A book can be a great way to close a chapter in your life in a way that honors it and allows you to move forward. – Amy Jo Martin
About Amy Jo Martin
Amy Jo Martin is the author of the NY Times best selling book Renegades Write the Rules: How the Digital Royalty Use Social Media to Innovate. In addition to being a great writer, she’s also a speaker, entrepreneur and rookie scientific researcher. She’s spent most of her professional career in marketing and helping her clients like Hilton Worldwide, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal navigate social media.
Interesting Amy Jo fact: She used to live on a boat and now lives in a treehouse in the forest with two of her favorite Australians.
In this interview Amy Jo talks about writing a business book as a way to close a chapter on a part of your life in a way that honors it and allows you to move forward. We also discuss why you should write a business book as quickly as possible, social media fatigue and why writing is so hard.
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Topics We Explored
- Writing a business book as a way to close a chapter on a part of your career or professional life that you’re moving on from and to share the lessons and everything you learned.
- Why business books need to be written quickly.
- Why being an author is so hard.
- Social media fatigue.
- What it’s like as a female in male dominated industries (like sports, entertainment, technology, etc.).
- The power of serotonin.
- Conducting research studies to support your ideas and writing.
- Going back to school in order to gain the scientific credentials you need to be able to speak to the science angle of your work with credibility.
- The importance of middle-people to bridge the gap between science and storytelling.
- How writing has evolved over time.
Key Takeaways
- A book can be a great way to close a chapter in your life in a way that honors it and allows you to move forward.
- If you’re interested in working on a scientific research project, there’s a lot of scientists and researchers out there that you could collaborate with who would likely work with you on it for free.
- If you’re going to get through the process of writing a book, you need to be really passionate about what you’re writing about.
- You need to be passionate about the book you want to write because it’s going to require a lot of time and energy not only to write it, but to promote and share it as well.
- Writing is harder now than ever before because we’re constantly distracted by all the stimulation coming at us. We have the attention span of a gnat. You have to focus when you write and most people don’t feel comfortable when they have to focus on one thing for a long period of time. Dedicating a lot of time and energy to one thing isn’t normal anymore.
- Become comfortable with the way that you write and let go of the expectations that you put on yourself to be a “great” writer.
Resources and Books Mentioned
- Amy Jo’s Spread Serotonin Initiative
- Stephen King’s On Writing (book)
- This is Your Brain on Serotonin (article)
- Vanity Fair, America’s Tweethearts (article featuring Amy Jo and myself)
Connect with Amy Jo
- Follow Amy Jo on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook
- Learn more about Amy Jo on her website
- Listen to Amy Jo’s podcast Why Not Now? on iTunes or via the podcast website