Hey friend. Welcome to the Old Fashioned On Purpose Podcast. I am doing a solo episode today because we are just about two weeks away from the launch of the book, the book that has been all consuming in my life the last two plus years. It's almost ready to be born out into the world. And because of that, I've been having lots of conversations about the book. I've had lots of questions about the book.
Just a lot of curiosity, I think around the publishing world, or at least I've always had curiosity around it, and I, I think a lot of other people do as well. It's one of those industries that sometimes it's kind of hard to figure the ins and outs of, unless you've gone through the process a couple times. So I thought it'd be fun to draw back the curtain a little today, give you some behind the scenes. And share some of the surprising lessons I've learned from writing.
I'd say my cookbook, but mostly this most recent book. Just some revelations and. Thoughts I've had, and perhaps you've pondered the idea of writing a book of your own in the future, or you are in the process and maybe this will be helpful to you. I know I always when I look at my favorite podcast, anytime there's author chats or there's discussions about publishing, I always find those especially interesting. Perhaps that's just because I'm a nerd, but I dunno.
I think a lot of you are nerds like me, so I think this will be a fun little conversation also at the end of today's episode. I'm going to be telling you how you can get my full length Complete Heritage Cooking Crash course for free, absolutely free. So don't leave too early. Stay till the end because it's a little bit crazy the offer we're making, but I definitely don't want you to miss out on that. So without further ado, let's just dive right in.
The five most surprising lessons I've learned in the process of writing books. So I think the first lesson, and I, I may have talked about this on previous podcast episodes at some point in time, but it's been a while. I think a lot of people don't realize how long the publishing process is, and by the time that a book finally hits bookshelves and gets into people's hands, like sometimes it was written years. Prior.
I know when I signed my book deal for this latest book, everyone was like, oh, okay, so we'll have it, you know, have it out in like six months. And I'm like, no, it'll be two years by the time you see it. So it's a very long process. And kind of how it goes. If you're, if you're not familiar, the first thing you do is you generally work with an agent and you create a proposal and that can take many months. 'cause the proposal's not just a one pager, it's generally pretty robust.
You have to have your chapter outlines. You need to prove that you understand the concept that you're going to be writing about and you have kind of proof that you can do it. Number one, that your writing is solid and that you've thought through it enough to have a really solid product. And so I know for my upcoming book, old Fashioned On Purpose, we didn't rush this. We could've done it a lot faster.
We kind of took our time and let some of the ideas just Make their way into the world as they wanted to, as we were putting this proposal together. But it was, I'd say, at least six months that we worked on that. My agent and I, we kind of threw it back and forth and collaborated on that. We had the outlines of potential chapters, and then I had sample chapters in little chapter summaries for every single chapter in the book.
And that's not to say that, you know, You roll into a relationship with a publisher and they're never gonna change anything. In fact, they often change a lot, but they just wanna see that you have proof of concept that you can, you can pull this off. And so that I think, is some of the most heavy mental lifting, is just organizing ideas.
And any of you who create for a living, content creation, you write things, you make things, you know, that, just those foundational pieces where you're sorting through all the thoughts and all the ideas and turn them into. Really solid pillars or a really solid outline. That is the hardest work, I think of any project. Give me an outline. I can flesh it in. I mean, not say easily, but smoothly. Or so, but man, when you're trying to just figure out and organize ideas, it's just a lot.
So it takes a while. So anyway, we worked on the proposal, I think it was 30 ish pages, maybe over the course of many months. And then you take it to publishers and your agent, if you work with an agent, they'll set up calls with publishers. And so we had quite a few publishers interested, and I had several days where we just talked to everybody in rapid fire, like Zoom calls, bam, bam, bam. And. Different publishers wanted to know different things, but a lot of the questions were the same.
You know, why'd you write this book? Why do you feel like this book is what is needed right now? What brought you to this place? Tell us. You know, they wanted me to tell them about the other things I've created, so we had those. Then about a week or two later, the publishers started to send in offers, and we got to decide based on offers and the publishers themselves, who we wanted to go with. Then we agreed.
