Think Like a Writer: The 5 Mindsets of Best-sellers

This is called Think Like a Writer. The five mindsets of bestselling authors.

I think this is why it's so important to talk about mindset because having the right mindset can really change everything for you. No matter what stage of the process that you're at.

But first let's talk about mindset. What is mindset? What does that word even mean? And how can it help you in your writing? So a mindset, the definition of a mindset is that it's a mental attitude. It's a way of thinking. It's a set of assumptions, usually influenced by your world view and personal philosophy.

In other words, mindset is how you approach your writing. It's what you are bringing to your writing. When you sit down to the page, anytime that you write something, anytime you show up to the blank page, you're bringing your mindset to that task and that matters. It matters because your mindset can totally change your results.

The right mindset, when you approach your writing with the right mindset over time, you're going to accomplish your goals. You're going to finish the chapter that you're working on. You'll become a better writer. You'll finish your book. You'll get published, but if you approach your writing with the wrong mindset, you'll get stuck.

You'll get stuck in writer's block. You won't finish. You won't get published. You won't make it as an author and you'll fail to achieve your writing goals.

And it really is about the beliefs that you have. The beliefs about your writing and how you approach your writing.

And that's why I'm here. So in 2008, I hit something of a low in my writing process. It was in some ways, a really exciting year for my writing. I wrote over a hundred articles that I published some short stories and poetry, which was so great. It was so fun to be writing, but I was also publishing most of them to just five people on my personal blog. And I got so discouraged during that time because it wasn't working because I wasn't connecting with people that I decided to take a long break for my writing that lasted almost a year.

And I felt so discouraged and discouraged. And so frustrated in the midst of that. I worried that I would never write a book. That I didn't have it in me, that I wasn't smart enough that I wasn't disciplined enough or talented enough to actually do it. Have you ever felt like that before that maybe you don't have what it takes to write a book that maybe you're not disciplined enough or maybe not talented enough?

Have you ever felt like that?

And then in 2011 everything changed for me 2011. I was mentored by a New York times bestselling writer and I just want to say. That was three years later, which is both a short amount of time and kind of a long time.

But three years later, and everything was different for me. I was being mentored by a New York times bestselling author. I published my first book, which became a bestseller. I was read by over a hundred thousand people, which was crazy. I became a professional writer, a dream come true. It really was one of the best years of my life.

So what happened? What was the difference between 2008 and 2011? And the difference was mindset. I learned some new mindsets. I had some ways of looking at the world and approaching my writing that were not working. That were letting me down that were failing me. And then I got a new way of looking at the world and I started succeeding beyond what I thought was possible.

And that's what I want to talk about in this training. I want to talk about five myths that can hold you back in your writing.

I've worked with thousands of writers and they see these myths again. And again, and again. Some of you here have these myths that you're believing. These failing mindsets when you write and they're holding you back from accomplishing your goal.

We're also going to talk about best-selling mindset. Some things that bestselling authors know that affects the way they approach their writing and their craft and their publishing process. Some of the things that we're going to talk about today will actually challenge you. They're going to challenge what you believe about yourself and about the world.

I encourage you to be open, to change. Because if you're not willing to change, if you're not willing to change how you think about the world, how you approach your writing, then you're not going to have the success that you want.

And my hope for you is that you will accomplish your goals. That's our mission at The Write Practice to help you accomplish your goals. But we need to start here with the beliefs that you have about your life and about your writing. Okay. Can we commit to that?

All right. So let's get into it, the five mindsets of best-selling writers and we'll start with this first myth that so many writers believe is that passion is enough to finish your book. Passionate is enough to finish your novel or your screenplay or your memoir.

And sometimes what this looks like is just being really excited about your idea.

And you think you have this amazing idea and the fact that you're so excited about it will be enough to finish your project. And that's true for me as well.

There was this one time when I had this amazing idea for a novel. I was in Romania at the time I was traveling the world. I was actually in Transylvania and I thought, this is an amazing place, a very inspiring place to write a novel.

