Chat with Sacha Black: THE ANATOMY OF PROSE Writing Craft Book Release

Katlyn:
Hey everyone, I'm so excited to have Sacha Black here today to talk about her newest nonfiction writing craft book, 'The Anatomy of Prose', which releases later this month on May 29th. Thank you so much Sacha for coming and please introduce yourself and let us know about your books and how you got into publishing.
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Sacha:
Okay. So I am Sacha Black. Thank you for introducing me. And I am a self-published indie published author. I publish both fantasy at the moment, young adult, but I am moving into adult fantasy. And I also publish nonfiction. Also writing craft books to help authors and writers develop all kinds of things. So I have villains ('13 Steps to Evil: How to Craft Superbad Villains') and heroes ('10 Steps to Hero: How to Craft a Kickass Protagonist) and now I've moved into 'The Anatomy of Prose'. I'm also a podcaster. I host The Rebel Author podcast. I do some freelance work for the Alliance of Independent Authors and I am developing a course as well. And I also developmental edit, although not as much as I used to do cause it's quite time consuming. Yeah, I think that probably summarizes an intro.

Katlyn:
I also wanted to extend, congratulations on releasing a book. How is it going: releasing a book during a pandemic?

Sacha:
I think there are loads of factors at play here. So my general sales are actually up. So that is one thing that I think is interesting. I don't know. I don't know why that is. I don't know if that's because people have now normalized to being in a coronavirus and therefore they are looking for entertainment. Or what, but, yes, my sales are definitely up at the moment. That said, my preorders are down. Now, there are still three weeks to go until the launch. So, you know, I haven't really put my foot on the accelerator yet for the marketing. I've only sent one email to my mailing list. So, you know, I haven't done the bulk of my, my advertising. And so in that sense they're probably actually up because I haven't put my foot on the accelerator. So it's really hard to say. The other thing that's hard is that with paperback preorders you can't do those through Amazon. You can only do them through Ingramspark. And unfortunately Ingramspark don't give you preorder metrics until after they're finalized, so until after the launch. So that is really unhelpful. I adore Ingramspark, I absolutely love them. Like to the bottom of my heart, I use them for everything, my hardbacks. But that particular lack of technical information is a bit of a bugbear of mine because it's very hard to measure whether or not your preorder campaigns are working when you can't you know, find out if you've got paperback preorders especially with nonfiction because lots of people do buy nonfiction in paper. So yeah, otherwise it's much the same. I work my marketing principles on marketing principles regardless of what the economic and social climate is. So it's very important to have a mailing list. I have my mailing list, I've grown it for a long time, you know, that is a huge source of sales and also my podcast. So I'm preparing some special episodes I'll be doing. Possibly if there's time I'll be doing a more of an authortube video. I'm not going to be an authortuber, but I, the podcast is an enough at the moment, but yeah, so I don't know, I think it's too early to say. There's still, like I said, still three weeks to go before the launch.

Katlyn:
On my channel I've been doing for 2020 writing craft book reviews because I have so many and they're just sitting there and I'm sort of in like an input stage of my life that I just want to keep absorbing information. So I'd like to know what your favorite writing craft books are and how have these books influenced your fiction and your nonfiction books.

Sacha:
Okay. So I, I didn't necessarily pick my favorites because lots of my favorites are wildly popular and I'm sure you've had them probably on the channel already. So what I, what I did was I tried to pick books that have influenced me for particular reasons. So the first one is a bit of a cheat because it's more on the mindset. So I tried to divide the books that I was gonna recommend by mindset, business and craft. And I hope that's okay. Just rebel a little bit. So the first one is called 'The War of Art' by Steven Pressfield. And this is a telltale sign of how much I liked the book because the more post it notes you have in there, the more I've taken from the book. But so this book is very much about mindset and it talks about resistance. Steven Pressfield basically coined the term resistance with a capital R and it for anybody who is struggling to either get the words out, to form a habit and to just do the work. Steven Pressfield is amazing. Now I do say that with a word of caution because with mindset in particular, I think everybody has a voice that appeals to them and therefore everybody has voices that don't appeal to them. So, like I have a group of friends and we all read a lot of self-help books and some of us in the group will love one particular book and others in the group won't. So yes, I do give it a caveat and a caution. I don't think there's necessarily anything that's completely new. If you've been reading a lot of mindset books for a long time, there might be no new information in there, but what, what there is a very unique way that he says everything. And that's what really appealed to me and it really opened my eyes to what resistance is and how to overcome it. And yeah, I mean it pulls no punches. It's a bit of a kick in the butt if I'm honest. But yes, I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. So that was the first one. I will hop and skip to a, what's the word? A craft book now.

