The Top 7 Mistakes Writers Make and What to do Instead

Introduction (Various voices) 00:03

Welcome to the Empowered Author podcast.

Discussion, tips, insights and advice from those who’ve been there, done that, helping you write, publish and market your nonfiction book. 

Being an author is something that you’ve got to take seriously.

I’m proud I’ve written a book.

What does the reader need, first? What does the reader need, second?

What happens if you start writing your book before you identify your “why”? What’s the problem with that?

If you’re an indie author, you take the risk, you reap the rewards; you are in charge of the decisions; you’re the head of that business.

Know that every emotion you’re feeling when you’re writing is felt by every other writer.

The Empowered Author podcast. Your podcast hosts are Boni and John Wagner-Stafford of Ingenium Books. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 00:53

We’re here to talk about the top seven mistakes writers make and what to do instead. I’m Boni Wagner-Stafford from Ingenium Books and I’m here with the esteemed Marie Beswick-Arthur. Maybe I’ll just take that slide away for a second. Hi Marie. Thanks for joining us. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 01:13

Hey, nice to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 01:17

No problem at all. And I’m hoping that some of our buddies – you and I met several years ago at the La Cruz writers group and I know we had some folks interested in whether they could join us. Lynn, I hope you found the right time and hope you can join us. So we’re going to do – this is going to be fun. So Marie and I were just saying how, you know, whenever she and I talk, we end up chatting and chatting and chatting and it goes on for a long time. And so we’re going to work very hard to be as concise as we can but there’s a lot of really good things in here that we are quite passionate about. And we think add – will add some real value to your writing, whether you write blogs or letters or books. Now, Marie and I are both in the business of books. So, it’s the long form that we pay most attention to. I think that’s fair to say. Is that fair to say, Marie? 

Marie Beswick Arthur 02:16

Yeah. But I think everything is story. So if you do a blog or you have a website, it’s the same thing. For me, it’s the same policy, no matter what I do. Yeah. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 02:24

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So these are things that apply no matter what kind of writing or what the product is that you’re writing. So, we’ve got these top seven mistakes writers make and what to do instead. We thought it would be kind of fun to present them Letterman style – hope Letterman doesn’t mind if I use his style. So we’ll start with number seven and we’ll end up at the number one biggest mistakes writers make. And, we’ll talk a little bit about what you can do instead. Now we’d really like to encourage, if you have any questions for us as we go along, post them in the chat: we are going to hold those questions until the end because we’ve got seven things to talk through and we like to try to keep these sessions to 30 minutes. We can go over because nobody’s going to cut us off if we need to go over but we try not to because we know everybody’s busy, including us. So, I think we’ll just jump right in. Would you say, are you ready to do that, Marie?

Marie Beswick Arthur 03:32

I’m ready, yeah. All right. We had about a hundred things but we narrowed it to seven and we’ll keep going because you and I talk fast and love it but we’ll do the seven today. Yeah. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 03:43

Yeah, exactly. And we’ll, you know, as we said, we can do some more of these sessions because we’ve got a whole bunch more topics that we’re passionate about. So writer mistake number seven is the fear of starting. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 03:59

Yeah. You get an idea and you think it’s going to be fantastic. Maybe it’s the middle of the night. So by the morning you’ve forgotten it and then you’re angry with yourself. But when you get that idea of what you want to write for your blog or your book, automatically, like the ghosts of like C minus past come in: the ghosts of your old English teachers come in and all these demons come into your head and, you know, you’ve got it in your heart that you want to do it but then you get scared. So I think the most important thing – sorry to jump in right there, Boni, because we haven’t rehearsed this at all.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 04:32

No, it’s good. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 04:33

I think the most important thing to do is you’re going to find a thousand ways not to do it once you decide you want to do it. So know that everyone feels that same way. At any point, people fear or fear showing or telling people that they’re going to do it. So what I like to do – okay to just carry on, Boni?