On who we wanted to have a relationship with and who would publish the book, signed a contract, and then I had six months from that date to write the book itself. So I believe, oh my gosh, my dates are getting fuzzy. I believe that was November, 2020. One when we signed, finally that contract and then I had from that day until May of 2022 to write the actual book. So I had my outline, which was great, and I had to kind of go back in with my editor once we had signed on the dotted line.
And she kind of looked at the outline again and we decided if we wanted to change anything. I had six months to write it. So some of you are vaguely aware of that timeframe because I went pretty much dark on social media. I didn't publish much. I think I stopped sending out email newsletters, stopped YouTube videos. So it's pretty intense, especially, you know, if you're like me and most of you are, you have other things to do in your life.
You're just not writing 24 7. I have children and homeschooling and businesses and so yeah, it definitely. It was fun, it was hard, But yeah, it was, it was a process getting up early often. I wanted to get up at four or 5:00 AM and write for a couple hours and then go do school with the kids and then come back and write some more. Christian really picked up the slack during that period. Just because I, I had to focus so much time on the writing, so I submitted that in May of 2022.
Editor looked at it, she came back with some pretty substantial edits. She wanted things changed. So we reworked it, and I think it was last fall, so fall of 2022, when we kind of had agreed that, okay, the manuscript is where we want it to be. So, You can, you can kinda look at that timeline.
It's the, the time when the manuscript was complete was almost an entire year prior to the book actually being published because then it goes to copy editors and the printers and we had to record the audio book. And then there's marketing and sales. So there's just like a really, it's a really long process is what I'm trying to say. So if you are looking at writing a book with traditional publishing, know that.
You want that idea that you have right this moment to be something that you're still gonna be passionate about two or three years later, or it's still gonna be relevant two or three years later. So I think that was one of my biggest shocks with the cookbook. And you know, maybe not as shocking with this book 'cause I've experienced before, but it's just a long process. Okay. My second revelation, or surprising thing I learned from writing a book is how much writing helps you to think.
I kind of knew that. I was aware of that, but especially with this book, since it wasn't a cookbook, you know, last time it was all about recipe testing and photography, and this time it was really about Breaking down deep concepts, distilling these concepts down in a way that makes sense. And I think, you know, you have 80,000 words, I think that's roughly what I ended up with. Multiple chapters, 325 pages.
And you have to make this stream of ideas that you have not only come together, but they have to flow from chapter to chapter has to be logical and inspiring and engaging. And so all of the, the topics I wrote about were things I was Somewhat familiar with already, right? It's a book about old fashioned living. It's what I do every day.
So it wasn't like I was researching a brand new topic, but I was absolutely blown away at how this process of writing this book over six months helped me to dig into these concepts and really grasp them more than I ever thought was even possible. And so it's honestly really. Inspired me as a homeschool mom or as a parent that I want to really focus on writing with my kids even more than I already was.
Not that I expect them to go be authors someday, but I feel like if a child or a human or an adult can write well and write clearly, it shows that they are thinking well and thinking clearly, and it blows me away when during the writing process, and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this in a minute. How when I first would put my ideas on page, they would just be kinda a jumbled mess. And that's, that's I think how you kind of have to write.
That's how I write my first draft is absolutely horrifying, And if you try to make your first draft prettier or nicer, you end up sabotaging yourself. And so I have these ideas that I'm already familiar with. They're not new to me, but I would try to. Verbalize them on the page, write them on the page, and it just was a disaster. And I just had to learn to train my brain to think about in a more linear way, in a more clear way. So I think that was a really awesome revelation.
Throughout this process, it's made me feel very much more fond of writing than I, than I was before, just as a life skill, especially as a homeschool mom. I also think this revelation makes me Even more concerned about the advent of AI or artificial intelligence writing. So much of, you know, the words in our culture and especially I see it looking to the future, I see that taking in more, taking over more and more.