And so I was so excited about it and I decided I was going to stay up all night. I was going to pull an all-nighter to work on this book. And so I'm working on this book in the middle of Transylvania, under the stars, working on this idea.

And I thought, if I just keep going, then maybe I'll get far enough to finish. Maybe I won't be able to quit. And so finally it was like 3:00 AM. I'm falling asleep at my computer. I couldn't write anymore. So I decided to end my writing time that day. And I came back to it the next day and I was pretty excited, still.

Then I read some of my writing and it didn't look so great. I still thought the idea itself was pretty good, but definitely not as great as the night before, but I kept working on it and I worked on it for a couple of weeks and every day, every writing session, the idea that I had in my head would diverge more and more from my actual writing.

Have you experienced that before? The original idea was so great and so exciting, but after I got 20,000 words in it had no resemblance to the actual writing I was doing, which by all accounts was terrible.

Then eventually a couple of weeks in the idea itself stopped working. I thought it was the stupidest idea in history of the world. I thought this is the worst book ever written. It's never going to work. So I started working on a new idea and I was so excited about this idea. I got 10,000 words into that. And then I thought, Hmm, you know what? This book is actually the worst book in the world that other book I thought that was the worst book I was wrong.

That was only in the second worst book in the world. This is the actual worst book and it's never going to go anywhere and know, by the way, I don't have another idea. So I'm just going to quit. And I did quit and I quit writing for a year.

Because passion is not enough. It's not enough. It's not going to fuel your writing.

You can't pull an all nighter and write a book. You do not have enough enthusiasm to fuel writing a book. None of us do writing a book. It takes too long. It just takes too long to be fueled by passion alone.

What best-selling writers know, the mindset that bestselling writers have is that they have to have a process, process over passion. Process trumps passion every time.

You need to have a process, a way that you go about writing your book, that works no matter what, whether you're feeling like writing or not, because they're going to be so many days when you don't feel like. Right. You need to have a process. And we actually have a process at The Write Practice that we've been developing over the last 10 plus years.

This is the process that I developed after failing to finish so many books and finally figuring out what it took to write 15 books. And so we have a worksheet that we're going to send to you. So make sure to go get a copy there.

You'll find that really helpful for you.

We're actually going to fill this out as we go through the training, and that will be so helpful for you as you work on your book idea.

Okay. And develop a process for writing your book. Sound good. So make sure to download that. Print it out if you're able, you could fill it out as we go in the training. Okay. And by the way, this worksheet is part of our write plan daily writing planner.

This planner for writers is really everything that we've learned about how to write a book, the entire process that we've developed over the last 10 plus years, packed into one really beautiful daily planner.

And one of the most important parts of the planner, when one of the most important parts of the whole writing process and that we've developed is our deadlines and consequences.

Section deadlines time. Consequences. So let's talk about each of these, starting with the deadlines. Okay. What is a deadline? A deadline is when you figure out, when you're going to finish your book, you set a date by a certain date. I'm going to finish the draft of my book or my screenplay or writing project.

And you write that down and you stick with it. And then every week you can work backward from there every week, you say, okay, I know that if I need to finish my book, I'm going to write X number of words this week to make my deadline. And you do that. So maybe your deadline is four months from now.

You want to finish your book before the end of 2021, which I think is totally possible by the way. And you, you commit to that, you write it down and you say, this is what I'm going to do it. And I know that this sounds like a really simple. Right. Setting a deadline on, it sounds like a simple thing, but once you commit to it, you're actually much more likely to do it because you start figuring out how you can actually hit that deadline and working backward from there.

Okay. And once you do set your deadline, here's a trick. That will make you more likely to do it.

Take a stand, make it public. Here's something I did last year. I set on Facebook by the end of September, I'm going to finish the second draft of my novel, which I'm in the middle of right now. It feels both terrifying and so exciting.

I posted that on Facebook and this was last year and I, I did it. I finished the second draft of my novel. I committed to that deadline publicly and I did it.

