Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today we have Phil Elmore. Phil, welcome.
Thank you.
Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Well, I am a professional writer. I’m actually many times over a writer. My life is a series of desks and I moved from desk to desk writing different things at different desks. I’ve written extensively in the fiction world, everything, dozens of commercially published novels. I also write nonfiction as a technical writer and most recently I’ve become a writing coach, not only helping individuals to preach there what I would call their offering goals where they become authors, but also to help businesses take advantage of the marketing opportunity that is having a nonfiction book or sometimes even a fiction book that’s property that they can use to accomplish their goals. One of the things I find myself doing is explaining to many business owners, small business owners, large businesses alike, how that can benefit them and then how they can also accomplish that goal through a coaching company like mine without adding a lot of extra time and effort to what they’re doing.
Because obviously the last thing a business owner wants you to do is roll up onto their doorstep and say, let me show you how to spend a lot of your time doing something you don’t want, thank you for that. In one of my episodes, I did actually say this is near enough to quote, I said you are a person who I’ve spoken to, who has got the most books and I think this person wrote eight books.
Now, the next question for you, as you can imagine, how many books have you written, Phil?
That is a tough question to answer because I have ghost written so many books that I’m not allowed to take credit for that I stopped counting. I know that I wrote 23 books in the executioner series for an imprint of Harlequin romance novel company. They used to have men’s adventure imprints for many, many years. Teams of ghost writers like they wrote entries in what was a very long running action series. The series actually was it inspired the punisher for example, they’re all series about lone gunman who make the very rational logical decision to shoot everyone who is vaguely related to the people that killed their family.
Oh, the mob figured directly in the death of my family, I guess I’ll kill all of them. Which is pretty much the first 40 books of the executioner series. There are hundreds of books in that series. When the original author sold the rights to the imprint that belongs to Harlequin, they employed many, many writers. I’ve met lots of other fellow executioner writers who helped turn out those hundreds of books in crossover series and spin off series. And in the main, I’ve written all kinds of nonfiction publications. I’ve written extensively for internet marketers producing both copy and e-book products. So, if you count the e-books and these don’t truly have ESPN numbers. So, I don’t know, there are people who wouldn’t consider those real books, but there’s still publications that people have paid money for. If you add them all up, I have probably produced conservatively speaking at least 100 publications that make people money and maybe twice that number of publications that were produced for people who paid me to make them.
Sometimes that goes write or rewrite other fiction. I had a client who had me help him rewrite a very autobiographical story that he wrote. It was a novel that was really quite beautiful, a sort of a rumination on his relationship with his father. There are very few genres I haven’t touched, you know, I do technical documentation as well and have for many years, that was my father’s business. My father started his technical writing business in the 1980s and that’s how I learned that people would pay you to write things for them, which was a new idea. And then I tried very hard to run away from the family business and ended up getting pulled back in. And that sort of put me on the course that I ended up on. And ironically, it was my father’s collection of executioner novels, had dozens and dozens of. I used to read those as a teenager. Little did I know that I was doing research for the job. I would later have writing entries in that series. So, there’s a lot of wish fulfilment that comes with this type of job. You get to fulfil a lot of lifelong dreams if your dreams centre around having all these adventures from a series of tests. So, I mean it’s over 100, possibly 200.
Would you say you’re an overachiever?
No, because I would define that as about the time I have that J. K. Rowling bathtub full of money to lie down in at night. That would probably be overachievement. And of course, I joked because J. K. Rowling made so much money that she gave a lot of it, she gave so much money to charity that she ended up lowering her position in the which people standings and every author should have such problems. But until I reached that level of success, I will consider it merely adequate levels of achievement. I have been fortunate in that I make a living off the sweat of my brain, like that’s how I sit down at the computer, and I write. And I don’t mean to put a sort of a crass commercial spin on it, I value what I do and I feel very strongly about it and I like to turn out good work, but not everyone has the opportunity to sit down at a computer with no other inputs other than what they can research and actually make a living. So, it’s very gratifying and I feel very fortunate.
