Do you know what I love about you?
That I don’t even need to explain to you what I do. My ‘job title’ – my ‘passion title’ – says it all to the kind of client I want to work with – YOU.
You know what a birth doula is, so you have a very clear picture of what I can do for and with you as your book doula. You know that birth doulas are non-judgemental, accept all of who their client is and hold space for her while she births her baby. So you can well imagine the kind of person I am as I help you birth your book – present with all my being for you, with all my heart and with all my passion to assist you in the birthing of your ideas, sentences, chapters and, ultimately, the whole of your baby. I am here with you, at every turn, and I make sure you get to the end, and beyond too, and of course as serenely as possible.
For some potential clients – those who I would love to work with, those who I know are committed to their ideas, their writing and their desire to see their books being released into the world – it means that although I am not even working with them (yet?!), I am already inspiring them. As one of them put it, ‘Knowing I have a book doula that could help me has made me think about writing a book! I never thought about it before. You are inspiring people already!!’
Another potential client said that she didn’t even know that ‘book doulas’ existed. I said I didn’t know either, until a month prior to our conversation! When it first came to me, I thought ‘Yes, let’s go for this “passion title”, it says it all and encompasses everything I do!’ It’s only the next day that I thought, ‘Oh, I’d better check if there are already other book doulas out there.’ I did a quick search on Google and found one article published by The Guardian in 2017 about the name ‘book doula’ being an actual thing/job and referencing three ‘book doulas’ (one of whom I had already come across separately, top of my search). So it’s not a ‘big’ thing, just like birth doulas aren’t ‘big’ (yet), but it is a thing! I was surprised that it existed, but also relieved and excited. It was a thing, it summed up all my passions and it was very niche – precisely what I had been striving to uncover/create for the past 3 years, encouraged by business coach extraordinaire Suzy Ashworth ? I felt I had arrived and I was complete!
So I love that I have created for myself a job that encompasses everything I am passionate about (birth in all its forms, emotional support for women, books, editing and proofreading) and that you ‘get it’ – you know my services are exactly what you need, because you sense that you want hand holding in the creation of your book and you understand that the whole process will be a lot less painful with me by your side.
Small disclaimer: there is no such thing as perfection, and so it is still possible, despite my being a grammar geek and a spelling sorceress, that I will miss something in your manuscript, witch we will only realise once the book has been published. It is practically inevitable. Once you have gone through the whole editing process (if you haven’t already), you will understand why. There are so many moving parts and stages to it that we could read and reread your manuscript ad nauseam and still there would be one or two spelling mistakes or typos left (though typos should be avoided thanks to the spellchecker in Word – we just need to remember to run it at the end of the very last read of the manuscript…!).
So if you have a book in you, or a half-written manuscript in your computer, or are at the last stage of your book-writing (the proofreading stage) but can’t stand reading ‘this thing’ one last time, you can get in touch with me. I will help you whatever phase of the writing process you are in (even if all you have is a vague idea and three sentences). I will assist you editorially and emotionally. I know how hard it is to birth a book. To put yourself out there. To put your baby out there. To even simply let go of your baby, who, it feels, will never be ready.
I understand.
Let me help you.
Together, we can blast through those blocks.
Alone, I can edit or/and proofread your book, so that you can rest and stop thinking and worrying about it.
I can give you peace of mind.
I can work with you on anything that you find challenging – the structure, the editing, the proofreading, the writer’s block, the blocks from your childhood when your teacher told you that you would never amount to anything or that your grammar was so poor you would never get a job (‘let alone write a book’ was the implicit message).
Get in touch. We can just have a chat. I offer a FREE 20-minute consultation.
PS: I have deliberately made a spelling mistake in this blog post. Have you spotted it?! (Clue: it’s Halloween soon…!)
PPS: Today, my maternal grandmother would have been 99 years old. 99! She only died just over 4 years ago. A remarkable woman. I dedicate this post to her. She was a doctor and a prolific writer, of mostly books about nutrition, but she also wrote about her life, as well as a few novels and short stories. She was an avid reader too, was excellent at Latin, had irreproachable spelling and grammar, and a vivacious mind and spirit. I miss our literary conversations, I miss walking around the park with her, I miss her wise words, I miss her stories about the war, her medical studies, her exemplary parents and her family, I miss her anecdotes about her childhood. In my attic, I have all her manuscripts. There is a novel in all of this, which I will attempt to write as soon as my daughters are old enough to either leave home or to help me write it. I will need a lot of space to spread out everything, and a lot of time to wade through it all and turn it into a novel – or perhaps a biography, as she truly had an extraordinary life. She was always an inspiration to me, and even now, beyond her death, she still is. Your spirit lives on, Mamie.