I Didn't Learn to Write Until I Was 53

We are up to the Epiphany Bridge Script and telling our own origin story for the Clickfunnels One Funnel Away Challenge. This story is used for marketing our products. The assignment was to either write or video our story based on a set script that we were given.


1. Backstory
2. Desires, Internal/External
3. Wall
4. Epiphany
5. Plan
6. Conflict
7. Achievement
8. Transformation


Backstory
So I didn't learn to write until I was 53, which anybody who knows me finds kind of amazing because of all those books that are sitting there behind me. But it's true. I didn't learn to write until 53 and it all starts back way back. My earliest memories about myself, the one that everybody already has an early memory mind goes back to about five years old. My earliest memory and I had three set three goals that I have used for my entire life. One was to own my own business. This is five years old. They did this. The other one was to do something in TV or film. And the third one was to write and publish books. I don't know why I came up with these three goals, but they were the goals and I set for myself at five years old and I have pursued them all the way through the rest of my life.


Desire/External
Now the problem was, uh, on all this is I don't know how to write. And somewhere around fourth grade, I was diagnosed with being dyslexic. But for me, English and writing are just awful. It was just a horrible experience. I don't understand nouns and pronouns. I don't understand how sentences go together. I don't understand anything. And I was that kid. I was always a kid in a school that was the kid who was allowed to do projects because they couldn't write the papers. That was me. So I made Viking villages and I made science projects and I acted out plays. I did all kinds of things. Because my teachers would feel sorry for me because I could not figure out how to put those words together. Um, I still want it to be able to learn to write and do, write and write books, but I just couldn't put it, it just didn't make any sense because my brain was messed up and this kind of went all the way through, all the way through grade school, all the way through high school, all the way through college.


Not knowing how to write. I changed my major in my senior year of college because I didn't want to do a thesis paper in the major I was in. I didn't want to do a thesis paper and I switched to art and I had been hanging around in the art department all along. But, I just didn't know how to do it. I had a professor who would flunk you if you put a comma splice in a, in a paper. I have no idea what a comma splice is. I have no idea today what comma splices are. And so I just eliminated all comma from my papers figuring, well, I don't have a comma that I can't have a comma splice. And so, that's the way it was. And it struggled and went through business and I'd have different bosses try to help me and people who helped me and try to do things.


Desire/Internal
It just, I couldn't write memos. I couldn't do it. I couldn't any of that kind of stuff. And, eventually that all came in as I became a graphic designer. And the problem with being a graphic designer as you worked with words all day long. And um, so as my client's got to know me because you have to do corrections all the time is they'd have to spell all the words. So I'd sit on the phone for hours while they would do corrections on newsletters and brochures and they would spell the words to me. And if I didn't get the word out, which would really sort of getting people upset, they didn't know me really well. Uh, they would get upset. And if they tell me your word over the phone, if I do not, even today, if I don't get the word out, the first shot, even a simple word, it's gone.


It's just completely gone out of my head. I have no idea what that word is, how to spell it, how to put any of it down. It just disappears. It will come back tomorrow, but it just doesn't do it. So it was just this sort of struggle, this internal-external struggle of trying to work in a world. And it happened to pick a career that, you know, works with words a lot. Of how to, you know, navigate writing papers, writing memos, correct. Doing corrections, dealing with words, right to spell. If you have to sit next to me in a meeting, it's kind of embarrassing. I've had people do that to go, what is he doing? Cause it's all scribbles and, scratches. In fact, you can kind of see it. It's just that. But internally I'm like just feeling like a fool or an idiot because I can't get the words out.


I don't understand language, didn't understand how things went, what they did. So it was just sort of a struggle to kind of put all that together, in, so that's, that was me, that's my backstory. That's who I am. Just trying to figure out how to, write and put words together and do all these things. But at the same time, I had this dream of that I want to write books and I want to do something with writing. I'm not sure why that came. I did. The other thing, I started my own business. I worked in a lot of TV stuff. I did all that kind of stuff that was fairly easy. But the writing was, was just a, just a real pain.

Wall
So, so as I got closer to my 50s, or in my fifties, I decided I just wanted to learn to figure this out.
Just see if I could do it, see if I could get words down. And blogging kind of came along. And so it gave me a good opportunity to start, to try to do something. So I just, I started to just push myself in writing. I was like, you know, I didn't know how to do it, but I had a number of things happen because of the graphic designer. There's a number of sort of epiphany's that happened or awarenesses that happen. One of them was learning about the power of an editor, so the editor takes and fixes stuff. And so I worked with a lot of editors doing graphic design and I started to come to the realization that I didn't have to be perfect. I didn't have to get my own words out because we're always correcting other people's words and the editors come in and fix their words.