Well, the one thing that I thought was, I think it’s fascinating and that is there are so many people that struggle with the concept of writing a book. I would say probably even though public speaking is one of those things which is quoted as being the thing which people most fear, I think that people would prefer to do public speaking than they would write a book and you make a living from writing books on behalf of people. So why is it that you can succeed or excel in something which so many people struggle with? I think in a lot of cases it has to do with simply how your brain’s wired. I am terrible with technical things. I have a business colleague who does all of the technical support aspects of what we do together, where I’m writing web copy and emails and he’s taking care of the technical side. Whenever I have to venture into that technical aspect actually figure out why is this software not behaving as it is supposed to? I find it really frustrated and his brain is wired in a way that he sees that as a delightful puzzle to solve. In that same way, if he has to write something, he finds it agonising, whereas I could fall down a flight of stairs and accidentally write a few paragraphs along the way.
I think some people are born with a facility for it, but it’s not that you can’t train it, you can learn to do it and learn to do it better. A friend of mine came to me the other day and he was working on an obituary for relative and he’d agonised over it for three days and I said, please never do that, just come to me and I’ll help. And in 15 minutes we wrote, and it comes down to how does your brain handle communication? What I do is largely a communication skill. So, as you can imagine, I don’t have a lot of difficulty talking to people about things. Shutting me up is actually usually the issue. So when I deal with people who need something written or want something or trying to write something, it’s usually just a case of assessing, okay, where are you along that curve of what you find easy and what you find uncomfortable and what you find difficult? And everyone can be moved along that curve. Everyone can learn the skills that they need to learn. I was speaking with a business contact the other day who has at times been an employer and at other times writer and she was explaining that she was having difficulty working on a plot and that’s something I do over and over, work out the plot.
And specifically, there are a number of resources for people who like fiction, including the Save the Cat Plot Beats. That’s a reference to the fact that in most movies you’ll see someone do something where essentially they’re saving a cat from a tree. They are doing something kind that explains to the viewer or the reader that this is the good guy. This is the person you should sympathise with. You’ll see the opposite of save the cat when the evil villain casually executes a henchman. In an early scene, that’s where you established this is a bad person who kills people who work for him. So, the Save the Cat Plot Beats, you don’t need to interpret them literally. But she was having trouble with some of the literal interpretations of what the plot beats are explained to be. And so, I explained to her no, these are abstract. These are feelings that there are literally beats in the plot that you might choose to follow. But you don’t have to. There’s a number of different ways to conceptualise novel plots. And these are things you learn from experience. You only get one first novel and they’re all terrible. I wrote two of them and they were terrible. The second one was slightly less terrible than the first one.
But nobody, almost nobody, writes a good novel the first time out. And there are famous published authors who will admit to you that their first book when it eventually got published because they achieve success with later books had to be extensively rewritten. Matthew Reilly, I believe he’s Australian action-adventure writer whose books I’ve enjoyed and in the foreword to one of his books, he explained this was my first book and I self-published it and it didn’t do well and it wasn’t very good, so I’ve rewritten and that’s a very common experience for successful offers. It’s almost like you have to get the venom out of you, you have to exercise the poison before you can go on to write well. And in my case, learning to write novels was literally just a function of practice. The first time I wrote a novel, I had very little idea of what, you know, other than having read a lot, doing extensive reading, especially if you can read for all your life can help, because it gives you reference in that it explains to you how a book is structured, how the mechanics of writing at work and usually have a vague idea of how thoughts were, you know what you like, You know what and many people will cynically tell you that the reason some of us know what we like is because Hollywood and writers turn out the same plot over and over again.
You can break those down into the plot. A lot of them are very similar, some of them are almost literally taken from the guide. Some of them are more abstract, but there are always exceptions, and everybody is different. So, writing anything is a dual process of identifying where are you at, which I realised poor grammar, but you know, where do you find yourself on the continuum of what you’re comfortable with and once or not? And also, where do you want to go? And so, when you can find someone who can help you get there, suddenly everything becomes easier because you have someone guiding you and helping you to get there. You know, my services include like if someone wants to write a book, they don’t usually want me to write it for them, but I’ve had people who come in and say I want this book to exist. I’m never going you do that. And so, I do. And it’s always fun when someone has told you, here’s the characters I want, here’s the plot that I want, here’s elements that I want in it and then you get to play with that. I find that remarkably just being able to work within those guidelines. It’s like a new puzzle every time if I want to sit down and write my own book, there’s nothing stopping me.