And I want to challenge you to do that right now. I want to challenge you to do that right now. I want you to go to your favorite social media site, whether it's Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is, and post on there saying that you're going to finish your book by a certain time, and that's going to help you stay accountable.

So here's what happens when you commit to this publicly, it actually changes your brain. It actually makes you more likely to do it. Okay. But here's the thing deadlines by themselves.

They're awesome. I love them. I think you should use them, but they're not enough. You might've heard of this quote before. I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make when they go by.

Deadlines are awesome, but they're not enough. You also have to have a consequence. If I don't finish my book by december 31st, 20, 21. I will. Something bad will happen to me. Okay.

So let me tell you a quick story about how I discovered consequences and how they worked. So I was working on my memoir, crowdsourcing Paris. By this time I had already written several books, like four or five bucks. And so I thought I was a pro, I was literally a pro I thought I knew what I was doing, but I was really struggling with this memoir.

And I was complaining to a writing friend saying, you know, I'm stuck. I haven't made any progress. And he said, okay, here's what you do. Write a check for a thousand dollars, give it to a friend and say, you have to send it. To a charity that I hate if I don't hit my deadline and you will absolutely finish your book.

And I said, that's stupid. That's a gimmick. I don't need that. I'm a pro.

And then a month went by and I hadn't made any progress on my book. And so I said, I have to do this consequences thing.

So this was 2016. I wrote a check for a thousand dollars to the presidential candidate that I most disliked, who's going to remain nameless.

And I gave it to a friend said, you have to send this. If I don't finish my book. And I will tell you, I was the most focused I've ever been. I finished that book in nine weeks. It was an amazing experience. And that's the power of consequences.

Failing writers. They think that passion is going to pull them through that, the ideas and now.

And it's not. And that's why they fail because they don't have enough process to get them through when the writing gets hard.

Because it is going to get hard. You guys, it's going to get really hard. You're going to hate your idea and you need to have something that's even harder, that's even worse.

And that's what the consequences for it's going to help you stay focused and get your work done.

Bestselling writers, they have a process. They do things that guarantee them to actually finish their book. And you need to have that too. So on your book plan worksheet, fill that section out the deadline and consequences section.

There's a whole section for your consequences, your deadlines. Fill that out, let us know in the chat. What, what consequence are you going to use to accomplish your goals?

All right, let's get into myth. Number two, the second myth that so many writers believe is that talent matters. So many writers believe that talent matters, that talent is the most important thing to be successful as a writer.

So many people believe this, and it's a myth.

Here's how this usually sounds. Because I'm a talented writer I deserve to be read. I deserve to be successful. I deserve to be a pro to become a bestseller and so on. And it's really an entitled mindset.

When I first got started as a writer, I had a version of this because I thought I was really talented. People often told me, “Wow, Joe, your writing is really great.

And I would say, “I know, right? It is really great. “

But this same mindset can often be flipped on its head and sound like this because I'm not a talented writer, I can't write a book. I can't become a bestseller. I can't become a pro writer. And so on.

Have you ever felt like that? Maybe you're feeling like that right now, that you don't actually have what it takes, that you don't have the natural talent, the natural discipline that you can't pull it off.

And I had these same fears because while some people told me that my writing was great, others told me it sucked or just ignored me altogether.

And this is the problem with this mindset, this talent mindset, because you can move back and forth between this entitlement thinking, thinking you're the best that you deserve things to self doubt, thinking about how you'll never make it. And you should probably just quit.

But talent is meaningless. The reality is, is that where you start has no effect on how you're going to get where you're going, because everyone is on a journey. All of us are on a journey. You are on a journey, but if you don't do the work to get there, you are not going to reach your destination.

So what then is the work that you need to do? You need to approach your writing practice with the mindset that you can become a great writer through deliberate practice.

Instead, you need to change your mindset from one where talent is the most important thing to your success, to one where practice is the most important thing to your success.

And at The Write Practice, believe it or not, I know this is probably hard to believe, we really do believe in practice because it changed everything for me.

