Suzi McAlpine lives in New Zealand. I live in the United States. We connected for the first time via social media. That was a full two years before she began working on her book, Beyond Burnout.
Like many of my clients, Suzi had a successful business and wanted to write a book to increase her reputation and income opportunities. The problem was that she didn’t know what to write about.
She developed what seemed like a good idea and set off to the United States to do research. That trip turned into, in Suzi’s words, “a train wreck.”
Back in New Zealand, she worked to keep her business going, shake off the effects of her research trip, and come up with another book idea. We stayed in touch.
Suzi initially pushed herself to write a leadership book on a topic that her intuition warned her was wrong. She spent a significant amount of money and time researching it, which culminated in a “train wreck” of a research trip to New York.
Suzi abandoned her original idea despite the sunk cost and pivoted to writing a book on burnout. She chose burnout because she had personally experienced it and saw it cause problems for her client organizations.
Challenges
Every author confronts challenges. Two of Suzi’s challenges were challenges that any author will recognize.
Suzi had to find time to devote to the book. That means getting consistent blocks of time to write. Like many of my clients, Suzi had a demanding business and a family with a child at home.
Suzi had to write a book that would be distinctive. It should solve an important problem and stand out from other books on the same subject.
Suzi’s third challenge was unique. She wanted to write a book specifically for people in New Zealand and Australia. She wanted a legacy publisher.
How We Met the Challenges
Time to write would not magically appear in her schedule. Suzi would have to take it from somewhere. She chose to devote two days a week to her book instead of working on her business.
Suzi sharpened her book idea until it was distinctive. Competing books are almost entirely about how an individual could deal with burnout. Suzi chose to write a book to help the burnout sufferer. But burnout is also an organizational problem. Suzi wanted to give burnout sufferers’ bosses tools to help them deal with the situation and give top management insight, inspiration, and tools to enable the whole organization to prevent and address burnout.
Suzi put together a team to help produce the book. My job was to be the book coach and developmental editor. I also became the project manager. Christina Wedgewood brought some important things to the team. She’s an experienced editor with strong connections in the New Zealand Publishing World. Christina sold the project idea to Penguin Random House’s New Zealand division. She also functioned as an editor for the book.
Our team worked well. Suzi was a good, disciplined writer and very coachable. In addition to publishing connections, Christina is the fastest good editor I’ve ever worked with. We built on our individual strengths, shared a common work ethic, and respected each other’s expertise.
I suggested to Suzi that she write a “zero draft” of the book. That meant writing the book straight through from start to finish, noting conflicts, questions, and needs for more information. She was “appalled and frightened” at first, but she dug in and wrote the draft. The zero draft significantly sped up our project.
As a team, we identified milestones on the way to meeting the publisher’s deadline. We established a productive, sustainable work rhythm.
The Results
Penguin Random House New Zealand published Beyond Burnout: How to Spot It, Stop It and Stamp It Out in 2021. A note on the cover told readers this was “A New Zealand Guide.” The book was a bestseller.
Suzi’s proud of the book, but there are some more tangible rewards. Suzi got “lots of speaking engagements” because of the book. She says the book “got her name out” in new ways.
The Author’s Advice in Her Own Words
“Carve out some time each week. For me, it was Tuesday mornings and Thursday mornings. Put an out of office on. Treat it like it is one of your most important uh appointments.”
“If you start a writing session and you don’t want to write, that’s okay, but you can’t do anything else.”
“Write for one person.”
“Make sure that you don’t forget other really important parts of your life like your relationships and your health.”
“Embrace the power of walking for thinking through things. So often, if I got writer’s block or I was chewing over something or I couldn’t do it, you’d say, “Go for a walk. Just go for a walk.” And so, I would go for these walks, these sorts of walking meditations. Invariably, my writer’s block would go. My daughter, who’s now 17, started calling them ‘Wally Walks.’ Let’s go for a Wally Walk.”
“If you were thinking of writing a book, and you thought about all the things that you wanted in a book writing coach that would help you write that great book that you had inside you, and then, if you created a rating out of five that you could give to a book writing coach, you would give Wally a 6. Because that’s how good he is.”