I don’t feel any kind of creative suppression because this client is paying me good money to write a book about a topic that I wouldn’t have picked for myself. You know, I always have the option to go do that, so it’s a lot of fun. It’s a playground really. And then when we get into the nonfiction and where I employ my technical writing skill set, that can be extremely educational and entertaining at the same time. You know, I’ve written both, written any number of nonfiction publications to include really boring stuff like industrial documentation. People will say, how can you spend hours writing a manual for a piece of industrial machinery? It’s not the machine that matters. It’s the puzzle. How do I impart the information that I need to impart? And I always hark back to the old episode of Mash television series where they’re following written instructions to disable a bomb that has fallen in the courtyard. And he said, now cut the red wire. But that is a great example of how informational design, imparting information to other people through technical writing really matter because order of operations is an overarching concept.
You know, you never want to, but first somebody when you’re giving them important critical instructions, it’s a funny example, just as a summary, would you say if someone was to ask you what you do, would you say that you were a ghost writer? I don’t consider myself a ghost writer because I’m also – if I always say I’m away and there are certain asterisks appended to that because I touched so many different genres, I am published under my own name several times over. So, I don’t, I feel like I’ve been relegated to the status of and because I don’t only do fiction, it’s a little more broad in terms of how I would choose to define myself. I do make a distinction between being an author and being a working writer. So, I would classify myself as the latter because a working right or someone who is making a living off the things that they type off the sweat of their brain. Anyone can become an author, especially now with the barriers to entry are so low, you can follow the instructions, write a book and publish it on amazon directly. You can even write a Kindle book only where you don’t even have to spend any money.
It’s completely free to set up a Kindle book and allow Amazon to take a portion of the profits. Because the virtual product, there’s no physical product, there’s no start-up costs, they have the infrastructure. So, anyone can become an author if they wished to varying degrees of success. This started with self-publishing and when published on demand technology came out and suddenly you could pay someone to set up a book for you, create the help you with the cover and make a book exists. That’s how I did my first self-published novel.it felt like being a real author, but the market was immediately flooded with people who would have been screened out of the publishing process simply because they lacked basic mechanical experience. They weren’t at the level of a published author necessarily, but there was nothing to stop those books were coming out. Then all of the publishers adopted the published on demand technology. I used to work with a company called paladin Press who published two of my books and they adopted published on demand Technology, which meant no longer do I have to keep inventory of books to then sell out and are out of print until I print them again.
Now I get an order for book X, I print once it comes out of the machine, and I’m done. So that helped stave off the eventual demise or something like that. But many of them did go under because as the shift to virtual books happened and kindle books and other formats started out selling paperbacks, all of the major publishing companies felt the squeeze. So anybody can become an author now and it doesn’t mean a whole lot, arguably didn’t necessarily mean a whole lot unless you achieved widespread success before, but there was a lot more cachet associated with being an author and a lot of people are still very enamoured of the idea of I want to be a published author and these are usually the people who will add to their signature lines in their emails, published author and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t done that myself. The thing is that if you really want to make a living at writing, it is a lot less glamorous than, you know, I’m a successful author and people look at me and we talk about writing, we write about writing.
That’s a thing that many beginning authors tend to do is they’ll start blogs and write about, they spend more time writing about writing that I do, honey. Sometimes not at all to be a working writer, to get paid for what you’re doing requires you to make some compromises and to stretch yourself and take on work that you wouldn’t choose to do. I like to say that you’re not a working writer until you want to go to bed, but you can’t because this is due to be finished before you can sleep, and I can’t tell you how many nights of my life have been spent doing just that. I have contributed millions, literally millions of words of chop to the internet for internet marketers who wanted long involved websites, but really didn’t say a whole lot, but were there to achieve a certain search engine optimisation purpose. And when I think back to how many hours of my life has been doing that, I could regret it, but I don’t because I’m living doing you know – and someday I ever write a book about my own experience becoming working right and establishing myself space in those long evenings sitting in a room alone, typing is very much part of that experience.