So this one is called 'Self Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print' by Renni Browne and Dave King. You can see, again, I took a lot from this book and this book is I think so much more than just an editing book. It really delves into craft. There's a lot on dialogue in particular in here. I don't think they intended to do that. But they did focus quite a lot on dialogue. And so I always recommend it for anybody who is struggling with their dialogue as a book to read. So, they talk about it in terms of self-editing, but actually I just think it is a very good holistic view at how to write better. Mistakes, things to afford, that kind of stuff.

Okay. So back to mindset. So the next one is 'Big Magic' and there are no post-it’s in here, but I think it might be because I read the listened to the audio book and then so that, that's, that would be why, but, Oh, I adored this book because very similar reason to the mindset book. It is a mindset book. Essentially. It's about creativity. It's about you know, fear. But what I adore about her book is the way she, she, she tells a story, she tells continuous different stories about her life, about her experiences. And the thing that I really, really love about Elizabeth Gilbert is how she talks about creativity or the muse even as a separate entity to us. And that really resonates for me because I get my stories in what feels like a very disembodied way. So it feels like I don't necessarily come up with the ideas. They come to me. And so that really appealed to me.

Next, okay, I'm going to go to business. So 'Business for Authors' by Joanna Penn I think is fantastic. She says herself that this one isn't one of her bestsellers, which I find astonishing because it is such an excellent book. It is basically a grounding in everything an author needs to think about everything an author needs to know in running a business. And she herself says that quite a lot of authors don't really want to run a business. They just want to write books. And so that's why they don't necessarily you know, that's why the market is smaller for these kinds of books. But that is what we are doing. We are running businesses. And even more so as indie authors. And so yeah, it is just a fantastic grounding. It opens your eyes. I read that one really early on and it helped to frame my mindset around making money and you know, turning this into a business. So yeah, I highly recommend that one for any new writer, even any writer who's got a few books out and might not be where they want to be, go back and read the basics because it will help.

And last, but by no means least this was I think my favorite book of last year. So this is 'The Emotional Craft of Fiction' by Donald Maass and Oh my goodness me, this book is fantastic. It goes so deep into the craft of yeah, well basically as it says on the tin, creating emotion at the character level, at the story level, at the sentence level, it is phenomenal. And that book in particular changed--I can't necessarily put my finger on one thing that has changed. But I know after having come away that my prose and my stories and my characters were different after having read it certainly had more depth. So yeah, of all of them, if you want to improve your craft, go and read that book.

Katlyn:
So what was--you started off with? Young adult fiction? No?

Sacha:
So, kind of, so it's a complicated story. So I wrote fiction first and I wrote flash fiction, short stories. I wrote a young adult novel had written a lot of fiction, but I haven't published any fiction. And what happened was I, I bit like you were saying earlier about needing input. And I have always consumed craft books. I've always consumed podcasts and anything I could possibly get my hands on to learn. But what I am is a little bit senile. And so I needed so much to put to these lessons and I work best when I write them down. So I started blogging the lessons that I had learned. And basically what happened is I shared a few that were on villains and they, they went kind of mini viral and I realized that there was definitely a market for this. So I continued to research and there weren't many books, particularly on villains. So I was like, well, I'm going to write it because I've been doing all this study. And so I did and I researched more and I wrote it and I did it so fast. I've never written a book that fast before or again, but I wrote it in four weeks and it was out, I think, yeah, like I literally, I just, so when I think when you input so much information over time and you then come to write it, it just outpours it's so different writing nonfiction to fiction, which maybe we'll come to later. But yeah. So I actually ended up publishing the '13 Steps to Evil: How to Craft a Superbad Villains' first, just because there was a hole in the market and I knew I knew more and I was more comfortable. So I published that one and then I went back to the young adults to say, yeah, and then it's been a mishmash of whatever since.

Katlyn:
Oh nice. So yeah, that was my question was the, how you got into nonfiction. I think that's interesting because I know in 'The Anatomy of Prose' you talk about taking snippets from things that inspire you and writing them down and you seem to have done that with your blog posts. So I find that very interesting.

