Shelley Hitz: Powerful Writing Strategies [Interview]
In this Behind-the-Scenes interview with Richard Lowe, learn the 3 writing strategies that helped him write and publish 7 books in 30 days.
This is episode six of author audience. Welcome to the author audience academy. show the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here’s your host, Shelley Hitz.
Shelley Hitz: Welcome to author audience where I’m on a mission to help you reach more people with your message, it’s time for you to shine. Today, I’m rolling out the red carpet and inviting you into my community for a behind the scenes look at what’s working for authors just like you. And my name is Shelley hits. I’m the owner of author audience Academy.
The most rewarding part of my job is helping others get results and to reach their goals. In this episode, I want to position the spotlight on one of my members. And that member is Richard Lowe. Welcome, Richard.
Richard Lowe: Welcome. Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
Shelley Hitz: Yeah, Richard is one of the most prolific members I have. And he’s, he’s gonna be talking about that soon. But I just wanted to briefly introduce you, Richard, from your bio. Richard has spent 33 years in the computer and information technology industry. So, you just told me you’re a computer guy, right. He decided to take early retirement to pursue his dreams of becoming a professional writer and published author.
We’ll hear more about that soon. Richard is a leader in the computer industry serving as VP Consulting at two companies, then Director computer operations at Trader Joe’s. During his 2410 year tenure at tgase. He focused on computer security and preparing for the possibility of disaster. So he’s written hundreds of articles and actively works as a professional ghostwriter.
So if you’re looking for a ghostwriter, you might want to check out Richard. And he’s done a ton of other things. He’s published books on his own. And he’s written a short ebook, on the aspects of freelance writing, and so much more. So welcome, Richard. I’m so happy to have you.
Happy to be here. So one of the things I really wanted you to teach about in today’s center stage spotlight training is about being a prolific writer, and what really helps you to reach that writing zone where you’ve been able to just really write a lot of books, how many books have you written? recently? I’ve lost track.
Richard Lowe: The last 30 days I published seven.
Shelley Hitz: That’s amazing. Seven, seven books in 30 days. Did you write all of those books to or were some of them already written?
Richard Lowe: They I wrote them off? Wow. I’ve got three in progress.
Shelley Hitz: Yeah, it’s amazing. Now. So I’m excited for all of us to learn from Richard today. And his success strategy that he’s going to be sharing is just what he’s learned about writing quality books fast. So tell me just a little bit about just your journey in this last month, and some things that have really helped you in getting this much writing done.
Richard Lowe: While I was writing a computer book, the first one, and I got a bit into it, and I was scattered all over the place writing a novel and writing some other books and didn’t really know what to do. And then I saw your email pop up that said, Hey, come to my teleseminar.
And it’s okay, fine, what have I got to lose? You know, it’s gonna be another one of those, you know, yeah, just demands money, you know, blah, blah, blah. Well, it turned out it wasn’t that actually, you turned out to be an awesome speaker, and you gave me information, even in the teleseminar that I could use, which is kind of different than most of them. Most of them don’t do that.
So by the time the seminar was over, and over, I’d already bought before was over, and then I’m like, all happy and stuff. And already starting to take the courses while you’re tight while you’re talking.
And it was quite funny. And I got all excited. And what motivated me about the course is you talked about short Kindle ebooks, and I’m was busy trying to write much longer, harder, more researched paperbacks that were taking months to write, because of the research involved in interviewing people and, and all that.
And something clicked it was just like, oh, yeah, you know, it’s a lot less risk to spend. You know, for me, it takes actually three days to write one of those Kindle ebooks of about 10,000 words, wow. But however long it takes, it’s a lot less risk and spending whatever writing a paperback. You write it if it doesn’t sell fine, you know, you’ve wasted a few days or a week or whatever it takes to write you didn’t just wait six months.
Right? And that really motivated me and you know, so I started writing and then Boom, boom, boom, boom, they just started coming. And it’s they just come fast and furious. Because I’ve got a lot of ideas, I got a lot of experience in different areas. And the course is really good.
I’ve kind of decided to, I’ve gotten through the first module and I decided to stop finish, get the ideas out, write the books, that I’m going to pursue the second module, which is, you know, kind of how to sell them. Is the next part.
Shelley Hitz: Yeah. So, tell me a little bit about you. You’re mentioning how it really helped you to schedule your writing. Talk to us a little bit about that?
Richard Lowe: Well, that was one of the things that I decided to do was to set a calendar and say from, in my case, from 4pm, to midnight, and other people have different times is my writing time. And I actually do two things. So every day my calendar beeps and says it’s time to write stupid, and that’s what it says,
Oh, no. So I get up and I don’t start writing and write write, write, write. But also, I set my timer to write for 45 minutes. And then I take a 15 minute break and go do something else. And then I come back, set the timer for 45 minutes. So I’m not writing that entire time. And that really helps because I found I get what I call square eyes. If I stare at the computer screen for too long.
Shelley Hitz: You know, that’s really, really smart, because they talk about that, you know, giving yourself a set period of time. Think it’s the Pomodoro technique, you know, the I think there’s this, like 20 minutes or 30 minutes. But that’s really, really smart what you’ve done because you give yourself a period of time, and you tell yourself, you have 45 minutes to write go.
And your brain in your brain takes that it’s like, okay, 45 minutes, what can I get done, and then you give yourself a break. That’s good physically, I used to be a specialist in ergonomics, when I practice as a physical therapist. So it’s good for us to get up and stretch. But it’s also good for your mind to give yourself a break, and then you come back another 45 minutes. So that’s a great tip. And it sounds like it’s really worked well for you.