But there are also really positive experiences. I remember there was one time when I was up all night finishing a novel, I had promised my co-writer that my portion would be done by – let’s call it Friday. So in order to finish on time I had to stay up all night and they did and then I drove to Canada because I was set to go on vacation in Niagara Falls. So completely sleep deprived. I arrive in Canada late in the yes nine or 10:00 at night and I was in the tourist area of Niagara Falls where all the things are happening. And because I was completely wired having spent all that time writing a book, I couldn’t go to bed so I found an outdoor rooftop T.G.I Friday’s bar and I sat there alone because this place was deserted and watched the lights of Niagara Falls sipping my drink and thinking about the fact that I have just accomplished what I thought was a really good book and there was no one there to experience that believe. But it’s a cherished memory because of the feeling of accomplishment. And that is what that is what writing is, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, whether it’s helping further your business ends or it’s just something you wrote because you wanted it to that feeling of I have done this is what motivates people to keep going.
Well, I kind of ruined that for myself a little bit because I was engaged in the story and you were setting the scene and everything. And then I realised you’re telling a story like you would as a writer, right? And it was brilliant. That’s just me explaining that that is there is no calculation behind that. That’s just how I think about it can be something of an occupational hazard because I’ll be listening to the radio and find myself copy editing copy that they’re reading their ads like that you ended that sentence wrong, that you don’t do that. No, that’s the wrong work. And my friends tell me that I ruined movies because someone will say, well, why did they do this? I’ll say, well narrative if they had to accomplish getting the characters from pay to be and so we did we shut up Phil you’re ruining the movie. So I heard that it’s unconscious behaviour for you now. Yeah, it’s just how my brain works. So what have you got in terms of thoughts of marketing a book, Marketing a book? Like making people buy your book? I don’t see that as the goal. In most cases, I see the book as the means of marketing, which is why I try to help people in with usually small businesses, but it can be a business size, understand what a book can do for them.
The book doesn’t have to be long and it also doesn’t have to be complex. But the smartest people in business understand what having a book can accomplish for them. For example, I have a client who is a contractor. He builds buildings, does homework patients. He wants to write a book. This is – I’m making this up – but let’s say he wants to write a book on the top 10 disasters that he’s seen in home renovation and home construction, the sorts of nightmare things that people can’t look away from, but that every homeowner fears will happen to them. I’ll spend all this money and there’ll be a structural flaw in my home. It will become a money pit their entire movies about. So his book not only entertains the reader with the benefit of his experience having been working this job for some, but also establishes in the reader’s mind, he’s identifying these problems that means he can see them. That means I can trust him. That means when I want work done I go to him because if he can see the problems, he’s not going to make another client I have is a realtor. He wrote a whole book on his system for flipping homes and what he does real time.
Most of the people who read that book are not going to immediately go out and start their own homes with. What they’re going to do is think about starting their own home, flipping business and then turn to him as the real sir, because he has demonstrated his expertise in the subject matter in that way any book can be used as a calling card and as a marketing tool to establish a connection with prospective audience. You know, for instance, this realtor leaves his book behind when the business properties, things like that. You can even use fiction in this way. I have worked with a client who we ghost wrote some fiction that was simply a topic that his internet marketing audience would find have to be vague about this because it was ghost written. And I can’t take credit for it. And then in putting that book out, it doesn’t sell a product, you don’t buy the book and then it says you should buy this thing here. It doesn’t what it does do for you. It shows you that this man who is marketing this book understands me.
He understands me as part of this community, who are who have the shared topic interest. This could work for any top. And as a result, I’m entertained by his book, but I also start to associate him with expertise in that field in this community. He’s one of us, there’s connection with poor and any salesman will tell you, you don’t sell your product, you sell yourself more genuine. You are, the more you connect with people who might buy, the more likely they are to trust you introduce. So, so in that way, a nonfiction book, even a brief nonfiction book can be used as a marketing tool for almost any business. I have yet to be presented with a business where that isn’t the case, I’m sure there must be, but I haven’t yet found one where I couldn’t find a way to figure out how to apply that concept that they could use the book to their advantage. Um, and then there are those people who just want a book to exist, whether it’s a nonfiction book about a topic that they’re really passionate about. Um, yeah, I’m making this up. But let’s say you have someone who’s really into the supernatural and they want to publish a book about their ghost hunting the various adventures.
