Jacob Lauritzen

Learning the Business of Writing

Author: Jacob Lauritzen

  • Talk About Your Writing

    Talk About Your Writing

    I started to post online about my upcoming book, Co-Teaching with Robots: Being Human in the AI Assisted Classroom, but I wasn’t prepared to talk to people in person about it.

    Knowing how I have reacted in the past to these sorts of conversations, I should have expected it. I am horrible about talking about these things.

    I’ll have friends and acquaintances ask me about something I’ve posted and I get incredibly uncomfortable. I try to minimize what I’m doing and I try to end the conversation as quickly as possible. I don’t know if I feel like I’m boring them or if I really am afraid to talk about my writing.

    Are you the same way? Are you afraid to talk to friends, family, or even strangers about what you write?

    Maybe I’m afraid of sharing my work and feeling rejected if they are bored by it or maybe I am really just uncomfortable with the attention.

    There is this safety in sharing thoughts and ideas online. I have time to think about what I am going to say (or not say). I can choose when to login or not to login. I don’t have to be in the room with someone as they read what I’ve posted.

    It’s much more intense to have a conversation about my book on AI when someone asks me about it.

    And more and more that keeps happening. It is nice to have so many people responding to my work, but I also realize that not every book I write on their the next year is going to have the same audience, much less my friends and family.

    This first book is for teachers. If you aren’t a teacher, then you really aren’t the target audience for it. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t or shouldn’t read it, but it’s not for you.

    How do you talk to someone about a topic that you know they don’t NEED to know about?

    And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’m just uncomfortable, because I expect them to only care about the topics I think they care about.

    Whether we think we are talking to much, we don’t have anything interesting to say, or we’re just anxious, we need to practice talking about what we write. We need to believe in what we write. We need to trust that others might be interested in what we have to say.

    If we don’t, we’ll never get passed these self-imposed barriers that stop us from connecting with each other. We can’t market that way. We can’t grow as authors if we live in fear of someone actually being interested in our work.

    I’m going to work on this. I might even role play so that I am prepared when the opportunity arises. You might consider doing the same. I hope for your sake, you do better than me.

    Good luck out there! I’ll see you next week.

    —Jacob

  • I Wrote a Book in Three Weeks. Now What?

    I Wrote a Book in Three Weeks. Now What?

    At the beginning of this week, I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

    I made a list of all of the chapters that I needed to finish and I planned out the days to complete them. As I checked each box off, I started to gain motivation and before I knew it, I only had two chapters left.

    Yesterday, I finished those two chapters and now I have a complete rough draft.

    Now what?

    I could take a victory lap and pat myself on the back. I think that’s important, but my real goal isn’t to write just a book in a month. My goal is to write a book a month for at least a year.

    I’m a week ahead of schedule. Kind of two weeks actually, because I gave myself five weeks for this first book.

    I have mixed emotions as I scan the horizon from here.

    There is a part of me that wants to plow ahead and take advantage of the lead I’ve given myself.

    There is another part that is worried about burning myself out if I don’t pace myself.

    What would you do if you were in my shoes? You’ve completed a big step in a project. You’re a head of schedule, but there is still a lot left to do. What would you do?

    As I walked to work this morning, I asked myself what I wanted to do next. I have a very detailed plan in place, but it is a tentative plan. I thought I could start to work on revising my book or I could do the more fun project and start to outline the next book. That would mean I would need to commit to which book would be next.

    My original plan was to write the second book in my series on Co-Teaching with Robots (teaching with AI). But there is another part of me that thinks it might be invigorating to switch gears.

    I could jump ahead in the schedule or throw my plan out the window altogether.

    Then, I start to ask myself why I want to change my plan already. What was wrong with the plan? Am I afraid that I’ll lose momentum again.

    The second week of this project had several dips in motivation. Maybe I’m just afraid that next week I’ll run out of gas because I made the wrong decision.

    I’m conflicted.

