What it's All About:
This episode is not just for pagans, but for everyone! Well, except for those of you want to write fiction. This is about what you need to know if you want to be a non-fiction author. So, I was talking to author Krys Copeland the other day about her new book and why she decided to write it. She gave me some hints as to what to expect if you ever decided to write a book. It's not as easy as you might think. There's more to it than just hitting a key on your computer, or putting pen to paper.
Songs Featured:
Links Mentioned:
Speak Your Own Book (Don't forget to add the discount code: DREAMSOUNDER when you purchase this book on their website.)
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Spirit Guide of the Week:
By Jeff Dahl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3379653
Seshet
Transcript:
(02:39)
Welcome to another episode of the Music From the Goddess’ Vault Podcast. I am your host, Midnight Starr. You just listen to Gaia’s Voice with Gaia Speaks. The topic of today’s show is Speak Your Own Books. But first, I am now on Mastodon. You can find me @goddessvault@witches.live. For those who are unaware, Mastodon is a Twitter alternative. It’s different from Twitter, so there’s a bit of a learning curve. This microblogging site focuses on community, and each Server (Or Instance as they call it) has rules to follow. But I’ll still be on Twitter @goddessvault. If you love this show, you can become a supporter of the Music From the Goddess’ Vault Podcast on glow.fm. This is another subscription based platform created by Libsyn. By the way, the podcast is now on Libsyn. Your donations keep this podcast going. You can pay five dollars a month, $50 a year, or a one time fee of 20 bucks. I’ll put it to you this way. The payments will go towards the show and the royalties I have to pay the musicians I play. To do this, please visit: http://www.glow.fm/musicfromthegoddessvaultpodcast. You can also make a donation to http://www.ko-fi.com/goddessvault or http://www.patreon.com/goddessvault. You can stay up-to-date on the latest from the Music From the Goddess’ Vault Podcast by signing up for their newsletter. You will be informed as soon as new shows are released. You can access past episodes by paying seven dollars per month or seventy dollars per year. Or you can subscribe for free at http://musicgoddessvault.substack.com. That's http://musicgoddessvault.substack.com. Please check out the blog https://goddessvault1.wixsite.com/home if you haven't already. You can listen to the show from there. And finally, if you have any suggestions for this show, you can contact me through the blog. The Music From the Goddess’ Vault Facebook page. TikTok at Midnight Starr with two r’s and the number two. Instagram and Twitter @goddessvault. And now Mastodon at @goddessvault@witches.live. Now for the topic: Speak Your Own Book. Before I go on, there will be no story or symbols today because of this interview. There will be a Spirit Guide of the Week. Let’s talk about the author. Krys Copeland is a pagan, born and raised in the United States, and now lives in the Netherlands. She is the Owner and Book Writing Coach at Speak Your Own Book. This differs from any publishing company in that you get help from transcribers who help you write your book. And you don’t have to type anything. She, along with Donald Lewis has written and released a book called Speak Your Own Book: A Guide for Witch School Students. You don’t have to be a pagan to read this. This book is about how to write your own non-fiction book. You can either find this book on Amazon or go to http://www.speakyourownbook.com. Krys has given all you listeners a discount… just enter the code GODDESSVAULT on the Speak Your Own Book website when you purchase the book. I’ll say it again at the end of this show. You can also find Speak Your Own Book on TikTok, Facebook, And Instagram. If you want to be an author, please listen to this conversation with Krys Copeland after this track by Dragonland: A Book of Shadows, Pt. IV: The Scrolls of Geometria Divina.
(09:58)
Midnight Starr: What got you interested in paganism in the first place?