Sacha:
Yeah, that is literally so for anybody who hasn't read it, I basically I take sticky tabs in everything that I read when I see a sentence that is either beautiful or good description or good dialogue or bad, sometimes when it's bad too or if it's something, a lesson that I haven't heard before and it's some new information, I'll always underline it. Then at the end of a book, I will collate all of these sentences and I will write them up or photocopy them and yes. And then I will pattern spot. And so I look to see whether, say for example, most of them are dialogue quotes or most of them are description quotes or are they characterization? What typically happens is an author will be good at one particular thing. And I won't know that until I get to the end, but then it will be that it's mostly one type of thing that I've underlined. So then I break it down and I look at, well what have they done with word choice? What have they done with grammar? What have they done with rhythm or flow? And from that I can then not copy what they've done, but I can pull out and extract the tactics and the methods that they have used. And then you can then use those tactics and methods in your own writing. So yeah, a very methodical approach to developing my craft.

Katlyn:
Such a practical example. I highlighted a lot in that chapter cause I was like, Oh my gosh, like I read all the time. So this is something I can be doing always. You know, I do highlight in my Kindle, but I tend to just set it and forget it. You know, I don't ever go back. So now I'm making a point to go back and study it. I guess, you know, in my own way versus, you know, craft books are great too. But having that practical sense of practice I guess you're able to figure things out yourself and find what you specifically like.

Sacha:
Exactly. And I think so many writers learn passively from reading and that is fantastic. You absolutely must do that because we do take in things just from passively reading. But I think you develop faster by purposefully intentionally practicing and you know, it's like the Malcolm Gladwell quote of 10,000 hours, which is always misconstrued. He didn't say you needed 10,000 hours of practice. You need to 10,000 hours of intentional practice, which means purposefully trying to practice a specific thing or purposely studying a specific thing. And so that is why I'm so anal about going back and looking at what it is that I've highlighted at the end of a book. My methods have changed a little bit now because I've been doing it for so long, I can sort of do it as I go, but I certainly needed to do that at the start. And I do still when there are things that I think are exceptional, I will now go and put them in like a little exceptional folder for examples for the future. I'm such a geek.

Katlyn:
So you mentioned you felt there was a hole in the market when it came to '13 Steps to Evil'. Did you feel that way with hero and also moving into 'The Anatomy of Prose'? Like how did you start with those?

Sacha:
So no, I didn't with the heroes book, it was very much driven by readers. I would say, what, you know, what you've done villains now you have to do heroes. And I was actually super resistant to doing it because I didn't think I could do it justice. And I, but I did, you know, I just, what I didn't want to do was repeat a lot of the things that I'd already said because a lot of character development is character development regardless of whether it's a secondary character, a villain, a hero, a minor character. So that was why I was resistant to do it, but the more I researched and thought and you know, tried to create an outline of what I would do, the more I could see an angle for where I wanted to go. And so there now there was very little crossover. There's a tiny bit just where I couldn't avoid it, but for the most part they are different books. But at some point I might do an entire compendium that also looks at side characters and sub characters and stuff. Because I feel like I would like to look at characterization in a, from another angle as well. But that's for another day. In terms of 'The Anatomy of Prose', that came from probably three places, I would say. So, I think it's the last chapter in heroes that talks about sprinkling the magic on your character. And it links back to the hero lens which is basically the concept that I coined, but it's very well known that the story is told through the eyes of your hero. But I take a particular view of it and that last chapter started to look at embodying the character at the sentence level. And I very quickly realized that if I wasn't careful, I'd be writing an entire book about that particular topic. So I did take a couple bits from that and was like, no, no, stop now. Stop now. So that was the first place I sort of felt it was brewing. When I finished that book. Now the other two places are what we've already talked about. So my geekery and love of deconstructing sentences. I've always wanted to share that obsession and love. And actually, funnily enough of my advanced readers, you are the second person to have said you have changed the way I read. And yeah, like it literally made me so happy because I might geek, now I can geek out with other people. I have people like sending me sentences now. I'm like, that's an amazing sentence. I'm writing that one down. And the third reason is because of my developmental editing, I have seen a lot of very common errors. I hate using that word, not, error. Just ways in which you can improve your prose, improve the cleanliness of your manuscripts and improve the characterization or description, whatever. But editing is a one on one relationship. If you write a book, it's one to many. So I can help many, many people with 'The Anatomy of Prose'. And that book is essentially, if you, if you read that book cover to cover and you implemented everything, you've just done a developmental edit on yourself and that was one of the purposes behind doing that book. It will pick up so many of the things that I, that your developmental editor will pick up. And that was part of the purpose for sharing it because I wanted to help people improve their manuscripts and their stories. And their prose, this book is enormous, like it is not a small book. So the fact that you know, there are every page has another thing that you could change or edit or make it better. It is a lot to absorb and I make no apologies for that. But what it does mean is lots of people will use it like a reference book and that's totally fine. Like you will come back to it, you know, it is one of those books that will need to be read two or three times before you can absorb everything because it's a decade of knowledge and learning from me, you know, that is everything that I've learned over, you know, a decade of writing. So yeah, it is a lot and yeah, but that is why it feels like I, and it wasn't me that said that it's some-- one of my readers said to me, it feels like I'm going--I'm doing a developmental edit because of all of the things that you're looking at. And in a way it is, I suppose what it doesn't do is it doesn't look at story arc because it's not about story arc, it's about prose.