    Part of this project is to challenge myself to do new things—to improve my writing—to challenge myself. Another part of this project is to actually make money. That might be the part that scares me the most.

    As much as I may struggle to motivate myself, I can’t control whether other people buy my book. That scares me. I can market it till I’m blue in the face, but that is only influencing a purchase. I can’t buy it for them.

    I’ve reached a milestone—a benchmark—but maybe this is also a plateau. I can go up from here, or I can stay where I’m at. I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to keep climbing.

    I guess I’ll let you know next week.

    Thanks for reading.

    —Jacob

  • Believe in What You Write

    Believe in What You Write

    As I start this year long project to write a book every month, my biggest fear is that I am going to lose my motivation. I love being creative and coming up with ideas, but my ADHD brain also loves to jump from project to project. That has made focusing on one book at a time really difficult.

    As I write this, I have about 70 pages completed for my first book in the series: Co-Teaching with Robots: Being Human in the AI Assisted Classroom. I am pretty happy with what I’ve written. The more I write, the more confidence I gain that I am going to finish this book and be able to keep this project going.

    This week I only wrote a few thousand words, but I was able to launch the pre-order for the book on Amazon. I was nervous to launch it because I don’t know if anyone is going to buy it. 

    Even though I just launched this project with its new newsletter, YouTube channel, and podcast, I was hoping I would have more followers and subscribers by now. I’m trying to be realistic, but it has really challenged my motivation.

    Because I have been worrying about being able to focus and trying to keep going with a small following, I have been thinking a lot about my motivation. That’s when I realized I need to believe in what I write.

    I know that I need to improve in my marketing. I have tried, but I haven’t been successful—yet. Still, I need to believe in what I write.

    We can’t know if we’re going to be successful or not. That’s not a reason to stop or to give up. We need to believe in what we write.

    As I started to think about this, I was reminded of how athletes approach competition. As a fan, I know that sometimes my team is going to get destroyed by their competition, but that doesn’t stop them. They may even go into the game believing they can succeed. Sometimes they do—against all odds.

    How? How can they ignore when they are outmatched and still believe that they can win? I’m sure a sports psychologist could explain this better, but in short, because they have to believe. They simply can’t do their job if they don’t believe they can win. It’s a job requirement. As writers, we need to adopt a similar mindset. We need to believe against all odds that we can succeed—because we can.

    At my doctoral graduation, the guest speaker was WNBA legend Lisa Leslie. During her speech, she told the story of growing up in Compton, California. Against all odds, she believed that she could succeed. Why? Because, she said, “Why not me?” Someone had to succeed, why not her?

    And so I ask the same question: why not me? Why not you? Why not us?

    It may not happen now. It may not happen soon. But, why not?

    As long as I keep trying, even if I fail along the way, the only sure indicator of failure, is giving up.

    I have struggled to be motivated, but I’m not ready to give up. It’s too soon. Too much is possible.

    As I share what I’ve written so far, I have had a good response—in person. That encourages me. Seeing myself complete more pages encourages me. Knowing that I’m getting closer to my goal encourages me.

    Why not met?

    Why not you?

    Why not us?

    Let’s keep going. We can choose the measure for our own success. Right now, continuing means success for me. Let’s keep going.

    I’ll talk to you next week.

    —Jacob

  • Write a Book-a-Month

    Write a Book-a-Month

    Well, I did it. I started writing my next book.

    My goal was to write 3,000 words in my first week and then report back to you. I was able to write 8,000 words.

    Why such a lofty goal? Well, I wanted to try to write a book in a month. After hearing Michelle Kulp’s strategy, I decided to try it out for myself. She was able to write a book a month for an entire year. By the end of the year, she was making $3,000 a month in royalties. Since my goal with this project is to see what it takes to make a living as a writer, this seems like a great place to start.

    So I did.

    I started by writing a rough outline of the topics I wanted to write about with a thesis and a story for each chapter. Then, I started to write.

    Some days were easier than others. I started to find my voice and the words flowed easily. Other days, I really struggled to find my motivation to write.