Krys: I live in the Netherlands now. But, I started life very differently. I was raised on a farm in Texas and when I was living in Texas. Of course, like most people there, I was raised Christian and in particular Southern Baptists. I always knew that there was something not quite right with the things that I had been hearing in Southern Baptist Church. Especially towards the gay community. Towards and in particular in the very White Church that I went to. Even casual racism and all of these other issues that you just see a lot of in places like Texas. I understood at a very young age that a lot of what I was learning, in all honesty, didn't match the teachings of Jesus, much less like Christianity as a whole. It was counterintuitive to living a Christlike life. If you were saying all of these terrible things - are doing all of these terrible things to people. I left that at around 14 years old and started exploring on my own. Around that same time, my own mother also left that faith and began exploring Wicca. Around that same time as well, I was really into watching the craft, the old 90s movie. I researched a little bit about Fairuza Balk, who is now one of my favorite actresses, and started exploring where she got these ideas to include in the movie. And I discovered what Wicca was. I researched a lot online. Tried out a lot of different things and realized that some of this stuff was really powerful. As far as being able to create the future, I wanted for myself, or the present I wanted for myself. The ethics of Paganism, Wicca and Earth based religions spoke to me much more deeply than the ethics that are, or lack of ethics that are in some of the other Christian Judaic religions.
Midnight Starr: What made you write this book for the Witch School Student?
Krys: We were actually approached by one of the founders of Witch School, Ed “the Pagan” Hubbard. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he runs Pagan World TV. He runs http://www.witchschool.com, he's involved with the Correllian tradition, and the Parliament of world religions. A lot of different things online. He asked us to create this course for Witch School in particular. That is because there were so many students of his that wanted to publish their own books, but didn't really know how to get started. And it usually revolved. It revolved around Pagan themes, Pagan ideas or skills.
(13:55)
It's time for another spirit guide of the week. II’m going to Egypt to talk about the Goddess Seshat. She is the Egyptian writing goddess. The literary and library spirit. Other duties assigned to Seshat include census taking, measurements, book, and record keeping. The books and writing implements she uses as symbols show her passion for learning and sharing knowledge. Seshat is a goddess who loves to honor history, learn from the past, and keep track of time. She is commonly depicted as a bald woman in a dress and star-shaped headdress. Seshat is also sometimes pictured with a papyrus scroll or a leopard skin. Her name means female scribe in English. Seshat's brother and husband Thoth is the God of writing and she is credited with inventing letters. She works alongside Thoth in supervising the afterlife for the deceased. The job of Seshat is to record the names of the dead. Thoth is the one who declares the deceased and what they have done in their life before they go to meet Osiris. Seshat is also the goddess of construction. She once fought Ptah for the title of founder of architecture. That is it for now. Stay tuned for another spirit guide of the week.
(20:08)
Midnight Starr: That was An Open Letter to You by Tuatha Dea. Before that you heard Goodnight Sweet Witches by Reclaiming. Now, back to the interview I did with Krys Copeland from Speak Your Own Book. In her new book, Speak Your Own Book, she goes more in depth about how to write nonfiction.
Midnight Starr: When I was reading it, I'm thinking it's not just for people in Witch school, it could be for anybody.
Krys: Absolutely, that's kind of the goal of the business as a whole. We're a social entrepreneurship. Our primary goal isn't necessarily to make money. Money’s nice. Of course, everybody likes money. Money pays the bills. But our ultimate goal, once we pay the bills, is to create jobs and to help new authors find their voice, publish their works, and deliver that message to the world. It can be people from the Pagan community. It could be people from a sustainable living community. And that there's a lot of overlap on those communities. But yeah, anyone who has a message or something they want to share with the world but may not be the most gifted with words.
Midnight Starr: I notice from reading it there's a system. Can you give us a little overview as to the system itself?
Krys: Yeah, the system is actually not really a new one by any means. It's actually pretty ancient. But I'll explain it to you in modern terms and show how it relates to the old the way. We sit people down in a zoom meeting, very similar to what we're doing now. We give them a series of questions about their book, to kind of help them with brainstorming, right? Well, what kind of message do you want to deliver? What are the best ways to deliver that message? What do people need to know in order to understand the message you give? We walk them through that step by step. That brainstorming and outlining. Very similar to the way you would do the same thing, when you're preparing an educational type course, right? Asking all of those thought questions to get the creative juices flowing. Once we have a system set up through that initial conversation, we then create an additional list of questions that will begin asking in the next session. That will be over chapter one, will specifically outline chapter one, and how they want that to look? They'll talk us through it. We take that recording and we have it transcribed. Our transcription team has been specially trained, so that they're not transcribing this word for word. But instead, as they go, they put it into a book format. They put it into chapters, paragraphs and sections with headings, and everything that you would see in a typical nonfiction book. Or fiction if we're going that route. We plan on making a separate book to cover how to write fiction. Because there's a lot more involved with that.
