Karen Hugg connected with Leigh during a #bookmarketingchat Leigh co-hosted with Rachel Thompson, a social media and author marketing/branding consultant. Karen had been looking for a writing coach to help her get organized and figure out her priorities. After an initial discovery call, Karen decided to work with Leigh to create her Writer’s Roadmap. They began by discussing her idea writing life and setting a clear intention for their work together.
This is how Karen set her intention, focused her main goals and then made them happen.
Why did you choose to work with Leigh?
Leigh approaches writing as a business, and I knew that my writing was going to be a business. I needed to use that approach. It wasn’t just that I wanted to publish a novel. I was more interested in having a writing career.
Once I articulated WHY I was writing, I was able to get more organized. Share on X
What were your biggest challenges prior to creating your roadmap?
I felt overwhelmed. I had just written a manuscript. That was the third or fourth novel manuscript I had written. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I had queried a previous manuscript. I was blogging. I was researching, marketing and thinking of self-publishing. Plus, I still had my gardening consultation business and had a separate blog for that. I had all of these things I was doing, and I didn’t know where to focus. Should I focus on my writing, self-publishing, marketing… should I query?
I felt overwhelmed by things that a modern writer is pressured to do.
How did Leigh help you set an intention and prioritize?
We worked through the OGSM steps, and she gave me her book. So I did all the exercises in there.
Once I articulated WHY I was writing, I was able to get more organized.
It’s not just about writing a story for me. It’s about my mission to spread a love of plants to the world. If I can make plants exciting and enticing, maybe someone will grow a plant or look at the environment differently. That’s how deep I went with my OGSM. [Writing] is about something bigger.
You really dial into who are you as a writer and why are you doing this in the first place! One thing that I come back to often since working with Leigh is that my Objective was to write and publish books while gardening for fun and relaxing by traveling with my family. That statement came when I realized that the most fun I’ve had with my family is when we were out doing things like hiking or little outings to lunch or traveling to Europe.
Whenever we go traveling, we have the most fun. That became part of my Objective. I used to have a business where I worked as a full-time professional gardener, and I couldn’t do that anymore because I was overworked. I knew I had to phase that out of my life, but I still loved gardening in my backyard. It’s very meditative for me.
So that ended up in my objective. I was gardening for fun. And traveling for fun.
What I like about how [Leigh] framed the objective was you’re not just talking about your career here, you’re talking about your life and what is most important to you in your life. Those two things [travel and gardening] are big parts of my life outside of the writing and publishing. I thought that was a smart approach.
This is about aligning your whole spirit, not just your career.
You have a book coming out now. How did your book that fit into your writing plan?
When you intend on doing something, things fall into place. Once I made the decision to work with Leigh, she helped me figure out if I was going to do traditional publishing or self-publishing. It shook out that I was going to do both. Leigh pointed out on my website that it wasn’t clear what you were getting when you came to it. I needed to put some sort of product out there that people could purchase or enjoy.
I ended up [self-publishing a shorter novella]. I’d read materials about how to price it, do giveaways. In the first month-and-a-half, I’d had around 500 downloads of the book. It was great in terms of getting my name out there. Right after I self-published the book, I got an email with an offer from a small press and a contract to publish The Forgetting Flower.
After I set my intention, this book contract came out of nowhere. Now it’s happening, and it’s going to be published this June. Karen’s book, The Forgetting Flower, is available for pre-order here!
How did looking at your writing as a business change your perspective on your own work and contribute to this book being published?
Leigh is really good about reminding you that you should get paid for your words.
Yes, you should be generous with your time and your products, but you’re not going to give away your words — you should be paid for it. I think that’s smart. Many writers start out because they want to tell a story and they don’t have any idea about the business aspect.
Now that I’ve gone through the whole process with but — and I especially know this now going through the whole publication process with the Magnolia Press, I’ve learned things like — we talk about what kind of is the book cover that is going to make people pick up this book and read it? What is the blurb that is going to pull them to read it?
As you move away from writing a story, you move into this process where it’s not yours anymore. It’s a product that the world owns, that the readers buy. It’s completely fine if you just want to write and share your words with your friends and family, but once you start getting into the world of sharing with the wider audience, you have to be prepared to look at it as a product. If you want to reach people, you have to know why you’re in the marketplace and how to maneuver around it.
That’s why Leigh’s approach really clicked with me.