    My goal is to turn this into an ebook, paperback book, and audio book. I want it to be a little more than 100 pages so that it’s easy to consume, doesn’t take too long to write, but is still (probably) long enough to justify someone buying it.

    That’s my goal.

    If all goes to plan, then I think I’ll have a rough draft in about two weeks. Here’s hoping.

    After that, I think that I’ll try to spend about a month soliciting feedback while I start working on my next book. It’s hard to tell how long that step will take. I’ve heard others recommend giving people at least a month.

    Since each of my first few books will be on similar topics, I’m a little nervous about asking too much of my beta readers. Asking them to respond in a month is one things. Asking them to do it three months in a row is another.

    I can feel myself getting impatient even as I try to approach this situation realistically. I want to keep the momentum I’m building up without burning out myself and everyone around me—like I usually do.

    But so far, the future is looking bright. I made progress and I am confident going into next week.

    So what do you think? Do you want to try to write a book in a month? If so, what would you write about? I’d love to hear about it.

    Until then, happy writing.

    —Jacob

  • Write What You Can Finish

    Write What You Can Finish

    I have always been one to jump from project to project. Lately, I’ve been trying to understand why.

    The answer is actually very simple. I have ADHD. I was never diagnosed as a child, but the signs have always been there. Now, as an adult, it manifests in a number of ways—one of which is my constant pull from project to project.

    I have started countless projects that I haven’t finished because I jumped to the next. For this reason, I have been trying to understand how I can focus my creative mind.

    Over the years, I have developed a system for taking notes on each of my ideas. It has made it easier for me to follow my passion. If I get an idea for a new story, I just need to open up Notion (my notetaking app of choice) and write it down. When I need it, I know where to find it.

    Once, my best friend asked what our version of a Christmas movie would look like. Within a few seconds I was able to respond with two movie ideas. How? I had already written them down. I just had to pull out my notes.

    Which brings us to now.

    This week I have been reading about writing short books to start a writing business. In Michelle Kulp’s book, Write Your Way to $100K, she outlines two paths: either write a book to drive sales to your business or write a ton of books to drive sales of your books. Right now, I’m leaning towards the later.

    Kulp started her writing business by challenging herself to write 12 books in 12 months. That’s right. She wrote one book a month for a year—and it paid off. She was able to build up a passive income of several thousand dollars a month. Since that’s my goal, I am considering trying her strategy.

    She recommends a few strategies. One, write books in a series. This helps to iterate on an idea instead of starting from scratch each time. It also helps to build an audience of readers. Second, alternate writing longer and shorter books. I have outlined several books—some of which are relatively short.

    In a video from BookLaunchers, I forget which one, she said something that caught my attention. She suggested that authors of nonfiction books should write about a topic they want to be known for. That made me think. What do I want to be known for?

    My interests are all over the map. I have outlined two novel series, a series of poetic memoirs, and many nonfiction books. I have struggled with this question for over a year. What do I want to focus on? But because of my ADHD brain, I don’t want to focus! I want to do it all!

    I have also been thinking what book ideas I could write quickly so that I can start to build up a catalogue of work. Yesterday, I figured it out.

    For the past two years, I have been training my colleagues at work on how to use AI in their classrooms. I have already worked out a lot my ideas on the topic. I just need to write them down.

    So, I came up with the idea for a book: Co-Teaching with Robots: Being Human in the AI Assisted Classroom. Here is a mock-up cover I might use:

    I like to develop projects out of order (no surprise), so I made this cover to inspire me. I started to outline the book and I started to think I could actually write this in a month.

    Then, I kept reading Kulp’s book. She asked what series our books could fit into. So, I started to think how I could build this idea into a series. After some work, I came up with two more books ideas (I’m not going to share everything right now though).

    So, I have some ideas and I’m motivated. What could be wrong? Right? RIGHT?