Midnight Starr: And that got me thinking of another question, because I heard that it takes years for a writer to get a book out. How long does it take for anybody who wants to join Speak Your Own Books?
Krys: With the speaker on book method, we have been able to get books out in three weeks or less. I think our shortest time on a book was around two weeks. But in general, that was a lot of back-to-back interviews with the authors. Then our team just ran through and processed all of the audio files very quickly. Because we have a team that can turn those around within 24 hours. Then that is handed over to the writing coach at me or the editor on the project. Because the actual author is the client, the person speaking. The other person, the writing coach, is really a guide, and someone to help edit and clarify their meaning along the way. It'll hit back at my desk. I will go through that line by line, clean it up and make sure it looks like an actual book. That it makes sense and that it's logical. Then that's handed over to the client. In all honesty, it's really just, does the client have 10 to 20 hours to set aside? That's all that they need to do, if they use our full system. If they do the work themselves, it'll probably take them about four times that amount. Because that's about how long it takes to transcribe, and then probably another several hours to edit.
Midnight Starr: Explain that to those of us who are not techie in terms of SEO, just or just as much as you know?
Krys: Absolutely. SEO stands for search engine optimization. What that really means is you're getting Google to be able to find your site and like your site based on the fact that it has very well-written articles - with certain keywords that are the same as the search terms that people would normally type in to find you. Or to find your product. We can take it off of books for a second so people can get to wrap their head around this a little bit more. Let's say you sell Pagan jewelry. When someone is looking for Pagan jewelry, they're going to go to Google and they're going to type in - they might type in Pagan jewelry first, right? But that's not very specific. Maybe they look through the Pagan jewelry and they say, “OK, I want something that has a pentacle on it.” So pentacle jewelry. I think I want it in a necklace. Pagan pentacle necklace. All of those are different terms that someone might type into the computer to find your product. Being able to creatively come up with an article that goes on your website talking about your products and how they meet the search need. Google will see that and go, “OK, this site is a great recommendation to this person who is searching for it.” It will show your website. Now it takes a while to climb. It takes anywhere between six months to two years for your search engine optimization to fully take effect. It is a waiting game. If you want to do it a little faster, you have to pay for it with search engine marketing, which is the same thing. But Google will automatically put it up at the top. I do want to add in with the SEO for a second. We actually have a template that's included in the book for how to write an SEO article to pop onto your website. It's specifically geared towards books. That tool is available and there's also a link to a Google doc of the same thing, so you can edit it yourself too.
(32:07)
Midnight Starr: That was Spiral Rhythm with Three Witches. I thought you could use a musical break. But now, I’d like to continue with the interesting interview with Krys Copeland about her book Speak Your Own Book: A Guide for Witch School Students. We were still talking about how to market yourself as an author.
Midnight Starr: What is the cutoff in terms of how many times they have to post the same post in your opinion?
Krys: They don't have to post the same post. I would actually recommend that they don't post more than once a day. Unless they maybe have a very niche product that requires that. But most of the time, once a day is plenty. Enough to where people see you when they're scrolling through their feed at night before bed. “Oh yeah, that's that product that I like.” It can be a different post every time you might post a photo of the necklace by itself, or the book by itself. You might post a video of you reading the book. Or you might post a review that someone wrote about your book. But you can mix it up and put little different things in there while you're writing your book. You can also put excerpts from your book or the latest news about it. Yeah, the process of writing, it can create a whole lot of content for you on social media. Because you're keeping people engaged with you as you write it.
Midnight Starr: Fiction books. You don't have a book for that yet?