Well, maybe they could fix my words too. So if I had things I wanted to say or I wanted to write, I could always hire an editor was sort of a moment, I can kind of actually maybe do this. And so I just started to push and push and there was a tech, I came up with some little techniques as I sort of just kept pushing myself to see if I could write a, one of them is this thing I called it writing a letter to your sister. So sometimes what I discovered in that, that period of time was if can remove yourself from yourself and kind of put it through something else, some other vehicle you it come out kind of sets a switch off and you can go the other way. So one of the techniques, the first real sort of a little book that I had to write was a software manual for some software products that I had is I wrote a letter to my sister and I basically just said, you know, Dear Katherine, that is my sister's name, Dear Katherine, here is my software product.


And that was enough to kind of trigger to get out this sort of little software manual. I had to write for myself and my product just to write. So it's like a little trick. I started to learn in my fifties some little techniques based on doing graphic design, based on working with editors, based on just watching other people doing it and started to just sort of push.

Epiphany
And I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and very interesting things that have happened. That's why I say I learned to write a 53 it's right around 53 I took this course from this internet marketing guy, Jeff Walker. So a lot of you probably know who he is. He's a, he's a pretty famous internet marketing guy and I took a course from him and he had a technique in there.


We all had to write a business plan. So that was going to be this assignment. We had to write a business plan and, but the way he delivered or assigned us to write this plan was he gave us little assignments, single paragraphs, just little bitty things, write this out. So I was like, okay, I can write that. It's not writing a whole big thing. It's just writing a little bit and I would write that little bit and the next day he gives you another little assignment. I write that little bit and write that a little bit and this amazing thing started to happen is that by the end of that process of writing this business plan for the course, all of a sudden some kind of switch went off in my head and I could, I could write like words started coming out.


In fact, they came out, I could feel them coming out of the ends of my fingers. I had to happen once. Learning how to play the Mandolin, whereas suddenly got it and like notes can just pouring out of the end of my fingers. This was words that came out of my fingers and suddenly I went from this thing that was like so hard to suddenly, there are just words just like pouring up. And I would sit there and just write and anybody who has gotten an email from me during that time where before I struggled to barely get one or two sentences out and I still do this. I still take the backs of thoughts and put them at the front. If I write out quickly the backend of the sentences at the front of the sentence and the runs, that's, that's dyslexic being dyslexic, you switched things around.


Plan
Well, we're just kept started to come. I was like all I can pour it outright and point out right. And I'd be just writing, writing, writing, writing. So I'd write these emails that were like this long like measured them in feet as opposed to, you know, inches. And because it was like something had happened in my head that just switched and I realized it and I just started to write and I just started writing, writing, writing, writing, writing and I realized that also another big thing that happened to me was a couple of things in here. One is the power of hitting the publish button, the power, whether you are on a blog and it has to be public, but by writing something on a blog. I had been doing a lot of blogging at this time. I had been trying to push is that when you hit the power, the hit the publish button, you realize the second you've pushed it, pushed it what it is you should have written like you have a transformation.


Even just writing little tiny blog posts, you hit that publish button and something happens. You're like, oh, that's what I should've said, there is a transformation. Like you go, oh, and they can go back and fix it and you can fix it and you can realize that there's something that happens in the power or releasing your stuff to the world, like pushing it out there. So I sorta had this thing that happened were suddenly words are pouring out of my head, out of my fingers. It really felt like they'll be coming out of my fingers and mixing that with the power of hitting the publish button and letting things go and learning not that I don't have to be perfect on stuff and maybe an editor could fix it and just, and just go. And so what happened is I started to write everywhere.


And I started to write, I started to take off days and go off to libraries. You don't have to have your library has study rooms. Didn't know that. But I do now. And I did then. I started to learn about them. You can go there and just write. I took, um, I did. There was one day I went, I was in a conference in San Diego and I wrote, I went to, I had a lot of time to wait for the airplane with the conference done, I had the time to wait for the airplane and I went to the Hard Rock Hotel Cafe and I wanted to write a book and I had all my notes ready to go and I said, I have six hours, I have to wait. Can I just sit here for six hours? You bring me coffee, bring me food, I'm going to sit at this table and I'm just going to work.


And they were like, yeah, sure, whatever. And they just would kind of bring me food. I had ordered another sandwich. I just kept writing. I was there for six hours. I just wrote and wrote and wrote, wrote, wrote and wrote. It was, it was wonderful experiences just to sit there and do that. And I just started to keep to do it and I realized also you can lose this. And so I was like, okay, this thing happened to me. I can now get words out. If I don't, it's like a muscle. If I don't keep working it and do it, I'm going to lose this. So it was sort of urgency to kind of get things going. And uh, so it just, it was just the most amazing experience. And what had been an awful thing became a wonderful thing, a switch. There was a transformation that happened in me from not being able to do this, this whole thing.