    Well, remember I said I have ADHD? My concern is that I’ll get started on this project because it’s the latest shiniest idea in my head, but when I get a new idea, I’ll quit and move on. I don’t want to do that.

    Which brings me to the title of this article. If you can’t decide what to write, maybe because you don’t have any ideas or you have too many ideas, write what you can finish.

    A lot can be learned by working on a project, even if you don’t finish it, but if your goal is to publish—then publish.

    I’m talking to myself as much as I am to you. I need to take this advice too.

    So, my plan for the next month is to put my head down and focus on writing a short 100-ish page book on AI in the classroom. I have a plan. I am motivated. When I start to lose that motivation, I’m going to try to push through.

    What are you motivated to write? Maybe we can do it together?

    I’ll update you on my progress next week. Until then, thanks for reading.

    —Jacob

  • Become an Apprentice

    Become an Apprentice

    When I was in college, I had the privilege of studying creative writing. My program required me to take a little bit of everything, so I did. I studied fiction, poetry, scriptwriting, and creative nonfiction.

    I learned a lot from each class, but I was surprised by how much I was drawn to creative nonfiction. It felt like a natural extension of how I thought.

    We were visited by Karen Brennan, the author of Being with Rachel: A Personal Story of Memory and Survival. In it, she tells the story of caring for her adult daughter after an accident. That experience stuck with me, but I never followed through on writing my own memoirs.

    Over the years, I have thought and even outlined several books, but I’ve never finished any of them. That is until now. I have been working on the manuscript for a new book. It is part poetry and part memoir.

    The premise is simple. Shortly after I turned 40, my wife gave birth to our fifth child. Since then I have been writing poems about my experience as a father and as a man who is dealing with … well, getting older. Some poems are funny and some are serious, but altogether it paints a portrait of a moment of my life. I’m calling it: A Father at Forty: Poems and Stories from the Year I Grew Up.

    To prepare myself to write the memoir portions of the book, I have been reading Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington. I have absolutely loved how thought provoking this book has been.

    In one passage, she writes, “Whether you are a beginning writer setting out to learn about the memoir or an experienced writer turning from poetry or fiction to this new form, it is important to remember that it takes time to learn” (37).

    She goes on to refer to this as an apprenticeship. I had never thought of it this way.

    I have done a lot of writing over the years. I have written hundreds of pages of academic research for my college degrees. I have written several screenplays as well. I wrote a textbook. But none of that is the same as writing a memoir. I’ve come to realize that even thought I have spent countless hours learning to write, I am still an apprentice memoir writer.

    I have a lot to learn.

    In approaching this memoir, I decided to think of myself as a character that needs to have a character arc. That’s a strange thing to think about when you are still living the story, but it has helped me to gain perspective.

    Recently, I was listening to Episode 289 of the Self Publishing School podcast with Chandler Bolt. In that episode, he interviewed Brooke seam, the author of the memoir, May Cause Side Effects. In it, she describes the year after she was taken off of depression medication and the horrible side effects she experienced. She explained that even though she new what the story was, she didn’t find her voice until she tried a writing experiment where she wrote in the first-person present tense. Once she did that everything fell into place for her.

    I had a similar experience.

    When I started to write the stories between the poems, I also found myself describing the scenes in the first person. Maybe it’s because that’s how screenplays are written, but doing that helped me to make the scenes real. I was putting the reader into my shoes rather than just telling them what happened.

    This is one of the many lessons I’ve learned as I have only begun to learn the craft of memoir writing. Sometimes you need to look at the story from a new point of view—such as first-person present tense.

    If I approach this book thinking that I already know how to do everything, I won’t be humble enough to learn. I won’t be humble enough to listen to good advise. The book will almost certainly suffer for it.

    As you travel through you writer journey, be humble enough to learn. Think of the process as an apprenticeship where you should be learning. Approach it with expectations for what you will learn and go find the books, the teachers, the mentors that you need to learn the lessons that will help you down your path.