When I started to believe in deliberate practice, when I let go of talent and started to believe in practice, it changed everything because it lowered the bar instead of self doubt, this idea that I can't become a great writer because I'm not talented because I or an entitlement mindset, I deserve to be treated like a great writer because of my talent.

It can change to great writer, talented or not, I'm going to do the work I'm going to put in the hours. I'm going to be disciplined. And if I do that long enough, I'm going to accomplish my goals.

So I get this question all the time. What is deliberate practice?

Deliberate practice is focused. You're focused on a specific thing on accomplishing one thing, because it's like, for example, writing a thriller novel, or writing a poem in a certain style or writing a short story. Okay. You're focused on a specific thing.

You also have to finish that thing, right? It's not good practice to start writing a thriller novel and then quit in the middle. That is not good practice that is practiced at failing. Right? You have to finish that thing, even if it's not good, you have to finish it because it's practice.

Practice requires repetition. It takes doing something again and again, until you master it and then doing it again.

You have to get feedback so important to get feedback, feedback from a coach and editor from a peer that's so important.

And most importantly of all. You have to be willing to fail. You have to experience failure.

And this is, what's so different about deliberate practice versus talent. Because for the writer who believes in talent, when you fail, it means that you're a failure. It means that your talent is real, that you're actually not talented, that you're never going to succeed. So when you fail, you're actually a failure. It becomes part of your identity, because if you were a talented, then you wouldn't fail. And that belief holds so many people back. And so they quit, just like I did, but for the practicing writer, failure's a good thing.

Failure is a chance to get better. Failure is awesome because it can spur you on.

I love this book called The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels. I highly recommend it. You should definitely check it out. Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels are these two psychologists who work in Hollywood. They have some of the most famous award-winning screenwriters and producers in the world as clients.

And there's this one story where they're working with the screenwriter who had writers block. But even worse, he was on a deadline and he had already gotten paid to work on this script. But he was stuck. He couldn't write a thing. He had been stuck for months and he knew that if it went on any longer, not only is he going to ruin his reputation, but he's going to have to pay the studio back and probably go bankrupt.

So he paid these two shrinks $350 an hour or something. Barry and Phil, and here's what they told him to do.

They said every day before you start writing, I want you to kneel in front of your keyboard and ask the universe to help you write the worst sentence in the world.

That was it. And the screenwriter of course heard this and thought, this is crazy. Why would I want to write the worst sentence in the world? That makes no sense, but he was desperate. And so he said, okay, I'll try it. And so every morning before he sat down to write, he would kneel in front of his keyboard and pray to write the worst sentence in the world.

And he was three weeks into this process when he had a dream where he heard this conversation between two characters and it gave him an idea for a new script a week after that the screenplay was finished a few months after that the film was made and a year later it won an academy award.

You have to lower the bar. You have to focus, not on the end result, not on your identity, but on practice. It's all just practice. It's a chance to fail and then to get better.

Or can you do that? Can you just write the worst sentence in the world? Can we commit to failing if that's what it takes to become a better writer? To writing the worst sentence in the world, not to becoming a bestselling writer all at once, not to writing an amazing book, you know, because that just puts the pressure on you and on your talent, just right.

Set the worst sentence in the world. Okay. Just show up, just practice and you will get better eventually. You're right. You will write something that's better. Okay. I've seen some yeses, some people ready to commit to that? Yes. No harm in trying so ready. I could scream aniline. Yes, Susan. Yes. Margaret.

Yes. Yes. I'm ready. Susan said easy. I do it every day. Margarita said that. I think I can do. Theresa said yes. Yes. Nayla Susan writing such sentences can beat off fear of failure from me. I love that. Alexander. Yes. Christine said mark. Yes. Or ye I like that. Been there, done that. We'll do it again. To hear us Kikuyu said, yes.

I doubt I need practice to write the worst ones that Joel can do. ABI said a lot. All right. And here's why this is so important because writing is iterative. Okay. You write a really bad draft and that turns into a better draft, a better second draft, and then you write a better third draft and it gets better and better.