Katlyn:
I definitely found a lot of things that I do want to implement. So thank you so much for writing it. How did you basically start with this book in terms of everything that you wanted to put out because it's a lot. And you know, did you start with an outline or table of contents, something like that?

Sacha:
With most of my nonfiction books, I start with a Scrivener file and I so very much--it's funny and until you just asked me this question, I don't think I realized that I did this, but I almost follow the same method of reviewing the sticky note tabs that I have got in terms of how I then structure my book. So what I will do is I'll consume information even though I probably would have done that for a long time before and I've got, you know, most of the knowledge in my brain, I then always purposefully read on topic. So I will read everything I can get my hands on and then I will stop reading whilst I then go and write. So I will have quotes in folders. I'll have put paragraphs of my own thoughts or learnings. I'll put links to websites or whatever. So wherever I have learnt something or research, got ideas and I will folderize them, I don't know if that's a word, but I'm making it a word and I'll theme them. So I'll have a section for description. I'll have a section for dialogue. I'll have a section for in my villains book motivation, I'll have a section for mental health, whatever. And from that point it starts to take shape because I can see the patterns in what I've picked up, what I've started to put notes down on. I keep those documents in my Scrivener and then I start a new section of chapters and then I start writing. And as soon as I have used a paragraph of my notes, it gets put into a completed folder. And then I just go until I finished all of my notes and then when I have no notes left, the book is usually relatively complete. Now that said, nonfiction is super hard to structure because you have to take somebody from basic to advanced. And you also have to weave a story and have a voice and you have to be educational. So it is a lot more complicated than just that. But that is definitely how I approach it. So I wouldn't say I have an outline as such, but I certainly know what my chapters are before I begin and I know what information I want to put in them, but they always change. So I think when I started, prose was 18 chapters and then immediately as I started writing, I cut it down to 15 and then I cut it again to 12. It doesn't always work that way. Sometimes it gets bigger. But yeah, this one I definitely condensed. The hardest bit for me was the final chapter, which was actually chapter four originally. And it just didn't work there cause it's so massive. And it felt much more like a reference guide. So I put it to the back because then it felt like the end. But it was like 20% of the book, like one chapter. So I was, yeah, that was the hardest thing. I was like, do I just completely remove this? What do I do? Anyway? So, yeah.

Katlyn:
Yeah. That's interesting how you weave a story. Like you don't really think about it when you think of a nonfiction book. You just think of like a textbook or just something giving you information. And that led--that leads into my next question about author voice, which you, which you differentiate when it comes to author voice and character voice in 'The Anatomy of Prose'. Yours specifically, I've, I haven't read many craft books that I can, I feel like I'm just chatting with a friend. I, I've seen, you know, here--heard your podcast and when I read your book I could hear your voice just by the way that that you wrote it. So I just wanted to know like how important is it to you to stay true to yourself in your writing especially in your nonfiction books and do you find that easier or more difficult in fiction?

