I was recently chatting with a friend who is in my Writing as Healing community, and they have been writing what I call bits and bobs of writing, short little bits of writing that we write while journaling or towards a project—book, blogs, social media, or just capturing our thoughts about work, life, experiences, etc.
They wondered: “What am I supposed to do with this?”
I am here to tell you if you have a lot of “random” writing, you may have a book waiting to be put together.
Here are some ways to “put a book together from this random writing”
- Themes
- Reread (make the familiar strange episode 40 for more)
- Look for what the overall idea is in each of your bits and bobs (love, stress, family, coaching)
- Start labeling (I like color coding)
- Combine
- Revisit your bits
- Start to put together common themes or ideas that would go together well
- Expand
- After you have combined
- Look at how much you have now
- These can become chapters or sections
- What else do you want to say/write?
- What is missing? More stories, experiences, examples, etc.
Exciting new affiliate offer: Hey ladies, ready to take control of your health, especially when "the change" comes? I'm excited to announce that The Written Compass has partnered with Dr. Heather Bartos to offer you a special invite to The Menopause Mothership (https://heatherbartos.ac-page.com/menopause-mothership), a community of women being supported and guided through their mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical journey! Check it out here (The Written Compass and Shana Hartman will receive an affiliate payment if you choose to sign up): https://menopausemothership.drheatherbartos.com/checkout/menopause-mothership?affiliate_code=e0d3b3If you loved these tips and ideas and want more, head to shanahartman.com/schedule to get on our calendar and talk about next steps. If you are ready to explore what a writing community can do for you and your writing goals, head to shanahartman.com/schedule to get on our calendar and talk about next steps. If you want some help kicking things off, download my Embodied Book Writing Kickstarter: https://shanahartman.com/writingkickstart
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[00:00:02] What you want, when you want it, where you want it. This is The MESH. Okay, so you've got all of this random writing and you don't know what to do with it. In today's episode of The Written Compass,
[00:00:17] I'm gonna talk to you about how that random writing can actually be a book, maybe even more than one book. I'm going to talk you through the process that we use with our clients all the time to take those
[00:00:29] seemingly random bits and bobs of writing and put them together in a book. I'm so excited you are here. Let's get started. If you're anything like me, then oftentimes your writing comes in what I call bits and bobs, meaning a few
[00:00:45] sentences here, a few paragraphs there, and you wind up with all these little short pieces of writing and you might not be sure of what to do with them.
[00:00:55] Welcome to today's episode of The Written Compass. I want to talk about how your random writing can become a book. So, so excited you're here today. So, oh this episode was inspired because I was chatting with a friend of mine. He's actually, I call him a dance boo.
[00:01:12] For those of you who don't know, I do ballroom dancing here in the Charlotte area and there are so many amazing instructors and teachers and dancers at Midtown Ballroom. Shout out to Midtown. One of them is a part of my Writing is Healing community.
[00:01:29] They've been writing again what I call these bits and bobs, right? We were talking about it and he was just like, I have all these little short bits and pieces of writing and I'm not really sure. Sometimes they're kind of a journal. Sometimes it's towards something
[00:01:43] I'm thinking about, like maybe a book or a blog or something I want to post on social media. And sometimes he's just capturing his thoughts, right? We might be doing that in our little bits and bobs of writing. We're capturing thoughts about work, about life, about our experiences.
[00:02:00] And when you look at them in your journal or in your Google Doc or wherever they happen to be, you sit there and you're like, well what am I supposed to do with these now? They're all random
[00:02:09] and it's difficult for you to see any kind of connection or anywhere to take them. And first and foremost, I want to say that writing doesn't have to go anywhere. Waving my permission wand, it could have just been writing for you that was needed at the time and
[00:02:24] that is it. However, if you're sitting there going, I feel like there's something here but I don't, what am I supposed to do with this now? I want to also tell you that that random writing,
[00:02:37] if you have a lot of random writing, you may actually have a book and all it needs is some direction on how to start to put it together. So today I'm going to offer you kind of the
[00:02:47] three tools and pathways, the journey that I support a lot of people who write this way. They kind of write in what I call fragmented or like I said earlier those bits and bobs. This is how we support them in taking those fragmented pieces and actually putting them
[00:03:03] together in a coherent book. So first and foremost is you want to start to look at that random writing and see what if any patterns or themes are there. So how are you going
[00:03:15] to do this? You're going to need to reread or at least reskim what the writing is to familiarize yourself, right? So this is something that I've talked about before in episode 40. I talk about
[00:03:27] kind of making the familiar strange. So you want to take something you've written. You're like, okay, that looks familiar and you want to kind of pull back and kind of make it what we call
[00:03:37] strange, meaning look at it through a new perspective and see how you would categorize. Is there a theme here? Is there a focus, right? Even if it was just a couple of sentences in there,
[00:03:51] does it seem like it had a focus? And random can be a theme as well. So you're looking for the overall idea, like big picture so what in your little bits and bobs, right? Maybe it was about
[00:04:04] love. Maybe it was about stress in your life. Maybe it was about family. If you're a business owner, maybe it was something about working with a particular client. It doesn't matter what
[00:04:14] the themes are, but you just want to start to label them. I particularly like and have discussed on the podcast before anytime you're kind of looking for those themes or like-minded, right?
[00:04:26] Topics and ideas. I like to color code them because I'm a visual person and so I like to be able to quickly see, okay, where are all my yellows? Where are all my oranges? So we're
[00:04:37] starting to see are there some themes, right? So you might be going through and be like, okay, this is about love. This is about stress. This is about family. This is about work.