It's not that AI is always bad or wrong or, I mean, sometimes it's really useful, but I think what concerns me the most is if we're always outsourcing the thinking process, then we're really robbing ourselves of the gift of ruminating on things and coming into our own conclusions. You know, I even see that now there's A lot of people using ai, AI to write blog posts and articles and books.
Like this new thing is where AI writes books and it's, I'm like, no, no, no. Because what happens, you know, as a homesteader and as a business woman, back in those early years when I was writing blog posts every week, I. I was really grasping those ideas on a deeper level because of the writing. I was starting to understand the concepts more and more because I was going through the process of writing. And if we only outsource, then we're taking that away from ourselves.
Is there time and place for ai? Sure. But man, writing is magical and I hope that we can hang on to that as humans. So we can just keep expanding our own thought processes. Okay. My third. Revelation about writing a book, especially this time around, is how important it is to be concise. I don't think I, I won't, I won't say I was extra wordy with my cookbook. But I don't know.
When I started to write the draft of Old Fashioned on purpose, and especially I was, I was working with my editor I realized how many extra words I throw into sentences. And I think that process of working with experienced writers, I also had a wonderful woman named Julie who helped me. Kind of preed my chapters before I sent them to my editor. And she's an incredible writing coach and she's a, a New York Times bestselling author herself.
But just watching her edit my work was such a cool process. And you kind of have to let your ego go. 'cause I mean, the first few chapters I sent her, she would come back, she'd send them back to me, and she's so sweet and so encouraging. But it was like completely red, like marked up like so many red marks that you couldn't even see which end was up. And I remember my, my daughter Mesa, looking over my shoulder.
'cause I would, you know, mark up her papers in school with my red pen and she would see all the red on my word processor document. And she's like, holy cow, mom, like, what is happening? And I'm like, see, like we all need people to edit our work and to correct things. But I realized that. I put a lot of unnecessary words in things, and this whole writing process of this second book has been so good for me.
And what I do now is I find I'll, I'll write something, like, I'll write a draft of my weekly email. I put it aside for a day and I come back and I'll just shrink that down by sometimes 30% and just taking out extra words and just making sentences more clear and. I also, it's inspired me even as I speak and sometimes I, it's easy to throw extra words in when I'm doing a podcast or you're talking to other people. It's not maybe as noticeable, but like, how can we be more clear and concise?
And I think that makes us easier to understand and it makes our writing more impactful. So anyway, I dunno if that there's any great takeaways there, but, This la this latest book really taught me the importance of trimming and just keeping it as punchy and as to the point as we possibly can. And that kind of brings me to my fourth revelation and.
I kind of already spilled the beans on a little bit, but just like editing, editing is so important and if you are trying to learn how to write better or you want to try to write a book in the future, I would say if you can hire a good editor and have them mark up your work, put that ego aside and let someone go through like you'll learn so much.
I think that was Some of the best money I spent without this process was hiring Julie to collaborate with me and kind of to Preed because I just learned so much from watching her go through my words. And I also think that's why books still have such an important place as tools for learning and tools for information, even though we have all the online information because books.
In order for them to become a book, most of the time they have been seen by many, many sets of eyeballs before they get to you as the consumer. And that I just think makes them better. Some of you remember my viral I. I posted about our TV Fast last year. I think I might have referenced that on a previous episode, but I got a lot of pushback when I told people that we weren't watching TV for three months, and then one of the activities we were doing instead was reading.
And I kind of thought that was maybe one of the most neutral things I could possibly sing online. It turns out it wasn't, and a lot of people were really offended by that. It sounds even just ridiculous to say it out loud. But several people were like, you are damaging your kids by only letting them read books. They need to get information online, which I could see there's some truth in that, right? It's nice to have Google to research different topics.
However, what I find so much online is that that information is weak, especially now, especially with AI and especially with like, everything's just getting noisier. A lot of the stuff you find on websites and articles and different blogs, it is just like cheap information. It's not well written, it's not meaty, it's not in depth, it's just fluffy. I hate fluffy information. And even beyond Fluffy, a lot of it's just poorly done. And so that's one thing I love about a book is.
