“I’d been thinking about writing this book and tried 4 or 5 times to get started but it was going nowhere.”

☝🏼 I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this from people.

They desperately want to write the book that’s gnawing away at them, but get nowhere.

It’s painful — sometimes physically — to have an idea inside you that you can’t coax out, like bad psychic indigestion or something.

For me, it’s a bloated, over-extended feeling, like my skin is too tight, and I’m more restless than usual in an angry kind of way.

I don’t know if Sara Walka felt kinda like that, but I do know she was utterly frustrated at not being able to get her book started — and now, she has a book. She wrote it.

Here’s how.

“I wanted to write this book to help other people see that there’s nothing wrong with them.

Many people think they’re lazy, unmotivated, not intelligent enough but that’s not the case.

It’s something they’ve come to believe about themselves, and I want to help people stop believing that about themselves.

“When I found MicroBook Magic, I thought: This is perfect, it’s small and there’s somebody telling me where I need to be each week, pushing me along with a deadline in a small group. I signed up 10 minutes after spotting this course.

“I’m the kind of person who changes my mind several times and I worried whether I’d commit to a topic and follow through.

But Vicky’s reassurance throughout the whole process to make it smaller and doable really helped.

☝🏼This mind-changing can happen for many reasons, but it’s often because we’re quite sure about what we want to write.

We haven’t quite nailed down that idea closely enough, and so we flit about.

Part of what we do in MicroBook Magic is get that clarity.

We simplify, and hone, until the idea is super simple and the message is sharp.

“It’s been a great experience working with Vicky. She always gives constructive feedback and invites you to think or approach things in a different way. It’s never negative, always encouraging and just enough nudges to get you over the finish line.

“The process was very clear. Every week, we were given a clear objective, either come up with a topic outline, map your readers journey, write drafts, think of different ideas for catchy chapter topics and titles and think about marketing.

“Each week had a layer of how do you start? how do you follow through after you publish it? There was just enough information to keep top of mind and give you direction, without any extra work required.”

☝🏼One of the biggest reasons people don’t finish their books is the magnitude of the thing.

Writing a book is a mammoth task; it’s do-able, plenty of people do it, but it’s huge.

Writing a MicroBook, though, feels do-able right from the start, and I’ve designed the course so that we take tiny beetle steps every day

(because sometimes baby steps are too big, right?)

We create a habit, and take it one thing at a time, and make progress — and I am here by your side the whole way.

“From start to finish, the focus was always on writing your book and as you’re writing it, know why you’re writing it and what you’re going to do with it.”

☝🏼This is huge: we can get so bogged down in the writing and the magnitude of the task, we can drift off track.

It’s easy to forget why we started in the first place, and where we’re going — and this is another reason most books never get finished.

Having someone on hand to remind you is golden.

As Sara said: “When you’re in the thick of being creative, you can forget why you’re being creative in the first place. In this case, if you’re writing non-fiction, there’s a reason you’re writing it and it’s easy to forget that sometimes.

“3 benefits of getting help to write a book:

(1) Having somebody waiting for your book + expecting it

(2) Nudges to get to the finish line

(3) The guidance + coaching to stay focused on the mission. Remembering your mission and your outcome. What do you want to happen after?”

Another reason people struggle to write books is this idea that we have to do it alone — like Victor Hugo in his lonesome attic and scratchy blanket.

You don’t.

Nobody really writes a book alone.

And it’s not cheating to use tools!

“I liked the organisers that Vicky provided because they really helped to keep it micro, tight and to one topic.

“I think the most useful thing was her live feedback.

Even when I didn’t submit my own work (as I don’t have a lot of free time), hearing Vicky give feedback to other people on the Zoom calls and in Voxer, helped me to apply that to what I was doing.”

The group calls are a goldmine and you will get as much value from other people’s questions as from your own.

You do not have to do this alone.

So — you, with the book in your head. You haven’t started yet, and that’s okay — it’s super common, as I hope Sara’s story shows.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s get it done.