They had, they might just want that book to exist because they want to share what they’ve experienced without. But they may not be a writer, so that’s where I come in and I can help them that happen. There’s lots of different sticking points when it comes to producing a book. People don’t realise nobody writes, everybody writes a chapter in a book and then repeat the process. A book is impossible to write. It’s a mountain. You cannot climb a mountain in a single step. If I tell you climb this mountain immediately, you can’t do it. I have to start and go slow and achieve small goals along the way, or else it will feel overwhelming. So when people say I could never write a book so much, Yeah, it’s a lot by the time you get done, but don’t write a book, just write me a chapter work on that and then we’ll repeat that process before you know what, you’ve got a book. It’s a great point. So you raise something which is I think interesting, I think most people at least marketing wise have heard of the concept of giving away something which is a value in exchange, for example, contact details.
But what I really liked what you said was actually creating something fictional, a story, which I mean it’s entertaining to the person reading it. It’s a book in the way that a fiction story would be, but it is relevant to that particular scenario. So you use the refurbishment home refurb or home flipping example. You know, you could do a story about someone who did that and it went wrong or they learned from various different and you said that there’s movies about it. So, I quite like that. I’ve not heard that before. There have even been attempts to write instructional material in the form of a novel. I was first acquainted with this concept when it’s in college getting an accounting degree which taught me that I didn’t want an accounting degree. There is a famous novel called Accosting the Golden Spire by someone pseudonym suit down the pseudonym for that person is Irish Wild collect, which is a play on Words for the IRS will collect, costing the golden spire is I kid you not an attempt to teach basic accounting principles while telling a fictional adventure story.
It’s not a good book, it has never been a good book. But when I read that book, as an accounting student in college, get acquainted me with this new and novel idea of trying to impart actual knowledge while telling official story. There are other authors who’ve done this much better. I’ve been really honoured to work with the very Sharon Ahern. Sharon is alive and well. But unfortunately Jerry, her husband, passed away. The two of them wrote together many, many and they are fantastic novels. There were some of the novels that I read that put me on the path to want to write adventure stories. And one of the things that Jerry Herman really adept at was he was an expert on firearms and he wrote for firearms trade publications, magazines that nature. And so his novels weave in his knowledge of how these things work things, you should do things, you shouldn’t do ways to maintain them. Things like that. Such that after reading those models, you came away with a real education in the field of firearms.
It was sort of incidental, It was really more simply because he was very interested in the topic and it came out in his writing, but he was very specific. He did not make technical mistakes. One thing about the adventure audiences, they really love what they love. So if you make a mistake involved firearm and if something like that, something that is of interest to them, they will notice that mistake. If you if you create a gun in a calibre that has never existed, they’ll notice that these are people with encyclopaedic knowledge of that field. So reading those novels showed me years after my experience with accounting fiction that it was possible to do that well and to impart knowledge in a way that was still, I’ve actually written some novels and novellas along fine, since using that inspiration. Okay, I want to impart information that educates the reader on this topic, but I don’t want to hit them over the head with it in the way that are costing the gold inspired. Because, you know, very, very seldom do people break into conversation about, you know, the standards for accounting principles and it showed in that I’m sure I don’t I don’t know if there’s anyone listening to this guy has ever heard of Accosting both fire.
But yeah, Well, would you say that you prefer fiction over nonfiction?
Well, they’re different. Fiction is there’s usually less research involved. It’s less factually limiting because obviously when you’re writing nonfiction, you’re limited to reality research involved. There’s technical things involved, depending on what you’re writing. So if I’m writing a book about how to assemble a particular piece of machinery, I have to get it right. If I’m writing fiction, I only have to be entertaining. Yes. You obviously wouldn’t fill it with factual errors, but fiction is much more freewheeling. The difference though is you could look at it the other way. When I’m writing nonfiction, I can look to reality. If I want to tell you how to put this machine together, all they need to know is how I want to tell an entertaining story. There’s a lot more burden to be imaginative and entertaining agent. So there are people who are brilliant nonfiction or a brilliant nonfiction and technical authors, technical writers, people who write you know, even editorial political commentary, you know, picture most political commentators.
