Writing a World-Changing Book with Cynthia Morris - a podcast by Mark McGuinness

Today’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Cynthia Morris, a coach for creatives who shares insights on the book-writing process, based on her latest book The Busy Woman’s Guide to Writing a World-Changing Book.



So if you are contemplating writing a book - whether it’s your first one or your twenty-first - there is a lot of insight for you in today’s interview.







Even if you’re already a published author, there is plenty of advice and wisdom between its covers. I’ve written 5 books myself and I found myself stopping and making notes as I read through it, of insights that should make writing my next book easier.



And even if you’re not a writer, when I listened back to the interview I realised a lot of the advice applied to pretty well any kind of self-started creative project that involves a lot of dedicated practice. So whatever your creative discipline, I think you’ll find Cynthia’s story and what she has to say about creativity inspiring.



In the first part of the show I share with you a recent experience I had with my language studies, that reminded me of an important principle about creative work – you have to be bad to get good.



Cynthia Morris



Cynthia Morris is an author and a coach for creatives.



The Busy Woman’s Guide to Writing a World-Changing Book is for ‘busy women immersed in running businesses, building careers and caring for loved ones’, so she doesn’t just help you with how to write a book - she also addresses the big challenge of how to find time to write the book, in the midst of everything else in your life.







The book is based on many years of writing and helping others to write - Cynthia has written 8 books herself, including a novel. And she has been coaching writers, artists and entrepreneurs since 1999. So there’s a lot of accumulated wisdom between its covers.



Cynthia and I met virtually on the internet years ago and recognised we were on a similar path professionally. We’ve occasionally collaborated on audio recordings together, and we got to meet in person a few years back when I was coaching delegates at the 99U conference in New York.



She’s someone who really gets creatives and their motivations, and I always come away from our conversations with fresh enthusiasm for writing and creating.



When she sent me a copy of this book I asked if she would come on the show and share some of its insights with you - because I know there are a lot of writers and aspiring authors in the 21st Century Creative audience.



The result is a great interview in which Cynthia talks about writing a book as a relationship, and as a dialogue or a conversation with your deeper, wiser self. She also introduces us to a surprising way to counterbalance the influence of your Inner Critic.



Towards the end of the conversation, she shares some some great ideas on how to prepare for the launch and marketing of your book while you’re actually writing it, without adding to your workload.



Whether this is your first time writing a book, or whether you’ve written a few and you would like the next one to be easier than the last one, you’ll find plenty to inspire and encourage you in this conversation with Cynthia Morris.







Cynthia Morris interview transcript

MARK: Cynthia, what was it like when you wrote your first book?



CYNTHIA: I wrote my first book back in... I think I was writing it in 2002, and it came out in 2003. And it was called Create Your Writer’s Life: A Guide to Writing with Joy and Ease. And I didn’t think I could write a book because as a coach all of our... the main thing that I was trained with is asking powerful questions, good inquiries that help people discover their own wisdom and their own way of doing things.

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