If we’ve been a bit quiet lately (ie. for the last 6 months) it’s because we’ve been up to our neck writing our BOOK. It’s due to our publisher, Exisle, in just 12 sleeps (for a February release).

Writing a book is hard work, particularly for people obsessed with doing things in 15-minute bursts! But the sense of accomplishment we’re going to feel when we hold a copy in our hands will make the months of effort worthwhile.

Here’s what writing the book has taught us:

The structure we’ve ended up with is quite different from where we began, and you only work things like that out while you’re wading around, waist-deep in a project. Planning has a place, but there’s a point at which it’s best to dive in and get started, figuring things out as you go.

Focussing on a big project over many months can cause burnout if you don’t take regular breaks away from it. It’s the burnout that comes from being way too close to something for too long. Your brain just refuses to read another word of it, unless you step back and flick on Netflix, or go for a walk, or go camping for a weekend and come back to it refreshed.

It’s no mean feat to pull together 50,000 words, and there are times in any big endeavour where you’ll ‘lose the plot’ a bit. Back yourself, knowing you’ve done hard things before and you can pull this off too if you take a breath, ask for help or try it a new way. Self-doubt is completely normal, but needn’t stop you in your tracks.

We get a secret smile when we start daydreaming about the things we’re going to throw ourselves into once we’ve submitted our manuscript. There’s a time to let go or pass your project on to the next person in the chain, while you jump into something else for a while.

Not just when something is finished, but when you hit milestones along the way. Celebrate giving something a go, hanging in there and picking yourself up when it goes off the rails. Be your own cheer squad.

As soon as we get permission from our publisher to share with you the cover of the book, we will! We’ve thrown a LOT of personal stuff into this one, including some of our deepest failures, so it’s all going to be a little bit Eeeeeekkk!