You probably wouldn’t read a novel that they wrote. Although a few of them have done novels. I’ve never read any of them. I know like Bill O. Reilly I think has written some there might be historical novels and other fellows I can’t remember done. I think Newt Gingrich of all people, the politicians did some historical fiction novels. I’ve never read any of that, but they might be good. It’s hard to say. I think most of the time you’re engaging very different parts of the brain when you’re working with fiction. And again you have to use relying on your age. And when people review the work, it can be very different too. So the very first time I got a negative review of fiction books, it hit a lot harder than people reviewing a nonfiction. You know, you can tell yourself if they didn’t like the nonfiction what they don’t like my opinion. They don’t like my growth if they don’t like your fiction, it’s like they don’t like you, it feels much more personal. And another author of my acquaintance once said still those reviews are worth exactly what you paid for, which was a good way to help keep it because lots of people have, I had one guy complained that I wrote a novel and I used passive voice too much.
I’m like, well if this were a technical manual, I could see the complaint. This was meant to be entertaining. But for some reason that comments always kind of rattled around my using too much passive voice when I’m writing fiction. So yeah, they’re just different ones, not better than the other. I don’t prefer one to the other. If you ask me what I would like to do, you know, if I could just be independently wealthy, how would I like to spend time then? Yeah. I’d probably like to spend my mornings writing fiction and spend my afternoons doing nothing. Which is what some of the world’s most famous writers did. I think I think Hemingway spent his mornings writing, he was too drunk to write just and the rest of the day fishing. It is interesting how the negative review stick in your mind for a while. But in terms of you’re the breakdown of what your activities are. What’s the percentage in terms of fiction and nonfiction in terms of your daily activities? Well in an average day it’s about half and half, but there are very few average days. It really depends the cycle of what I’m doing as far as what project is currently most urgent.
So for instance, if I have a novel that finished, I might devote almost 100% of my time to that. And I become utterly intolerable to be around when I’m finishing a novel because that’s all that matters to me. And, you know, it’s just leave me alone. I gotta finish this and that’s all that I focus on when, you know, and I’m any given, if you averaged out today is, you know, in any given damn switching from project to project. All right, A couple of chapters of fiction, I have this project in the spirit of this piece of web copy that has to be done. It lends itself to very different days, so they don’t get born. And what’s your thoughts on writer’s block, quote unquote. I have experienced it. I pride myself on being very quick and being able to produce a lot in a very short amount of time. And I had a period of time where I I was not able to produce anything. I was staring at the screen and couldn’t get the words on the page and afterwards I’m like, what’s wrong with produced? Normally I’d be done with several chapters and it turns out to be overworked. So in a lot of cases, writer’s block is a function of your working too much.
You actually need to work less to work more. You need to give your brain time to recover in order, good luck. The average writer who’s experienced experiencing writer’s block is usually just having trouble getting started. Sometimes someone will get started and not know where to take it. I have a few tricks for if you’re having trouble getting started. One of those is just start describing, to start describing to me what you see, describe the scene described, where we are describing people describe anything, we’ll get things rolling if what you’re having trouble with is continuing. Usually the problem is I didn’t plot out where I want to go. I don’t have a solid foundation on which to build from. So for fiction and for nonfiction, the outlines always critically important. Did I outline what I want to do? Did I plot out the roller coaster curve of my plot? Which is usually build, build, build, build, roll quickly down to a climax, then level off. That’s what I see is the roller coaster plot shorthand that applies to almost everything that is fiction. So did you have a foundation to work from? Because if you did then you don’t get stuck because you know where you want you might have trouble with the transition chapter or how to get.