Sacha:
So I loved this question and I get told quite a lot that people can hear my voice in my nonfiction and I very intentionally write that way because it is first person nonfiction in a way because I am authoring it and I very much try to talk to, to the reader. So I suppose there are fourth wall breaks as well in there. Author voice is really important to me and it's one of the reasons I absolutely love writing nonfiction because I get to be my most authentic self and I very much feel like my nonfiction represents not the truest version of me, but a very prominent version of me. The version of my author voice in my nonfiction is what you see on live videos is what you see in interviews, it's what you hear on the podcast. And I think it's because nonfiction is me sharing my knowledge and information. So it comes directly from me. So the three things that I always tried to do in my nonfiction books are to be motivational. So very much in that, you know, here's a conversation with a friend to G you up to, you know, you got to write that book. I've tried to be knowledgeable, so that's why my book's always very heavily researched and also a little bit rebellious. So I do swear in my books and I make up words and you know, I use slang and so yes, I love that author voice. Now my fiction books. So this is, I think this is something that writers often get confused. What is the difference between all the voice and character voice? So author voice can change. So if you went and read my young adult fiction, you would be people who know me know it's my, my voice and my fiction. But it is very, very different to my nonfiction. And so in a sense it's harder to write because with the nonfiction you, I just vomit me onto the page. Whereas in fiction, you are creating a new voice. You are embodying another person, so to speak. And that character voice cannot change during the book because they are the embodiment. Their voice is the embodiment of their personality. Whereas if you look at authors, take me, for example, my nonfiction sounds very different to my fiction. Now the reason I loved this question so much is because I am having a tough time finishing my young adult series, because I want to pour more of me into it. So it's hard not to have, you know, violent, sweary, naughty, sexy books and stories because that's kind of who I am. But you know, every story, every character has a voice. And so the next fiction book I write sounds completely different to this fiction, even though it's still a young adult, it's contemporary. But that is one of the reasons that after I finished that book, I will be starting a new adult fantasy series just because I want to swear. Basically. But yeah.

Katlyn:
Nice.

Sacha:
I don't know if that answers the question.

Katlyn:
It does, it does. I wanted to you know, have you talk about the difference cause it does come up in 'The Anatomy of Prose' between character, voice and author voice because I think, you know, people see voice with a capital V and they think like it is their author voice or they think it's the character voice. So I think it's important to differentiate between the two.

Sacha:
To explain explicitly look at J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter voice. And you know, you only have to look at Hermione and as soon as I say Hermione you hit a whiny, know it all, lovable character but a, you know, a school geek. Whereas if you read her crime books, it's a completely different voice. You can still, you can still hear elements of her in there. But it is, it's a different tone. It's a different style. It is a different genre. So it sounds completely different. And essentially character's stay the same because as I've mentioned, it is, they are an embodiment of their personality. So if for example, a character is a stuffy intellectual, they're going to use long words, they're going to use complicated sentences where, and they're going to sound like that throughout. That doesn't mean the author is like that. And that's why you have so much--so many more examples of nonfiction. That sound like the way an author speaks because it is their knowledge, their opinion on the page, and not a character who might have a completely different personality type.

Katlyn:
So I wanted to shift gears a little bit, do you have any advice for anyone who is interested in writing their own nonfiction or writing craft book? Just from your experience?

Sacha:
The structure is the hardest thing to get, right. And so don't be afraid to change it and then change it again and then maybe change it again. So that would be the first thing. Always, always research. If you have topics that are perhaps not your expertise area, make sure you have professionals check it. So in '13 Steps to Evil', I have a section on mental health because quite often villains are represented with a mental health illness. And unfortunately, nine times out of ten, the writer will make the illness responsible for the actions, which is completely wrong. Mental health illness does not make you make bad actions being a bad person does. I, whilst my background is in psychology. I have two degrees in psychology. I still went and got a clinical psychologist to double check everything that I was saying. So it's really important that you, you, you are credible with what you're saying. And then the same stuff that you do with fiction, make sure you have beta readers, make sure you have it properly edited. But the biggest thing that I would say with craft books is one, make sure you research and two, don't make it boring. You don't have to make education boring. Don't, don't feel like you have to write in a certain voice or certain you know, professionally, formerly you do not, when you write nonfiction, be your most authentic self and you will find selling it much, much easier.

Katlyn:
With this book too. You were talking about like sort of the reference part of it. You do have a list of resources for the book on your website and also a workbook. I just wanted to know how you went through the process of developing all of these supplemental things to the book and their particular significance based on, you know, what was the significance of the website versus the workbook?