Boni Wagner-Stafford 04:54

Oh, well, I’m just going to talk about this for one second before we go to number six, if that’s where you’re headed. And …

Marie Beswick Arthur 04:59

Not, no, I’m not. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 05:00

Oh, you’re not? Okay. I’m going to jump in for a sec here then on the fear: one of my own ways that I identify that I might have fear around starting is procrastination. So when I go, “Oh yeah, okay. I really want to do that. I really want to, you know, work on that piece of writing” – and you know, I’ve got a couple of books that have been work in progress for a long time – and so when I always put things in front of getting started on those, it’s my trigger to go, “Oh, I have some fear around getting that started.” So it’s sometimes helpful to think about what might be masquerading as fear getting in the way of you starting your writing. Okay. Back to you. And then we’re going to switch to number six. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 05:47

Yeah. It’s not really procrastination. It’s fear. In those cases. What I do, what I recommend to people is start at the end. Don’t worry about – and that leads into another one but start at the end. Try to think about why you’re doing it, how you’re going to do it and what you’re doing. And if you can just answer those three questions in a phrase, you get past your fear and then, yeah, just put them aside and know that it’s normal. You’ve got to put the pen to paper in some way: whether it’s a list or pull something from the internet and paste it on a blank page, just making that start will help. But know it is normal. It is so normal because you’re putting yourself out there. Yeah.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 06:36

Exactly. And I hear that from the authors we work with all the time. Let’s pause for a moment for a message from our sponsor. 

Commercial 06:44

Boni Wagner-Stafford 07:14

Okay. Let us move to number six. Writer mistake number six: copy-pasting and not telling your editor. Perhaps you have some experience with this, Marie. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 07:28

Yeah. Perhaps I do. You know what happens is, you know, when we’re researching stuff and you’re writing a book, you go to different sources and you grab different people’s blogs and you look at what other people are Wiki. You’ll go to Wikipedia and you’ll grab some stuff. That’s fantastic because you’re getting your information. You’re pulling in what you need and your inspiration. But then as you’re going – especially in a long form; not so much a blog but in 55,000 or 100,000 words – you forget that you’ve copy-pasted that information. So as an editor, I’m going through it and I’m working through somebody’s stuff and all of a sudden, I might say, “Oh, this looks a little bit different,” and there’ll be a little red flag from me: did they copy-paste it? I’ll ask them. And they’re like, “I have no idea.” So not only might they have copy-pasted it but they also forget whether they have. Either way, it doesn’t matter: we’re stealing somebody else’s words and you don’t want anyone to steal yours. What I tell people to do is, “Don’t not copy-paste but when you do, put it in another color for your own sake if you’re not going to write – if you’re not going to reword that right away.” And along with copy-pasting is your sources. It just links to this. If you want to have a source – and I know we’re in the time of Covid right now and it’s very controversial – but let’s say you go and find a source and it’s on someone else’s website: not only are you copy-pasting but it’s also not researched because it’s just a blog. Unless they have a source from Harvard, Harvard Business School or something that Oxford University …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 09:04

PubMed or something very recognizable, yeah. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 09:07

Don’t use other people’s blogs as your source because they’re not a genuine source and it’s going to drive your editor crazy. But definitely, the copy-paste for yourself, like you don’t want Wiki words in your copy. And so – or in your manuscript. So for your own sake, do it in another color because you will forget. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 09:34

Right. And another thing I’m thinking about – I agree a hundred percent. And the other thing about making sure that it is identifiable as a copy-paste as you’re going through your work – whether it’s for you or your editor – is because related to the source issue that you’ve raised is before publish, there needs to be a decision made about the volume of material that you are sourcing. And it is not necessarily enough to add, you know, footnotes and in your bibliography that this came from this source. We need to pay attention to how much information is being paraphrased, exactly how it’s being paraphrased. And those are kind of copyright and licensing decisions. And, you know, I’ve worked with authors where it’s like, “You know what, you’ve paraphrased that movie for a page and a half and that’s too long. That’s going to potentially get us into trouble.” So making sure that you know where you’ve copy-pasted from and tracking those sources, recognizing which are valid sources, is really important information for down the road, even when it’s rewritten in your own words. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 10:46

