5 Tips to Dissolve Creative Blocks + Self Publishing My Book on AMAZON!
Now we are living on a boat, it’s not as easy to grow herbs in pots as when we had a cottage in the country. However, I’ve decided even though I can’t do it perfectly, it’s still worth doing.
Despite the salt air knocking them around, the fact I have to carry them below deck when we are underway, and that they die readily with the harsh conditions, I’ve decided they are worth the energy, effort, and investment.
Why?
Because they are a delight! (And life is more fun when we allow ourselves a dose of delight, isn’t it?)
They delight my heart AND my taste buds. The delicate leaves of lemon thyme go so well with fresh fish, parsley lifts any dish, fresh oregano adds so much depth to pasta sauces, and chives are perfect on salad sandwiches, and now the weather is cooling, sprinkled over hot soups
Self Publishing on Amazon
Along with growing herbs this year, I decided I wanted to publish three books on Amazon. I thought I would finish my new book “Flourish in Your Creative Life” before I focused on the others, but then, perhaps due to the weather (we’ve been cooped up for days on the boat while the river here in Port Macquarie has flooded underneath us!), I found myself converting my original ebook on herbs into a Kindle version.
My lovely writing mentor, Fiona Ferris, talks about how she made three practice books by compiling her blog posts into Kindle books, and how it helped build her confidence and feel comfortable using the back end of Amazon to self-publish.
For me, I’ve long wanted to sell my book “Grow Abundant Herbs & Greens in Pots” on Amazon, but always stumbled at how to do so. Finally, after years of dilly-dallying, believing I would have to find someone to convert it for me because I didn’t know how, I sat down and did it! I took one step at a time, followed Fiona’s advice in her course, and Googled anything I was unsure about.
The technical aspects I’d used as reasons not to do it weren’t difficult. I just had to focus.
Grow Abundant Herbs
So, why couldn’t I publish my book on Amazon during the past five years?
As someone who usually makes things happen, there must have been a reason why I wasn’t putting my lovely book out there.
Under the surface, it had nothing to do with the technical aspects. It had everything to do with my internal blocks. Mindset stuff.
As is so often the case in our creative lives, it had nothing to do with doing the thing itself, and everything to do with the story I told myself about doing the thing.
I’d blown publishing a book on Amazon into something that was a HUGE big deal. It felt so big, so daunting official and exposed, I talked myself out of doing it, even though my heart deeply desired to do so.
Perhaps you can relate? You might have an inkling to let yourself play with paints again after years away, plant a herb garden that would satisfy your soul, or build a business in line with your values. But things crop up along the way and stop you in your tracks.
Worrying about what others might think, how you might fail, what could go wrong. It’s enough to make anyone stop taking action.
Bullying ourselves into moving forward isn’t the way I’ve found works best. Instead, surrounding ourselves with support, being gentle with our fears, and taking small steps leads to a breakthrough, and suddenly, the thing we’ve struggled with for years, seems doable, simple and, dare I say it, even fun!
I loved every part of the process of making this Kindle book. From designing the cover, to laying out the formatting of the text and photos, through to figuring out how to set up my Amazon author page.
When I think about the process, a few things helped shift my mindset so I could finally do the thing I’ve wanted to do for sooooo long.
5 Tips to Dissolving Creative Blocks
Here they are, in the hope they may help you create something you long to create too:
#1. Find a creative mentor who’s values resonate with your own
Late last year I saw Fiona Ferris, author of my latest favourite book “Thirty Chic Days” was offering a new online course called Create Your Dream Life as a Successful Author. I eagerly signed up.
Before then, I had read a book on self-publishing, and while it helped me get into action, I noticed the focus of the book was on the desire to make the most sales possible, write to a set deadline, and what I think of as a very ‘hot’ energy. In my mind, it was a very entrepreneurial approach of doing things; climb the ladder of success, based on hustle, pushing and striving.
I wanted to embrace more flow, creativity, femininity and delight in my process of writing books. And Fiona fits that bill perfectly. Her feminine, fun, creative and flowing approach lined up with how I wanted to feel while I did the project, as much as my desire to complete the project itself.
I noticed this at university. We had a lot of different artists as lecturers, and of course, they didn’t all have the same values as me. Which meant I had to bring awareness around what they where teaching and how it applied to my life and art practice.
Sometimes it’s easy to get pulled along thinking you are doing something wrong, and another person knows the ‘right’ way, when in fact what is important to you both is different, and each of you are doing what is right for you. There is no 'one right way', but there is always a way that is right for you.
So my tip is to find a mentor who has done what you want to do, in a way that lines up with your values. They could be an author, teacher, mentor, friend or mastermind buddy. You could get the support you need from a book, workshop, class, online course, coffee-date or mastermind session. I’ve found the information doesn’t have to be delivered a particular way to make progress, but finding someone who’s approach inspires you and feels in alignment with your style of working and values is important.