It starts out really terrible, maybe like the worst draft in the world, but it gets better and better. And each time you have to commit to not being perfect, to not succeeding, to failing, but to making it a little bit better. Can you commit to that? Can you commit to failing? Okay. And that's what it takes.

Five drafts, maybe 10 drafts, just iteratively making it better. Every time is practice. Every time, a chance to learn every time, the chance to fail. And then. Right. It again, in a different way, failing writer, they treat every attempt as a chance to show off their talent. But when talent doesn't show up, they get discouraged and angry. They feel entitled and they quit.

Best-selling writers. They think that the world is practice and that every chance is a new time to explore. Every time they sit down to write a new chance to fail in a different way and a new chance that teaches them so much. And that's the major difference. Okay.

Let's get into myth number three. That your writing must be original. So many writers believe that their writing must be completely original, that you have to come up with these really original ideas, these really artistic ideas that are going to change writing for all time, the next great American novel or whatever you get an idea.

And it's so different. So unique. You think this is it. This is the idea I've never seen this done before, so I need to write it, but I've watched so many writers try and fail with their unique, original ideas.

Either they get stuck in the writing process because they can't write a book or they get stuck in the editing process because the book isn't working or they get stuck in the publishing process or the marketing process.

Instead, you need to have a different mindset.

I love this quote from Cormac McCarthy. Who's one of my favorite writers. He said, books are made from books.

And that's what writers need to learn. That books are made from books.

You take your original ideas, which are so important, and you combine them with the things that you learned from other writers.

Okay. You learn from other writers and you learn what they've done in similar situations, and then you take them and you apply them to your ideas.

And by the way, this isn't unique to writers. This is something, all artists do.

There's this famous designer named Virgil Abloh who started the couture street wear brand off-white. He's now the artistic director for Louis Vuitton, which is the largest fashion brand in the world.

And as a designer, he realized that humans want to contradictory things. They want two contradictory things. They want familiarity, that's comfortable and they want novelty, okay. Two things, familiarity and novelty.

So he decided to adapt that into his artistic strategy. And he created the 3% rule. And the idea behind this rule was that he was going to take an existing work, like these Nike air Jordans, and he was going to make a 3% change to it. And here's his version of that? Just 3%, 3% something new. And so, you know, you can do that as well. You can take structures that are already out there. You can take ideas. Shakespeare was really good at this.

And you just make a change to it. You add your own unique, original stand on it. And this is something that writers throughout history have done. You might have heard of the quote, great artists steal, right. And writers do this as well.

Ernest Hemingway, when he was first getting started, what he would do is he would copy out by hand the books of his favorite authors, including Rudyard Kipling, who is one of his favorites. He would copy them out by hand just so we could learn just so we could get a sense of the pacing and the structure that Kipling and other writers used. And this is true across all writing types when you're working on articles, whether you're writing screenplays, whether you're writing novels whatever you're doing.

Okay. And as you're looking for other types of things that you can study and that you can learn from. There's really two types of books that I would look at comps and masterworks. Okay. Compson masterworks. So what are masterworks to start with? Masterworks are the best, you know, of their class of their form in the last 50 or so years, sometimes longer, but the best books in their form in the last 50 years, their bestsellers they're classics, they might be films.

They're going to be in the same genre or plot type as your book. So whatever kind of story that you're writing, you want to find books that are similar to that, and then study them and you use them to inspire your style, to inspire your plot structure, to inspire your conventions.

So the second type is comps comps were published in the last five years. They're going to be best sellers, right? You're looking for a best sellers that are published in the last five years. And you want to find again, books that are in the same genre or the same plot type as your books. You want to find similar books in the same kind of story that you're trying to tell.

You're going to use these, especially, especially to inspire your publishing strategy to inspire your query letters, for example, and your plot structure, not so much your style, right? So whatever kind of story, cause that's being pot to whatever kind of story that you're trying to write. You want to find stories that are kind of similar that are out there so that you can learn from them.