Krys: Yes, that's in the works for 2023. We would like to have that finished during 2023 at some point. But basically when you're looking at fiction versus nonfiction. In general, nonfiction is just easier to write. You're not having to produce new information. You're having to share or come up with something completely new. You're sharing information that already exists. Plus, your experience with that information. Nonfiction tends to be an easier one. That's why when we're teaching little kids how to write stories, the first story they write is all about me. Because it's information, they already have about themselves. When you're talking about creating a story that doesn't exist yet in this world. There's a different set of things that you need to prepare for that. A setting for one, you know where is this taking place? The characters that are involved in it. Trying not to make them one-dimensional characters. But really full human beings or whatever type of being is in your books. To make sure that they have rough edges or things they could improve about themselves, not just perfect characters that always make the right choices. That can lead to a boring book. We also discuss with our fiction writers plot line. What happens to these people or these entities in your book? Then how do they react to those situations? And based on their reactions, what could happen next in that plotline. That's something that we talk through. We have a lot of tools to help our authors with. Yeah, we definitely want to get that published as quickly as possible. For those that are interested in taking that dream they had, that really cool dream, they had and they want to turn it into a short story or a full-length novel. How to do that? That's an excellent question.
Midnight Starr: What advice do you have for people who want to write?
Krys: For people who are completely inexperienced in writing, don't worry about the writing. You're not going to be writing when you're using this method. If you do the transcription work yourself, you're basically just typing what you hear. Don't focus so much on the writing aspect because you're just going to be talking about it. You'll tell the story that you want to tell. If you can get into a conversation with a friend, which is what we kind of do in the terms of Speak Your Own Book, when we work privately with the client. They come in with someone who talks them through it. If there's something confusing about what they said, the other person can actively listen to what they're saying and say, “Wait, wait! Go back a second because what you said just didn't make sense. Can you explain it a different way or rephrase this. Having that feedback from another person interacting with you while you're doing it can be very valuable.
Midnight Starr: Do you have any questions?
Krys: Yeah, If an audience member is thinking about their book, we actually have a free 50 question guide so you don't even have to purchase the book yet. If you want to just sample some of the material from it at speakerownbook.com, you can sign up to get a free 50 question guy that also registered you for our email newsletter. Feel free to opt out at any time. We don't send emails that regularly and a lot of our emails are just like a discount that you can use on our web store or whatever our newest release is. You know you might get one a month or two a month, something like that. And you can get that free guide which will help you critically think about your book idea. And how to start making a plan of action for developing it. Could I do one little quick thing of putting in my social, so that people know how to contact me if they have questions. If you're looking to reach me online personally, my socials are all @kryscopeland. I do a lot of travel writing and posting photos from my travels. Feel free to follow me on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok, those are the ones I'm active on. I have shut down my Twitter account. You won't find anything related to me on Twitter as of a couple weeks ago. You can pretty much find me everywhere else. For our Speak Your Own Book, it's just at Speak Your Own book on all the socials, again, except Twitter. We took a stand on that too as a company. And I look forward to connecting with people online. If you have a book idea out there and you're listening, and you're not sure how to get started with it - send me a message. I'll be happy to give you some advice on it. Even if you don't use our services directly, you can still take advantage of a free 15 to 30 minute consultation with me or with one of our other writing coaches, and we'll be happy to help you get that project rolling. Whether we're involved long term with it or not.
(40:11)
You just heard Origin by Leslie Hudson. That is it for this show. Again, I’m your host, Midnight Starr. Thank you to Krys Copeland for being on the show and talking to us about her book Speak Your Own Book: A Guide for Witch School Students. She also gave you listeners a discount code GODDESSVAULT, when you go to https://www.speakyourownbook.com to purchase it there. If you have an idea for a non-fiction book and want help turning that into a reality, you can book a consultation with Krys or one of our other writing coaches. These consultations are 15 to 30 minutes long and done through Zoom. You can find Speak Your Own Book on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Got an idea for a show topic, spirit guide or dream symbol? Share it on the website https://goddessvault1.wixsite.com/home, through the Facebook page, TikTok at Midnight Starr with r’s 2, Instagram and Twitter at goddess vault, and now on Mastodon at goddessvault@witches.live. If you want to help keep this show going, you can donate money to either https://www.ko-fi.com/goddessvault, https://www.patreon.com/goddessvault, and you can become a fan on https://www.glow.fm/goddessvault. If you want to be the first to hear the latest episode, you can sign up for the newsletter https://musicgoddessvault.substack.com. I’m gonna leave you with Wiccan Witch of the Wild West by Loke E. Coyote. Blessed be.
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