[00:04:46] This was a random. This was about my cousin. Okay, that was specific about a specific family member, but I'm going to lump that into the family theme. You see what I'm saying? So you
[00:04:59] want to start to notice if there are some patterns in the themes that you're pulling out and you can color code them. So I literally do this with a highlighter if I'm in my daybook
[00:05:10] or if I'm in a digital document, I will use the highlighting tool. Sometimes I will, you just want to be able to understand it. So I will put a label, whatever the theme is,
[00:05:22] and I might just highlight color code the label that I'm putting it or I might color code the entire piece or chunk of writing. That's totally up to you. Once you've kind
[00:05:33] of started to give things a label, and again, I always encourage having a random or not sure category because there can be things that you're not sure what it is and you'll be able to find
[00:05:42] a place for them later or they just might not fit for the book project that you're thinking of at the moment, but you want to start to combine like with like. So revisiting your little bits and bobs, start to put together those common themes, those common ideas,
[00:05:58] things that you think would go together well. That might be the same color or the same labels that you gave them so putting all the love pieces together or relationship pieces together or family pieces together or work pieces together, right? There may be some that
[00:06:13] are complementary and you feel like they want to go together. So if you've got some about family relationships in general and then about your sister and then about your spouse and then about your kids, all of those might have been labeled slightly differently and colored coded
[00:06:27] differently, but we can combine them together potentially if we're looking about, you know, how we want to put this book together. Okay, so start to combine your bits and bobs in a like-minded way. See what wants to fit together. Then after you've done that combination,
[00:06:44] the third thing that I like to support people in doing is looking at how much do you have now? Okay, so in these things if you've only got, I'll say two pieces, two bits or bobs,
[00:06:56] two chunks of writing around a particular topic, you want to really see, okay, is this something substantial? Does it go now with the broader, the other themes that I'm noticing? Does it fit? And if it does, then this is clearly something you're going to want to
[00:07:12] expand on right about more. And so you start to see how this putting together process, the thematizing, the combining now shows you what needs to be expanded, what fits and what
[00:07:24] doesn't fit and what might be a chapter or a section. And now you can go back in and ask yourself, what else do I want to say? What else wants to be written here? What else do I want to
[00:07:36] share? You can also start to ask what is missing here? Are there more stories, more experiences, more examples? Are there processes that I want to talk through that I haven't included already?
[00:07:48] So it's a nice way to go back and look at what you might write more about. It's also in turn a way where you go, wow, I really have a ton on stress, for instance. And you can start
[00:08:01] to look at if there's so much, does that need to be pulled out and actually become its own book? Yes, you might have multiple books when you do this process. We had a client one time who
[00:08:12] in her trying to put together her first book, she kind of had this similar process, all these bits and bobs. And we realized she was trying to put them all together. And it
[00:08:22] was really about two or three books that she was trying to put together. She was having a hard time putting it together and we realized, oh, that's because this is more than one book. So rather
[00:08:32] than forcing them and trying to figure out how to make them all connect, we pulled them apart. And then she has these beautiful, she's working on her second book right now. She's already had
[00:08:41] her first book out. So this is a really cool process to help you see how this supposedly, initially random writing can actually become a book and maybe more than one book. So I'm curious what resonates with you here? Is it getting you excited? Are you starting to
[00:08:58] realize, oh, wow, I think this random writing I've been doing could actually come together and be something that I publish. Or are you still a little, does it still seem a little
[00:09:09] mysterious and uncertain? Whatever it is I want to know. So make sure you send a message to me on Instagram, the Shana underscore V. Let me know what you're thinking after you hear this
[00:09:22] and how you're going to use this if at all, as you look at that random writing those bits and bobs. And I want to wrap up today as always in thanking our sponsor, the mothership ruler
[00:09:36] for menopause, the menopause rocks guru of the world, Ms. Heather Bartos, Dr. Heather Bartos. And you've been hearing me talk about her over and over. She is someone who is really on a mission
[00:09:51] to embrace this particular time in women's lives as the best time in your life. You aren't done. It's not something to be feared. It's not something that we just go off into a corner
[00:10:05] and just shrivel up and disappear. It's actually a time where we can really take ownership of our health and understand what is going on and receive the support that she loves to give. Dr.
[00:10:18] Heather Bartos is a Reiki master energy healer and physician, and she is committed to medical excellence that converges with soulful wellness. And I got to tell you, I have been working with her both one-on-one and in her menopause mothership community. And it has been a game
[00:10:36] changer in my life. So we are dropping the link. If this is something you are interested in, go check it out. I don't want anyone to suffer and I don't want anyone to not have the support
[00:10:47] that they need. And if nothing else, she's just a great resource. She has wonderful material and resources that you can look through on your own. She is awesome. So we are so excited to be partnered with Dr. Heather and her menopause mothership community. As always,
[00:11:04] thanks for joining us today and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Written Compass. If you are enjoying this content, do me a favor and go
[00:11:16] and review the podcast. This allows me to share and get these messages out to the people who really need them, who we want to read their books in the future. You can also go and share
[00:11:27] your thoughts and tag me at shanahartman underscore on Instagram. Again, this is just a way for us to get connected and share the writing love. And if you know that you are ready to write your book, that message that's been burning inside of you for a long time,
[00:11:44] then I want to talk to you. My team and I want to talk to you. Head on over to shanahartman.com and click work with us. From there, you'll see an application to
[00:11:54] explore and see if writing your book is your next best step. You've been listening to The Mesh, an online media network of shows and programs ranging from business to arts, sports to entertainment, music to community. All programs are available on the website
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