And the thing is that these books will save your life. They will save your life. You'll get into the middle of your story halfway through it and you'll hate it. You'll think this is the worst thing ever written. You have no idea what to do next. And so you go back to your masterworks, you go back to your comps, and you say, okay, what did these authors do? How did they solve this problem? And then you figure it out and you apply it to your own story.

We're not talking about stealing here. We're not talking about plagiarism. What you're doing is you're trying to learn from other writers and how they solved those problems, and then applying your own unique style to that.

Learning from the writers who have been there before, because books are made from books. So what are three comps or masterworks that can inspire you? There's actually a section in your worksheet that you can fill out and you can fill this out right now, three masterworks or comps that have inspired you.

And these might be films too, by the way, if you're working on a novel, sometimes films are the most helpful thing. And by the way for those of you who are wondering what is a plot type, how do I find these? Or if you just want to go a little bit deeper into some macro level this is how story structure works. We have a book, a new resource at The Write Practice called the right structure. You can check it out at thewritestructure.com. And you can get that and learn more about plot type, learn more about story structure and what other writers are doing to solve some of their big problems in their stories. So you can get that again at thewritestructure.com.

The point of all of this though, is that failing writers, they get an idea, they start working on it, and then when they get stuck, they have nothing out there to help them solve their problems. And so they quit best-selling writers. They look at what other writers are doing, and they try to adapt what they're trying to do using those conventions. They try to learn from the other writers who have gone before them.

All right. Let's get into myth number four: failing writers believe that your writing has to be groundbreaking, that it has to be elaborate, that it has to be grand, it has to be this instant classic, right?

They have these ideas. They're huge. They're going to be so amazing. They think I'm going to write the next Lord of the Rings, the next Harry Potter, the next Eat, Pray, Love, and so on.

And for me, this is a huge red flag because every time I hear someone say that, I think this is a writer that's really going to struggle because so much of the time those books came out of years of hard work for those writers, years of experience.

When you're working on your first book, it's so hard to accomplish these really grand these really elaborate plots.

Instead, what you need to have is a simple idea. The simpler your idea, the better that you're writing, because the best ideas, even the Harry Potters or the Lord of the Rings, they're actually deceptively simple. They look elaborate and complex and in some ways they are, but they have really simple strong cores. They have simple foundations.

And that's what bestselling writers know. Best-selling writers have simple ideas. You actually do better. If you take things out of your writing rather than keep adding.

And again, this is not unique to writing. So I discovered this tweet about Elon Musk's five step process as he builds Starship, which is this the going to be the most powerful rocket ever built, and the way that they've accomplished so much on this rocket so quickly has so much to do with what they don't do, how they simplify things.

So let's check out this five step list of their manual design process, because I think it's so brilliant.

The first one is to make the requirement less dumb. In other words, simplify the requirement. Right?

Step two is to delete part of the process. In other words, take out a step to make it simpler.

I think that's brilliant.

Again, simplify is step three. And the same is true for your writing ideas. Simple is better. And one of the best tools that you have is to simplify your idea through a premise.

What is the premise? A premise is a way to take your whole story idea and simplify it down to a single sentence or your whole article or your whole screenplay, and put it into a single sentence summary.

On your worksheet, we have a great resource where you can go and figure out how to write your premise. I think that will be really helpful for you. I've taught premise to thousands of writers, and so we're not going to go really deep into it right now, but your worksheet will be a really good help. And you can get more about how to write a great premise there.

But the point is, is that failing writers, they try to make their writing as grand and as elaborate as possible. And it sabotages. The bigger, the grander, your idea, the harder it's going to be for you to actually accomplish it.

Bestselling writers have simple ideas, but they do a great job executing those simple ideas, and they do that by simplifying. They summarize it down to a single sentence summary, and that's going to make you more successful.

All right. Fifth myth, our last myth that failing writers follow. And I hear this from so many writers is that you can do this on your own.

And in fact, you must do this on your own. And I hear this from so many writers. In fact, I used to have this belief myself, that I could do this on my own, that I could write books and build a career all on my own that I had the talent that I had, the skills that I had the determination to pull up.