#2. Surround yourself with support
I used tonnes of affirmations and gentle reminders of my intention over the past six months. Even while I was painting the commission for The Star, I was listening to beautiful recorded affirmations about writing from Fiona Ferris. They lifted my spirit, fanned the flame of desire in my heart, and helped to build a new vision of what I wanted to create and what was possible.
I also have a series of affirmations I painted on watercolour paper next to my bed, so they are the first thing I see when I wake up and last thing I see when I turn out the light at night. They remind me to mull over what I desire to create and experience, and find ways to bring those desires to life.
#3. Give Yourself permission… to write lots of books.
A tip Fiona teaches is to imagine your Amazon page with 20+ books published on it. How would that feel? What topics would you cover? What would the covers look like?
I’m a creative archetype (no surprises there! You can take the free quiz here if you like) and creatives need visual stimulus to help us form containers for our work. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of ideas floating around in our heads.
When I pictured writing lots of books, it felt amazing.
I always imagined, like most authors I know, I would just write one or two books in my life. I never imagined writing 20! This felt like a whole new ballpark of fun to me.
It was ironic, because I am well aware of this block in painting, and teach my students to work in series and on multiple paintings, giving themselves a sense of abundance so all their expectations and hopes don’t lie on getting just one painting ‘right’. That is too much pressure for any fledgling creative work to carry.
And so it is with books, as it turns out, for me. Once I had that lightbulb moment, I felt free to write! About all the topics I love and am delighted by; creativity, organic gardening, sailing, gentle business, following your heart’s desires, being true to yourself. It felt like it was released from a pressure cooker of trying to distil everything down into one, single, tome of a book that contained the full story of my life, beliefs and learnings. Too. Much. Pressure.
Watch this space. I am LOVING writing books and have a few more up my sleeve :)
#4. Make it into a small thing.
Another tip Fiona shares is to make it into a small thing in your mind to publish your book. There is something about writing and publishing a book that carries a lot of weight in our culture. We esteem it highly, and it feels, at least to me and possibly to most people, a bit too big and out of reach.
And yet, I felt capable of making online courses, exhibitions, ebooks for my personal website. But putting a book out into the world on Amazon felt huge!
Just bringing awareness around this, and affirming to myself it could be a little thing, helped all the wheels line up and cogs to turn so when I had a few days waiting around for the river to stop flooding, I could do this ‘small thing’ I was toying with and turn my ebook into a Kindle version and have it published in three days.
#5. Imagine your ideal vision for your life.
I leave this point to last, not because it is the least important, but because it was the last thing I did that really got me out of inertia and into action.
I connected with the vision I want to create for my life this year, how I want my life to look, what I want for Andrew and myself. I would love to build more income streams which allow us to continue cruising on the boat (ha! Autocorrect just changed that to ‘cursing’ on the boat - which is accurate at times too!) and enjoying this sailing lifestyle.
I would love to sail to the Whitsundays and have more adventures. While I was writing down my vision, I got more specific too, and wrote down how I want to buy more solar panels so I don’t have any worries about power consumption for my computer, and what we will do with Lacey if we decide to sail overseas (leave her with a friend, but have enough income to fly home easily to visit her and our families).
By spending an evening last week writing down with as much detail as I could muster, how my ideal life would look one year from now, I fanned the flame of desire I had in my heart until it was enough to pull me forward, instead of trying to push myself into action. That’s the difference between inspiration and discipline, in my experience, inspiration always wins.
Once I was clear on why I wanted to get the book into more hands than if I simply kept it on my website, and I felt excited about connecting with more beginner gardeners, it was quite simple to find the focus to make it happen.
Grow Abundant Herbs & Greens in Pots
If you haven’t bought Grow Abundant Herbs & Greens in Pots, I’d love it if would you consider grabbing a copy. And if you have the original version from my website, it has been reformatted, chapters have been updated and it will be on your Kindle instead of your computer (I love having a Kindle full of inspiration I can return to easily).
It is a lovely, inspiring book, and will help you grow an abundance of herbs without using chemicals for pest control or synthetic fertilisers, but instead introduce you to a world of organic gardening skills you can carry with you throughout life, in a fun and easy-to-read style.
I’m going to give myself the gift of a few new herbs this week. I can’t wait. I’m even going to take the extra steps to improve their potting mix and do all the things I suggest in the book to give them the best chance of thriving in this challenging environment.
Won’t you join me in making an abundant potted herb garden? It will be great fun!
With love,
~ Nicola
PS. Once you've grabbed a copy, if you would consider please leaving a review of my book, it will make me soooo happy. It doesn’t have to be long, but it will make a huge difference to how often Amazon shows my book to potential readers, and it will help them decide if what I write about is what they are looking for.
You can get your copy of “Grow Abundant Herbs & Greens in Pots” here, for less than the price of a cup of coffee. Thank you!