It gives that information and those words a chance to be seen by many, many eyeballs and many, many people. And it's shaped and it's refined and it's clarified, so it just flows. So I think that I don't care how inter, how advanced the internet becomes or how awesome, you know, different platforms are, we'll always have a need to have our ideas kind of vetted by other people. And yeah, it was just a really powerful process too. Go through it so many times, even just self editing.
You know, I'd, I would write the chapter and then I'd rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it. And this was all before my editor even got it. And it just has a lot of time to be refined and I think there's something really valuable to that. So that was a cool process. Even if you're not gonna write a book and you just wanna become a better writer, go have someone edit your stuff. It'll sting a little bit. It kind of like, we all think our, our work is our baby.
I think a lot of the time we put a lot of Maybe too much value in what we create, especially the first iterations. So it's a little bit like, ooh, hard on the ego when someone sends you back those first drafts marked up to death with red ink. But it's a really, really good thing. I think there's a lot of correlation to other things in life. Along those same lines. It's worth it to pay someone to coach you and mentor you gets you further along a lot faster.
Then the fifth and final Learning experience I've had from writing this latest book is I didn't realize how important pre-orders are to authors. I kind of knew that from my cookbook and we did some pre-orders, but this time I've really come to understand that they're really, really vital and that's where you come in today. I have a favor to ask you as you listen to this episode. As you know, you've heard me talk about the book a little bit here and there.
This book is bigger than just a silly little book about homesteading, and it's bigger than just a memoir about my life or cute little stories about our Wyoming homestead. It has a bigger purpose to fulfill and just like this podcast, I want this book. To help people to understand what we have left behind as we have raced towards progress. Sorry, that was my dog. If you heard that as we've raced towards progress, what have we left behind and how can we reclaim some of that in a meaningful way?
Not in an extreme way. Not to go live in an off-grid compound. Unless that's your thing and you wanna do it, that's cool, but that's not for everyone. How can we mix the best of the old with the new? And that's my vision for this book. That's why I wrote it. It's not just. Just for experience or existing homesteaders, although if you are in that category, I think you'll really love it.
But I want it to get into the hands of people who have never heard of this podcast, who would never go look at homesteading websites or Google how to can or how to make sourdough bread people that have not yet been exposed to these ideas. I feel like there is such an important shift towards old fashioned things right now for a reason.
I think people are feeling the Shakiness of our modern culture, and they're feeling that, you know, a lot of the things we've put so much stock in over the last 50, a hundred years, as we've become so much more consumer driven and so much more industrial like, they're not really holding strong, they're not really giving us what we need as humans. And it's not that we reject all of that, but how can we become grounded again? How can we return to our roots?
How can we be plugged back into the natural world? And that's really what this book is about. So, I have a goal for it to get into the hands of people just beyond our current homestead community. And one way, the biggest way that that can happen is to have people pre-order it. And I. Why that is the case is because when books have a good number of pre-orders, it signals to retailers and to media outlets that it's worth paying attention to.
So the order more copies, it gets out to the world a little bit faster. And so that's my goal is to get as many people to pre-order old fashioned on purposes I can. It's obviously awesome if people buy it after the fact too, but I like a challenge. I like a big mountain to climb. I like to do hard things. And so I'm really trying to see if I can Meet some personal benchmarks in the world of pre-orders.
Now the problem with pre-orders is that it's not as much fun to order a book one or two months or three months out and then have to sit and wait for it to finally get it in your mailbox. We all like instant gratification, especially in the Amazon world. So here's what I'm gonna do, and this is what I mentioned at the beginning for anyone who pre-orders. So this, this offer will be Good up until pub date, which is September 26th, 2023. So I don't make this available till then.
Anyone who pre-orders, I'm gonna tell you how to do that in a minute, gets access to my Free Heritage Cooking Crash course. This is a real course. This is a course I have sold in the past. This is not just a free little fluffy course I threw together. It has everything I know about cooking the old fashioned way, fermentation. All the canning sourdough bread, whole grains, curing meats how to stock a pantry, how to buy in bulk, how to do my non menu planning, menu plan routine, all the things.