Richard Lowe: What would I do in that 15 minutes is just like go jump on my exercise bike, and you know, watch some TV at the same time, something different, something not writing. Yeah, and it works very well.
Shelley Hitz: Yeah, that’s really cool. Now, you have also found that you really have a lot of success with speaking books. Tell me a little bit about how that’s been working for you.
Richard Lowe: Well, that came as a total surprise, I read it in your course, or listened to it, whatever. Yeah. And you said dictation, and I thought, well, I have Dragon Naturally already paid for it. So I may as well give it a shot. And I’ve never had any luck with it.
But I decided to give it one more try before deleting it from my system forever. And suddenly, I found myself instead of writing 200 words an hour, writing 1500 words an hour, because I could just speak them. Now of course, you got to go back and edit it. But that’s a whole different path.
Right. And just bam, you know, I can write a 10,000-word book literally in one day. And then I spend the next day editing it. And then the third day, I edit it again, just to make sure and then I send it to a proofreader. And that technique seems to be working very well.
Shelley Hitz: Yeah, and you know, every person is different. So, what will work for you may not necessarily work for me. But I love that you’re sharing these techniques, because some of our listeners may resonate with one of these tips.
And someone may just realize, Oh, I haven’t tried that before, I want to try dictating as well and see how that works for me, and they may find it works really well, I find that even just using the built in dictation from on my iPad, or my iPhone is pretty accurate. And I can dictate even sometimes, I’ve done it while I’m out on a trail logging. And obviously, it can’t be too technical of a trailer, I would pry trip. But I’ve dictated things when I’m out and about even sometimes, too.
So it’s a great technique. And I’m really, really happy that you have found a zone and that you’re really finding success with this. And I’m excited to see what’s next for you. I know that you have a ton of writing to do. But I know you’ll you’ll do well with the marketing too, because you’re definitely a go getter.
I love seeing you in the forums, and you’ve been very active in the forums. I remember you saying one day, I can’t believe how much more productive I’ve been just being in the forums, writing my take action plans and interacting with people tell me just a little bit about that.
Richard Lowe: Well, I tend to be very active on forums anyway, because it’s a great way to get data from people and to contribute and stuff. And I just jumped in and started talking and nobody was talking at first. I mean, there were a couple of people that were excited about joining. Of course, I just started introducing myself and asking people needed help and mostly talking about I was having all these wins.
And then people started blah, blah, and it was great. And it produces energy and the energy grows and then then somebody says something Oh yeah, that’s a good idea. And I’m off doing that thing. And you know, maybe it turned out not to be a good idea or something but at least it was an idea.
And the It’s funny though, how the energy picked up, just bam. It really helped somebody I’ve had more more things in the forums than anybody else, but somebody passed me recently.
Shelley Hitz: Yeah, there’s a leaderboard in our forums at author audience academy.com. And so Richard’s been at the top for a while.
Richard Lowe: I got past I got a kid. Yeah.
Shelley Hitz: So it is, it’s really, it’s encouraging and motivating to be have a place, I’m in there daily interacting with everyone, and have a place where you can post your goals every week, but then also post your wins and, you know, have other people encouraging you and offering input and advice, you know, getting input on book covers, or book titles, that sort of thing.
So thank you so much for being such an integral part of that forum. And you were there right when it was starting? So it’s just exciting to have you part of there? Well, as we’re wrapping down today’s session, I want you to share with our listeners a take action tip, what is one thing you would recommend that they do that they take action on this week? As a result of the training you shared?
Richard Low: Well, actually, I thought of two if that’s okay, yeah, that’s fine. The first one is make your calendar, set some time in the day, whenever your best time of writing is and create a calendar every day, or every Tuesday or whatever you’re gonna write and set the calendar up exactly that way and then follow it. So when it says it’s time to write, close the door, kick the cat out, tell the wife to go away, whatever. That’s your, that’s your writing time. And follow that religiously. But put it on your Google Calendar, whatever you’ve got.
So you get prompted, and it says, It’s time to write now. And then right. And that works very well, because then you don’t have any excuses. Yes. And then the second one was a problem that I found that I had was I used to write and edit at the same time. So I’d be writing, delete, delete, delete, writing, delete, delete, delete.
And that’s something that dragon dictionary solved, which is one reason why my rate went up is now I’m just writing. So the second takeaway is, right, doesn’t matter what it says, edit later. And that really helps. Because you don’t you don’t need to think as much you don’t need it’s a different whole different exercise. It’s well, you know, a hat, it’s a different hat. It’s a different job.
Shelley Hitz: Yes. And that is such good advice. Everyone that from Stephen King, to, to, you know, to you and I, we do better when we just let it all flow, the first draft and the first draft is never the final draft, and then do the editing. So those are both really great tips, Richard, and it’s just obvious why you’re getting so much success and you’re having so much momentum because you’re definitely putting those things into place.
So thank you so much for being here today. Where can people find you online if they want to connect with you or if they want to find out more about what what you offer with your ghostwriting services,
Richard Lowe: thewritingking.com
Shelley Hitz: Thewritingking.com. I love it. Awesome. Well, thank you, everyone for joining us for another episode of author audience. And Richard mentioned my live webinar. He called it a teleseminar. But it’s my live webinar. And so if you would like to join me on my next live webinar, I’d love to have you join me.
We do take action, you will get something out of it. And you can join me at Shelley hits.com forward slash live webinar. And I look forward to seeing you there soon. Thanks again, Richard. And you’re welcome. Excited to see what’s ahead for you. All right.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Author audience show. Connect with us online at author audience.com where you’ll find all the resources mentioned in today’s episode. While you’re there, grab Shelley’s free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six-step ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.
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