It was so hard to do to something that I just would go off for a day and write. I go to a library to write. I started writing on airplanes. I wrote a number of books in airplanes. I was going back and forth across the country a bunch at that time. I would, it's a, writing on an airplane is the most, it's a fantastic place to write because you can, you can write, no one bothers you just write. You know, it's limited time. If you're tired, you lean back in your chair and take a nap. Can you get back up and you just keep writing? Uh, it's a fantastic place to do it. And I wrote a number of books flying back and forth across the country.


So it just was sort of eye-opening and it's like, aah, and I had some amazing writing experiences, getting other people to write this sort of transformation that happens that when you go from the no, no, no world to the yes, yes, of letting yourself go of hitting that publish button, letting it go out into the world and see what happens. It's just, it was like incredible. So as this kind of went on, so that was like, I was around 53 when that hasn't moved on. I started to get better and better at putting words down and a number of things that I sort of developed at that time also is one breaking the perfection button. They, uh, came, a friend of mine who came up with a phrase of Perfection Freeze Progress. But some of it is realizing that when you have a thought when you're trying to write in your, you're used to with the pen is that we, we self edit ourselves in our own heads. We self edit, right? We stop our fingers from writing or typing and learning to just do that.


Conflict
Put those words down. I know you'll have conversations in your head with yourself when you're sort of trying to write something. I was writing some notes here. I put some notes here for this here and you're like, Eh, I don't want to write that. You just, it's learning to put that down. Like that is one of the hardest things to learn, I think is that we self edit ourselves and we'd go, I just want to say that doesn't want to say, I don't know what I want to say this is, it's going ahead and put it down because that's the power of the editing afterward. It's the, you have the power of publishing, but before that, you had the power that you can fix it, you can change it, you can edit it and so that's getting confidence in yourself that just put those words down.


Don't self-edit, like don't put this barrier up. It's like one of the toughest things I think to sort of as I learned to write and learn to deal with it and I and get those things out of my way. Get that stuff. That wall that you put up that prevents you in your own head and putting it down on paper. You haven't even shown it to other people yet. You haven't dealt with an editor, you haven't been with anybody. It's in your own self and putting that down and just letting it go and it's going, yep, that's okay. I'll just write. I don't know what I want to say but I'll just write, write that down and that's a big step and sort of moving it forward. I also developed a sort of a Top Ten Technique and I teach people this technique.


I'm not sure if you'd know me. You've seen me probably teach this. I've been on airplanes, I've done it on restaurants, I've done it all kinds of places. It's a technique that I kind of develop how to pull this stuff out of your head, how to use those initial thoughts and expand those thoughts and stuff. It's, I call it my Top Ten Technique. Um, and at some, it's a technique that I had sort of developed while I was going through this and it's helped me in writing a lot of books and doing kind of a lot of stuff. So, um, it's just, there is sort of conflicts that come up and walls that we put ourselves, but it's sort of a process of releasing all that stuff.

Achievement
So now we move forward 10 years. What's happened? Well, there's a whole shelf full of books. I have now over 50 books that I have published all different kinds of genres. I've also, um, helped a lot of other people get their books going, I have a large group on Facebook. I have, I've developed courses, I have books. All kinds of books, books on writing books and publishing something that was so hard for me. I now teach other people to do it. I have hundreds of people that have used my stuff and listen to what I've done. It's just been pretty amazing to watch people.

Transformation
It's exciting to watch them go through the process of learning, to write and to publish and to release. But it's really that transformation that comes, it has been some of the most amazing things to see people's lives, including my own, that have gone, who just had this internal dream. I wrote in one of my latest books, I wrote this phrase, I put, it sort of a dedication to myself in here.


And I wrote because I didn't really feel this because I've seen it happen so many times.



Publishing your book is often the fulfillment of a dream 

you might not know you even have, it can transform your life.

So let me just read that again.


Publishing your book is often the fulfillment of a dream you might not even know you have. It can transform your life.


It's, it changes your perspective on the world. It gives you organization, it helps you move forward. I've had some amazing experiences. I've watched people in a room who, somebody who I had helped get their book published, and they walk into a room of their friends with their book and just this unbelievable smile on their face. And there's this, they don't even know what's going on as all the people come around them. Congratulate them on their book. Because even though I'm kind of in a world that generates a lot of books, and we all have a lot of books and authors, most people don't have a book. And it's a huge deal to get one out. And so to be able to watch that happen, watch people's lives go in different directions, watch them. Gain the confidence to do things, to reshape things based on writing. So I just encourage you to push, pursue those dreams. Put stuff down on paper. Go ahead and publish. Hit that publish button. Uh, get things. Get a transformation that happens. It's unbelievable.

All right. See you next time. Bye Bye.