I had this belief that all writers are lone geniuses.

Have you ever felt like that before that you need to do it on your own? That writers are lone geniuses. That what you really need to do is lock yourself in a cabin in the woods, in your Paris apartment, in your Austrian chalet. And you'll write a masterpiece, like all of the genius writers through history.

But the reality is that this is a myth, okay. Because what great writers have always had is community. They've had a team. That's what it takes to become a great writer is to surround yourself with other writers that you can learn from.

And I say this with some nervousness and really almost exasperation, because one of the things that I found after teaching writing for the last 10 plus years is that people don't really believe in the power of community.

And at the same time, I've taught thousands of writers, and one thing I've seen is that all of the lessons in the world, they are going to help you. But the way that people actually become better, what actually drives results. It's not teaching people learn from community. It's actually community.

We learn from each other. You don't learn from a teacher, you learn the most from the people around you. There's so many benefits to having a team. You have accountability. So people to say, Hey, you said you were going to finish your book by this deadline. What happened?

You have encouragement. People who say when you're feeling like a failure, they say it's going to be okay, you're going to make it.

Beneficial envy. When you see someone succeeding and you think, ah, I want to have that kind of success. And then you work a little bit harder.

The chance to share ideas like this, where you're, we're learning from each other, right about our process.

And also group thing group think has kind of a negative connotation. But when you're really intentional about choosing your group, your group can actually teach you just through osmosis, right? That's the benefit of a team.

And this is my story. So in 2008, like I told you about when I was writing, when I was publishing these articles, they weren't going anywhere.

I was doing it all over. It was putting these articles up. No one was reading them. I didn't have any mentors. I actually treated other writers as threats as people who, if they were succeeding, it meant I couldn't succeed to my competitors. And so I never saw encouragement or accountability.

I was trying to do it all on my own and I was failing. And I was feeling more and more angry, more and more discouraged. And then I ran into this one writer and he started reading my blog. Actually, he shared something I had written on his website and in that moment I felt so encouraged and it changed everything for me.

I ended up getting him to become my mentor. He ended up introducing me to a couple of other writers. One of whom was in New York times bestselling author that I mentioned who became my mentor.

And I started slowly over time joining this community of writers and it changed everything for me. I saw what they were accomplishing and I wanted that too. That's the power of a group, the power of a community. It's so important. Since then I've written 15 books. I become a Wall Street Journalbest-selling author.

And we have hundreds of stories like this at The Write Practice. So this is Audrey Chin. She's been a member of our community for over eight years. She just published her fifth book with penguin.

Jamie wrote her first book in our course, she got 1.2 million page reads in a single year, which is incredible. This is Mary Goodman, published 17 books since taking our course incredible success.

Jake A. Strife, a Watt pad famous author already. He was kind of stuck though on his 23rd book, he finally finished it in just four months in our course.

This is JD Edwin. She's been a member of our community for over eight years. She published 30 stories and a novel Headspace, which just came out.

The point though, is that failing writers, they try to go it alone. They don't have a community. And then that sets them up for failure again and again, best-selling writers. They get mentors, they surround themselves with other writers. They get a team and this helps them accomplish their goals.

And I get this question all the time, but how do you actually find the team? I've seen it a couple of times in the chat. How do you find it?

And the answer is you need to do what Jamie Biggs did. So I mentioned Jamie, she had tried and failed to become a writer for years. She had tried to write books before she had the skeletons of way too many half finished manuscripts to prove it.

She had plenty of passion, but very little process. She had grand ideas, but no execution. Most importantly, she was trying to do it on her own and she was failing.

So she signed up for our course, 100 Day Book. And it worked, she finished her book.

It's had over 1.2 million page reads in just a single year. There you can see it. She signed up again for her next novel, which is now published. She's working in her third novel now using the same process. She did it. She changed her mindset and accomplished her dream.

