Category Archives: Nonfiction

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…