Sacha:
Okay. So I have two supplemental things and then a workbook. So, the first supplemental thing is a self-editing checklist. It is in the book, but obviously most people don't--well a version of it is in the book. So the thing is most people don't want to mark their books or they'll want to reuse them. So I created the prose checklist. So just how you were saying, you know, earlier before you, you want to, you like to read and then write things down that you're going to go away and implement. I try to shortcut that process for people to say, here's a list of all the things that you can improve that have come from the book. So it's essentially a cheat sheet, I suppose that people can use to edit their manuscripts and to really improve their prose. So that was the first one that one people can get by signing up to my mailing list. The other one that I did was a download essentially. And there's a few lists of words. So for example, common crutch words, these are basically words that people repeat. Lists of clichés and verbs that are stronger. For example, I haven't done loads of them, but I've just done a few just to give people an idea of what to look for. And then other things that I put in the download were, things like links I've mentioned because it's really hard to lift a link out of a book. So I wanted to give it to people in a, in a list and then also reading list, because I always write down recommendations for books and then I lose them because they're in the back of books. And so I was like if I pull them out and give you a recommended reading list, then people can go in and go read the reading list. So that was the purpose of doing that one. And that one anybody can get just by, just by reading the book. The workbook goes back to what I was saying earlier about intentional practice. And I am a very firm believer in yes, passively reading and passively absorbing information is really important. But just as important is putting that into practice. Because if you do not practice the things that you are learning, you are not actually going to get better. You know, one of the only ways to get better at writing is to write. And so I create the workbook. So there were actually workbooks for each of my nonfiction books. The next nonfiction book I produce won't have one. But that's for it's because it's a very specific thing. But I create them and I go back in the chapters and I look at, I come up basically with questions and exercises that will help people to reflect on that particular exercise or, or literary tactic. So it's, I very much don't like to preach about what is right or what is wrong or how your voice should sound. So that's why there are sections in the workbook for you to reflect on your opinions on what you've written. So it's basically to help people put into practice what they have learned.

Katlyn:
Do you find having a download on your website, would you go back and update it throughout the years or if you remember anything, do you think that's, that's a good way of doing it versus having something concrete?

Sacha:
So, I probably won't change the self-editing checklist unless I do a second edition of the book. The resource download won't change unless I put more links in the book because they are, they are what they are. What might change, in fact will change our, my reader magnets. So at the moment I have a cheat sheet. I think it's like a 17 page cheat sheet to help you improve your villains. Which is my current freebie when you join my mailing list. In fact, there's two of them. I just only advertise one and then I give another one. But they are old and they are still good and excellent, but I would like to do something more, something different just to mix it up. So yes, those cheat sheets and freebies, they do change and yeah, so those do change. But I think with the book, unless I do another edition, I can't see any need for them to change it unless like for example, one of the links expires or something and I need to update it. But yeah.

Katlyn:
It seems like you have a lot going on. And I like the idea of a second edition of 'The Anatomy of Prose'. I vote for that. But between all of the things that you are doing, your podcasts, your books, what is your exact process or somewhat of a process? Cause I know it's usually changes. Mine always changes. For like tracking your goals and keeping to a schedule that you can work on.

Sacha:
It's a hard question. I don't necessarily feel like I have that nailed. What I do know is that naturally I am a person who likes to have too much on their plate. I sort of thrive when I have one or two too many things to do for the amount of time that I've got. So I'm naturally in chaos, I would say. But there are methods and things that I'm doing. So what I found is that setting annual goals doesn't really work for me. It's too long and I lose sight of where I was, my plans change and I just lose focus or a new exciting opportunities come up. So I have found setting quarterly goals, which actually I only started doing because of Jenna, Jenna Moreci. So yeah, I now set quarterly goals and I, this quarter I've been using the Clever Fox planner, which has just been fantastic. Quarterly goals is just long enough that you can achieve something solid in, in 12 weeks and short enough that actually not too many plans change in that time period. So that really helps. The second thing that I do is I break up my day and I try to always do the important work first, be it editing my own work, be it creating my own work, be it, I'm creating my course. I'm doing a pros course to go, go with the book. Or eventually when I start recording audio books, I will also do that in the morning, in the afternoon. I then do client work. I do interviews, I do business work, so admin: marketing, advertising, all of that of stuff. Then in the evenings I then do podcasting or interviews like this. So it's evening in the UK now. And then when I'm not interviewing or podcasting, I should be resting. But what actually happens is I sit on the sofa with my laptop, we put something on the TV and I continue working on my laptop because I don't know how to relax. So part of the reason that I get so much done is cause I don't really stop working. I'm complete workaholic until I crash and burn. And then I'm like, okay, I have to take a day off. And then I get really itchy by like the end, by about four o'clock. I'm like, Oh, I need to do something. But yes, or I'm training or whatever in the evenings. But yeah, so the biggest thing, the biggest change I have seen in my productivity is doing quarterly goals. And I was so resistant to that as well cause I was like, how's that gonna make a difference? Oh my goodness me, it makes such a difference. Because then you have the freedom to like change your plan later in the year and also there is only so much you can do in a quarter and therefore you must reduce the amount of goals that you've got. And therefore it keeps you more focused.