But that’s a very different problem then I just don’t know where to go. Um, and most of the time when people are having trouble with writer’s block, they are having trouble knowing how to break free of the problem they’ve created, which is usually not building a foundation or not knowing how to get started. Sometimes it’s not knowing how to finish finishing is usually the easiest part because usually by the time you’ve written all that story, you’ve come to know your characters. So they kind of help you write the book itself. You know, I’ve read other authors talk about, well I tried to get my characters to decide all this dialogue, but they just, and you say, well aren’t you insurance. But when we know the characters, like, you know, I wrote 23 executioner novels, the lead character of that book, the protagonist, Mack Bolan, I know what he would do in any situation because I know the character after so much familiarity with it. So really you’re just creating scenarios dropping that well developed character into them and then how he reacts very obvious how he would respond the situation. And usually when people criticised especially a long running property for deviating from that is because the author wasn’t familiar with, that’s also why people have characters that behaviour that was a huge criticism of the game of Thrones finale on HBO was all of a sudden characters were hurrying to act in ways that simply were not logically supported because they try to rush and they and they didn’t have the benefit of George R Martin’s extensive build up to that point because they had outrun the novels, they no longer had written source materials to adapt.
They were now you know, running free with a few points from George R Martin to tell them where to go. So they rushed it. They didn’t make any sense. The same endings could have made more sense if they had several more seasons to develop, they just didn’t. So building your foundation and being consistent to your characters. Really good answer. So what’s your favourite book that you created? And what’s it about? My favourite book that I created is called Monsters. It’s a science fiction novel under my name and it’s about a future dystopian world where a man and his daughter are being hunted by authorities. And it’s really the book means so much for me because it’s really a rumination on a father’s love for his daughter. When I finished writing that book, I was terrified that I would never again find a topic that I found is interesting as bad. It took me a little while. And I would hope every author could have that experience when writing fiction this. I love this so much. I don’t know if I’ll ever like something.
And you hope that each project will do that. You know, if you’re not writing, if you’re not growing as a writer, what you have to be able to, I have a coaching student, relatively young lady who writes better than many adults of my acquaintance. And she told me I’m looking at some of my early stuff and I don’t, like I said, that’s wonderful because if you grow enough as a writer to be able to look at stuff from a few months ago, I hate it. That’s a wonderful time that you’re improved. So we should always look back on our older work and not like it to a point feel what your goals. Well my goal is to make the self-publishing report and the ghost writing reports from my coaching business is available to everyone. We have a Facebook group called the Self-publishing Report where I’ll be releasing a four week writers fast class. That covers some of the some of the biggest problems that writers have for both fiction and nonfiction and how to get past them. And they’re literally just me talking on video and explaining how you can overcome some of these common problems.
Feeling things like plotting and building the foundations or outlining stuff like that. So my goal is to help other people achieve what I’ve been able to do and what I’ve been privileged to be able to do with a lot less stress. And it’s kind of like saving a drowning man. If you could save the drowning man, why wouldn’t you? Well, there’s so many people out there who could produce books that make them happy. If only they had some help to get over the things stopping forgetting and if I have the ability to help them and it’s not hard because that’s how my brain works. And if I can if I can help them, I want to. So my goal is to help other people with that information so that they can achieve their own goals, create written works that further their business goals that make them money. Because you know, if you’re interested in writing or if you just have a business and you’re hoping that you can find something that will help your business grow. These are all aspects were writing a book and help. And fortunately it isn’t horror if you just have the right help.
And so many people have been, I wouldn’t say it raised to believe, because not like we preach this in society, but we a lot of people think a book is this insurmountable and it doesn’t have to be never asked as long as you have to write. Help. Yeah, I totally agree. There are many people that think, yeah, it’s just such a really difficult thing to write a book. And I guess there are many failures as well. So perhaps its strategy when your first book is always terrible. It discourages a lot of people. No one’s ever told them. No, no, it’s going to be bad. Just write another one. You have to get the first and you can’t skip it. You can’t say I’ll just skip the bad first novel and go right to a good one doesn’t work. So, if you’re writing a book, you’re like, I don’t think very good, it shouldn’t be, it won’t be just write it.
Well, I think you’ve given some great insight here, so thank you very much for all the value. Can you tell people where the best place to find you is?
Well, my personal website, philelmore.com. We’ll have announcements as far as whatever the most recent developments are for my coaching business and our group on Facebook, the Self-published Report is available now, that’s where we will be releasing fast class.
So, you know, if you join that group there will be further developments there and announcements and I posted up there about writing from time to time, just whatever I feel like. So those are both good places. But philelmore.com is probably the easiest way because any time I’m doing something I put an announcement there.
All right, well, thank you for your time today, Phil.
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed speaking with you.