So we have a program at The Write Practice. It's called 100 Day Book. And over the course of a hundred days, we want to guide you through the process of taking your idea, using this process and turning it into a finished book. Here's what a few writers are saying about the program. Kevin who finished his first book in this program, he just finished a second book. He said this program gave me the tools I needed to create a plan, execute in a timely manner and accomplish my goal of writing my first draft of my book, without the planning on the front end, the accountability of Joe's coaching in my writing community, this would never have been possible.

Brian who wrote his first book with us has since written four other books has become a really great thriller writer said I wouldn't be a published author without Joe Bunting. Not only did he teach me how to take an idea and turn it into a story. He showed me how to collaborate with other authors and make my writing the best it could be, which gave me the courage to share it with the world.

Sue who finished her memoir in this program said writing advice is helpful, but you can keep collecting it forever without actually doing anything. This program enabled me to actually write a book.

And that's our commitment to you. If you show up, if you follow this process, you will finish a book. You will have a finished book at the end of.

So here's how the program works. It starts with a hundred writing lessons. Okay. You'll get more than a hundred riding lessons, and these are meant to inspire you and keep you focused, but also to make you a better writer, because if you're like me, it's not enough to write any book.

You want to write a really good book. And that's what these lessons will help you do. We have lessons on story structure. We have lessons about how to write non-fiction, memoirs, world-building lessons, dialogue, and voice, and more, depending on what you're working on.

We also have something totally unique to any writing course in the world, something I think is really amazing. If you meet all your deadlines, if you finish your book by the end of the a hundred days, we're going to give you $100, a hundred dollars back, which is a pretty great reason to finish your book right?

But if you miss three weekly deadlines or don't finish your book by the end of the a hundred days that a hundred dollars will go away.

We want you to finish your book. We want to give you a hundred dollars. We're hoping that you'll be incentivized to finish your book. By the end of the hundred days.

We also want to pair you with a personal book mentor. You'll get weekly accountability check-ins from a book mentor you're personally assigned to. This is someone who's already an author who knows what it takes to finish a book. So when you're struggling in the process, they're going to check in with you every week to see what you're having a hard time with.

We'll problem solve with you. If you miss a deadline, we're going to let you know that we're waiting for your book and that's going to help you stay accountable.

One of the things I want to say, this works for any kind of book. This is a process that will work for you. Book by the end of the a hundred day book program, you will have a finished book.

So here's what you get in a a hundred day book. It starts with a hundred lessons. Then you have the hundred dollar incentive so that when you finish your book, not if, but when, you finish your book, you will get a hundred dollars back, which is a good consequence if you miss out on that. It's also a good incentive.

You'll have a personal book mentor. Who's going to hold you accountable. You can encouraging feedback on your book after you finish. Most of all, best of all. You'll have a finished. By the end.

We've been talking about failing writers and bestselling writers. Right. If you're not achieving your goals right now, if you're trying to write, but you're getting stuck, I think it's probably because of one of the myths that we talked about today.

You're not practicing. You're not approaching your writing with a practicing mindset. You're passionate, but you don't have process. You have originality, but no inspiration sources. You have grand ideas, but no simple execution. And most of all, because you don't have a team. What we've tried to do in 100 Day Book is to help you solve each of those problems.

To give you a chance to deliberately practice, give you a process that works. We've helped thousands of writers finish their books in this program, we have inspiration and structure that we're going to give you in the lessons. You'll get a chance to execute a really simple idea and a process that you can use to execute book after book, right?

You'll have a team. Most failing writers I talk to, they don't have a team. And really just having a team can change everything for you. And we want to help connect you to a team in 100 Dya Book. That's what it's all about. So that's a 100 Day Book. We would love to help you finish your book in this program.

We've helped so many writers do that, and I think it would work for you too.

Thanks for sticking with us. This has been so fun. So I'm just going to close us with something of a creative blessing. Okay. And then we'll end our time together. May you enjoy your writing may be fun and inspiring every day. And even when it isn't may it bring your life deep. Meaning most of all though, may you finish your books? Thanks so much, everyone. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being part of our community and we'll see you soon.