And we just freshly updated it. So if you've had it in the past, we just added a ton of new content to it this year. 'cause I've changed as a cook and I've learned new things. You're gonna get the whole thing for free when you pre-order. So here's how it works. Okay, so first things first. You have to pre-order the book from your favorite retailer or bookstore. At this point in time, you cannot order the book directly from me. That's just how this publishing world works.
You gotta go through Barnes and Noble or I think it's at Target or Amazon, or preferably your local bookstore if you don't have a local bookstore. bookshop.org is a really cool option because it is a smaller company and they put money back into local bookstores. So I know local bookstores are kind of a, a vanishing breed in some towns. So if you don't have one, go to bookshop.org. Pre-order the book. Then you're gonna take a screenshot or a photo.
Of your email confirmation or if you buy it in person, your receipt or whatever, just a proof of purchase. Take a picture that shows you purchased the book. Then you're gonna go to this website. I'm gonna put it down in the show notes as well. www.oldfashionedbook.com. So it's old fashioned with an ed old fashioned book.com. Sometimes people say old fashioned. I'm like, no, no. It has an ED on the end.
Okay, go to that website, scroll down, and there's a spot where you can input your email and a picture of your proof of purchase. Do that, hit submit. You're gonna instantly get an email in your inbox that has access to the full length cooking course and a bunch of other stuff. Okay, we're doing some giveaway of cooking equipment. There's some wall art.
There's just a bunch of stuff, so you can start working through the cooking course now while you're waiting for the book to come in your mailbox. So I'm pretty excited for this. It's been very well received. People are like, wait a second, are you actually giving away the whole course? And I'm like, yes. My business coach was like, Jill, I don't know if you can like give away the whole course. It seems like a lot. And I'm like, you know what?
We're doing it because I want you to have something to keep you occupied and learning while you're waiting for the book. So that's the scoop. Pre-order anywhere you want. Get your proof of purchase, go to old fashioned book.com, give me your email address, and it will be in your inbox immediately. Also I, if I see you in one of, at an event, I'm doing a couple homestead conferences in the upcoming months I'm happy to autograph your book, but I'm not shipping out autograph books right now.
So if you'd like an autographed copy, there's one way to do that. You can go to a small bookstore here in Wyoming. Or not go to, you can go to their website. Okay. It's Wind City Books. Wind City Books. If you pre-order from them, they have book plates that I have signed, and they're gonna be putting the book plates in the books. So you'll have a signed copy, but you have to order it or pre-order it from Wind City. I'll put that also in the show notes.
But that's a, a cool way to get an autographed version if you're not gonna see me at an event in the coming months. So anyway, friends. Shorter episode today. But just thought it would be fun to share some of my thoughts. I, if you're considering writing a book I would say do it. You know, whether or not the book sells millions of copies or hits a best bestseller list, it's gonna change you as a person. It's gonna clarify your writing process.
It's gonna clarify how you think, and I think it's a really good exercise. And so I'd say, you know, if you're feeling that. Nudge or you're like, should I do it or should I not? I would, I would start, maybe you don't write it all in six months, maybe you don't write it all in a year. You just start opening up a page and your word doc outlining it and just seeing what happens.
I know that with each of my books now, my Prairie Homestead Cookbook and now this one They're milestones in my life, almost like not quite the same, but almost like when you have a kid, you know, you think of your life before having this kid and after. And I think of my life also as before the cookbook or before old fashioned on purpose and after, just because it's changed my views. And just how I process information so much. And I think it's a really, really good process.
Not easy, it's definitely not easy, but some of the best things aren't right. It's hard, but good. So if you're filling that, that poll, listen to it. Start playing around writing some words and see what happens. So that's all I got for you today, friends. I am going to be reading. The introduction of the book here in a couple weeks on the week of Pub Pub date. We're gonna be having our podcast episode be the introduction so you can listen in there.
But go ahead and get your pre-order in now, and I can't wait for you to hold the book in your hands. So thanks for listening, and we'll catch up with you on the next episode of The Old Fashioned On Purpose Podcast.