    I certainly don’t have all the answers, but at least I know what I don’t know and what I want to learn. I hope this helped you as well.

    I’ll see you next week.

    —Jacob

  • Announcing “Draft Pages”

    Draft Pages is a weekly podcast on the business of writing. I don’t have all the answers, but I hope that through this process we can all learn how to make a living as writers together.

    Here is my announcement.

    You can subscribe to the new SubStack here:

    Subscribe to SubStack

    Here is the podcast on Spotify. I hope it helps you on your writing journey.

  • Can You Make a Living as a Writer?

    Can You Make a Living as a Writer?

    About a year ago I got the idea for an experiment. I wanted to answer a simple question: what does it take to make a living as a writer?

    I’m an English professor at a small college in Arizona and I have no intention of leaving my job, but it bothered me that I didn’t have an answer to the question. I also wanted to know if I could do it myself. So, I decided to find out.

    No one expects me to do this. Almost all of my students take my courses on their way to earning other degrees. They plan on going into nursing or business or education. They are only taking English, because they have to.

    My boss doesn’t expect my students to write best sellers or to win Pulitzer Prizes. It’s just not in my job description.

    I tell my students that the purpose of my classes isn’t to teach them how to write an essay or a research paper—it’s to teach them how to think critically. I frame the course that way, so they feel like there is something in it for them, even if they don’t expect to write essays in their chosen fields. But what if they could make money writing? That could give them more incentive. It would provide more value.

    I decided that the best way to answer the question was to do it myself. So, I started to research.

    Nicolas Cole, the author of The Art and Business of Online Writing, says that the fastest way to become a professional writer is to become a ghost writer. You don’t have to build a large audience, because you just need to find someone willing to pay you to do the writing they don’t have the time or skill to do. It makes sense, but I don’t want to cold call small businesses or take on clients. Not right now anyway.

    I want to write books. Lots and lots of book. I want to write nonfiction, poetry, memoir, and fiction. I want to do it all!

    And I can! There has never been a better time to be a writer. You don’t need to query agents and editors or pound on the doors of the establishment to find someone to publish your work, because you can just do it yourself! If I had a manuscript ready, I could create an account on Amazon and publish my book today—for free!

    But who would read it? How would they even know it’s available?

    Sure, someone might stumble into my work after sifting through pages and pages of other books. That might be okay if I just wanted to write for a hobby, but that’s not a winning business plan.

    So, I started to research business and marketing. I read Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. From there I found his other books, Marketing Made Simple and Business Made Simple. It gave me confidence and a roadmap to promote my writing as a business.

    Conventional wisdom on YouTube, and other outlets, is that every writer needs a newsletter. It gives you direct access to readers, it’s what Nicolas Cole calls an “attention engine”, but I don’t have any readers yet.

    I knew that I needed to find a way to provide my readers that same kind of value I wanted to provide my students. By doing that, I could build a community of readers that were willing to read what I have to write. But what would I write? What value could I share with them?

    So, I wrote out my StoryBrand and I cycled back to my ideas over and over again. In the end, my pitch is simple:

    • I am going to help writers that want to write for a living.
    • I am going to teach them how to write, encourage them to do it, and model the process through my own journey and writing.

    I don’t have an audience that will subscribe to a newsletter because they love my writing. They don’t know my writing. But, if I could help them to gain the confidence to do the writing they want to do, then they would have a reason to keep coming back.

    Now that I had a plan, I needed to figure out how to market it.

    So, I am starting this newsletter. I am also starting a podcast and a YouTube channel. I am sharing everything I publish through social media. I created a website to be the hub for everything. And, I am going to (try) to be patient as I start the long journey to break through the noise.

    If you are reading this, thank you. I hope that I can help you to gain the confidence to write. I hope that I can show you how to do it—because you can.

    It may not be easy, but it is possible. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I’m working on it. Together, we’ll be able to figure this out and yes, we’ll both learn how to make a living as a writer.

    Thanks for reading. I’ll talk to you next week.

    —Jacob