My new book, Writing with Moxie: How to Add the Sparkle and Banish Boring took me down memory lane of some 20+ years of lectures, festivals, workshops, courses, conferences, programs, conversations, catch ups, piss ups, books, documentaries all about the art and science of fabulous writing. It really should come as no surprise that a writer would love writing a book about writing, but every day as I penned Writing with Moxie I was filled with so much happiness as I thought about how the tips and tricks I’d be sharing would make an impact on the people reading.
Since my launch, I’ve had some (fabulous!) questions about Writing with Moxie:
How’d you come up with the title?
There’s a long and a short answer to this one. The short answer is I wanted something to make that connection between writing skills and brand personality while fostering a sense of the fun and joy that *should* be writing. The long answer is I had another working title that when I road tested with some girlfriends over cocktails resulted in hoots of laughter and a reference to a certain Sex and the City episode. This is a story best shared indeed over cocktails.
Why this book?
I had the first lightbulb moment for Writing with Moxie when I listened to a podcast episode by the ever-effervescent Steph Clarke who dedicated a podcast episode to Tell Your Story. Steph described it for people who want non-boring brand communications, and of course the opposite of boring is moxie!
What was your writing process?
Basically, a massive brain dump of every piece of writing advice I share in each and every Band of Batchers session, Write Here Right Now workshop, across clients’ copy and in my own writing practice every day! I then hit the library to correlate my experience and expertise with the research and the experts so I wouldn’t just be giving essentially an opinion based on ‘because Holly says’ but solid, robust, tried and tested not-just-by-me advice.
How different is Writing with Moxie from Tell Your Story?
Tell Your Story is about the broader communications of your brand. Writing with Moxie is about the actual writing toolkit to grab those communications and translate them into gorgeous writing. Tell Your Story is a call to arms about using story-led communications. Writing with Moxie is about using the tools of writers to make those stories sparkle. Both, I’m reliably informed, are as readable as novels, unlike some of those biz books out there…
What did you love about writing Writing with Moxie?
So much! This book was an absolute joy to write – even when it came time to clean up the truly shabby first draft! I especially really loved diving deep into my writers notebooks of decades and uncovering the genesis of many of the tricks and devices I’ve been using almost automatically every day for twenty years. I also loved having all of my favourite writing resources (finally!) in one place that’s not just my bookcase.
Any parts of the writing process you didn’t love?
I wholeheartedly loved all of it but there were a few challenges. I was three quarters through the first draft when I realised the structure/outline/table of contents was out of whack but I followed the advice I give my book writing clients and just kept chugging along til the end. You can’t edit a blank page, and all that, but you can fix all kinds of ugly in the rewrite. Then, in the rewrite, I could see where my writing had lapsed into the blog-sphere – it was like I’d forgotten I was writing for the page and not for the internet, but again, it was a relatively easy fix, and rewriting is one of my favourite parts of the process (you’re all my favourites) so fixing the mess was fun.
As I wrote Writing with Moxie I leant into that goal of wanting people to feel excited by their writing, excited to make it work harder for them, excited to tap into their creativity to share their message. I felt all of those things, and more, and I hope that reading the book will have readers feeling the same.
Writing with Moxie is my newest book baby, joining Tell Your Story and Write Your Year Annual Content Planner. All are available at the usual haunts as well as my website.