, or planning, or trying to do it all myself, the clearer the voice inside me, the one that dictates those significant actions, becomes.

(By the way, for inspiration, I recommend Mark Twain’s biography of Joan of Arc – he spent 14 years researching and writing it, and considered it his best work.)

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Creativity from uncertainty

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Reading Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success this weekend, I was enveloped by the statement that creativity comes in a space of uncertainty.

When we create something entirely new, we can’t know in advance what it will be, or how it will come – by definition, if it’s new, it’s something neither we nor anyone else has ever seen or done before.

And the greater the uncertainty, the greater the possibility, creativity, opportunity.

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Is writing too slow for your thoughts?

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The world is moving at a faster and faster pace – I don’t mean that in terms of hurry, it can be the opposite – the idea of Slow Time means doing more in less time with less effort, creating a magical sensation of floating through life.

For some people, the idea of writing a book is enticing, but getting their ideas down on the page doesn’t flow well.

My sense is that the reason for this may be simpler than it first appears.

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Understanding the Process – Presence on the Page

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A great conversation with my French teacher this morning – she is also a writer – helped me understand what I do that is different. It’s all about Presence.

Presence is what J.K. Rowling brings to the world with Harry Potter. Presence is what speakers bring to the stage that is unique. Presence is what makes the difference between simply observing life and truly living it. Presence is what makes the work we do worthwhile.

Fairly early on in my career as a novelist, I asked myself what the difference was with Harry Potter. There are no Emporer’s New Clothes with children’s literature – if children love a book, it’s because it really has something wonderful. Straight away, I realised what it was – Joanne Rowling is right there, in the story, and she takes us there, too.

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The Amazing Lucy Whittington

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I am delighted to be working with Lucy Whittington, Manager of Business Celebrities, www.BeingABusinessCelebrity.com, on her book about finding your Thing and getting famous for it.

As Lucy says, “Your Thing is the Thing you do effortlessly, the Thing that makes you smile, the Thing that is so obvious to you that you hadn’t realised the world was waiting for you to get out there and do it.”

Lucy is inspiring, a genius at helping you find your Thing when it is hiding on the end of your nose.

Watch this space for more information!

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…