Katlyn:
So what is coming next from you? I know you have a lot of goals you're thinking about, but in terms of your next book or your next big project?

Sacha:
In typical Sacha fashion, I have about 8,000 things on the go. So immediately I will be doing the course. I started developing the course and I'm pulling together all the slide decks at the moment. That's so good. I'm so excited. What I have basically had a consult with my friend who's a teacher and she helped me to structure them in a really good way. You know, it's very different teaching in a book than it is teaching in a course. So she really yeah, she really helped me and we've got something that I am super excited to share. So yeah, so the course is the first thing. I am also working on a nonfiction, a couple of nonfiction books in a collaboration that I can't talk about at the moment. But I'm very excited for those. I will be going back to my young adult fantasy series. I've got a book that's 75k so it's almost done. I just need to get it over the line and there's whole lot of nonsense in my brain that stopped me from finishing that book. So I need to go back and finish that one. And then after that, I'm actually going to spend a little bit of time just doing finishing small jobs. So like I have an exclusive epilogue I want to have as a reader magnet for my fiction. I have to update to my autoresponders and my reader magnet for my nonfiction. I've got a prequel that needs writing. I need to write this mini nonfiction book I mentioned earlier. Yeah, so like so many things and then also the audiobook for 'The Anatomy of Prose' and the other two. But that won't happen until we moved because I am building an audio booth in my office.

Katlyn:
That's really fun.

Sacha:
Yeah. I cannot wait.

Katlyn:
When you were mentioning the course do you, when we were talking about certain narratives, when it comes to--or flow, when it comes to writing nonfiction, is there a similar type of flow through in a course that's different?

Sacha:
Yes. So interestingly that was one of the things that my te--, cause I gave my teacher friend the book and said, you know, I need, how do I convert this from what it is into something more, not necessarily more but different. And of course I actually think the book is in three or four pieces. So some of the early stuff about learning, learning how to learn and voice I think is, is a beginner's intro. So I will probably do that as a freebie course. And then there's what I like to think of as the meat and bones, which is a lot of the middle stuff and then some of the last chapter. So some of the devices in there. Then the character section I think should come out and should actually go in a course with my other two books on character. So, I don't know, earlier on I mentioned that I felt like there was something, I wanted to come at it from a different angle and I actually feel like there's a piece missing that I want to add to these two. And part of that will be a book and part of that will be the course. And then there is a self-editing piece. I think that over-arches the whole book, some of the section 11, I think it is on self-editing. And some of them, the devices that are harder to crack, I think that would be in an advanced course. So I feel like the book is going to be hacked into four. Because like you said, it is a lot. And to put that into a course would be hours and hours and hours of material and I just think it would be too much into overwhelming. So yes, there is very definitely a flow. And I think in order to give the most and for writers to get the most out of it, I need to chop it into pieces that make sense.

Katlyn:
Awesome. So we heard about your newsletter and where we can find you. I'm assuming that's on your website. Where else can we find you to follow all of your many, many projects?

Sacha:
Okay. So my two podcasts are The Rebel Author podcast and Next Level Authors which you can find on your podcatchers or on YouTube. And then I am most active, so I have a Facebook group called the rebel author-- Rebel Authors. So just search 'Rebel Authors' on Facebook and you should find us. And then I am most active on Instagram and I am @SachaBlackAuthor and that is Sacha with a C. So S-A-C-H-A Black author. I think, I think that's it. I'm, I'm wide as well, so you can get all of my books Everywhere.

Katlyn:
And I'll also link all of these in the description below so that no one misses out on any of your awesome projects. I'm so excited to talk to you and to you know, see what you have next. And 'The Anatomy of Prose' again comes out May 29th and I highly recommend, if you're looking for a new craft book, if you're wanting to hone in on your line level and improve yourself as a writer, you definitely should get it. So thank you so much.

Sacha:
Thanks for having me.

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