Okay, so that leads us into the next. But before we go to the next, here’s another part of that: if you are looking at someone else’s material to copy-paste, and yet this is your, this topic is your passion – let’s say it’s dogs – and that’s your passion, why would you want to use someone else’s words? Write it and come up with your own because you’re writing this book: not someone else. So, you know, really watch that. Use it for research and then do your own thing. Yeah.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 11:17

And, and you’re so right. That leads right into writer mistake number five: not valuing yourself. Oh, I see this all the time. Okay. “So I’m going to write a book and I’m going to write about, you know, something that I feel very passionately about and I have direct experience in. And so, you know, I’m writing my book but I’m afraid that I don’t actually have the credibility. And so I continually talk about what other people have said.” I see this – I see this a lot. And I guess you see it a lot too. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 11:57

I see it all the time. And this is what – I’m going to explain to people who are watching what directly it means. Let’s say Boni’s writing a book on – let’s say Boni is writing a book on sailing. And she comes to me and she has her manuscript. And the front part of every chapter is a quote from famous sailors around the world. I would say to Boni, “Where are your quotes?” Because if you’re going to be a famous sailor and a famous writer, why don’t some of your quotes secure there instead of others? I just did a book that was a medical book and we have Hippocrates at the beginning of every chapter. And that author would not move from using Hippocrates. And that was fine. It worked for the book. But I was arguing to her that – making the case – that she is such an expert in her field, if she had the quotes at the beginning, she’ll end up being quoted in someone else’s book instead of Hippocrates. So it just makes sense. But people fear that they’re maybe not the expert. And I would say – I posit, if you’re the expert and you’re writing a book, your quotes are valid. Why don’t – then you can be on quotable too. You’ll be – that’s how these people – that’s how Emerson and all these other people got to be in Quotable.com: because they went out there and instead of quoting someone else, put their own quotes out there. So I really encourage people to do that.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 13:21

Yeah. I support that one hundred percent. And this – one of the ways that I see other writers doing this as if they’ve come from the academic world where an academic paper, it’s all about sourcing the previous scientists or theorists or other academicians who have gone before. Writing a book in the way that we’re talking about – and at least in my world, doing trade publishing of non-fiction; trade just meaning for the general public – it’s not an academic exercise. And so you don’t need to include those quotes and reference those direct sources because it is based on your experience, your perspective, your expertise. And you want to connect directly with the reader, I think. Does that make sense?

Marie Beswick Arthur 14:14

Absolutely. I’ll just book in that with this: that when you are, let’s say – oh, I don’t – I’m not sure how to sum it up in 30 seconds – but basically if you have the confidence to write the book, step into that confidence and have the confidence to have your words spoken instead of someone else’s. Steve Jobs is quoted all over and that is amazing. And he may have inspired you but you may have come up with new concepts. Why let someone else take credit for that concept when you’ve come up with it? So do your own quotes. Yeah. I think it’s … 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 14:53

Exactly. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 14:56

On websites too. If that’s your business: why not come up with your own taglines that people will say your stuff instead of someone else’s? Instead of saying that person who quoted Steve Jobs, they will say your name. And I think that’s really important in marketing. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 15:12

Yeah. I would agree one hundred percent. Okay. Writer mistake number four: sentence starters. You’re going to have a lot of valuable stuff to say on this one. I will just say that I worked on a manuscript recently, written by a neurologist and I just did a search and destroy out of – I think every second sentence started with “therefore” and it was like, “Whoa, we don’t need any more therefore,” or “additionally” or – and that leads us to the next one. But sentence starters: what’s your belief on sentence starters and the mistakes writers make with those?

Marie Beswick Arthur 15:52

Okay. Well, let’s separate sentence starters from superfluous words but isn’t it …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 15:56

That’s coming up. That’s a little hint of what’s coming up, yeah. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 15:58

Every topic on this list is actually connected because sentence starters still go back to fear and people don’t know how to start their sentence. So I’ve always said in all the courses I’ve taught, I always start my work like this: “Insert really amazing sentence here.” And then I carry on. And that way, I can go back to the first sentence and put the proper first sentence. You are never going to come up with your sentence – first sentence – at first; you’re going to write several paragraphs or several pages in a book and your first sentence is going to appear about quarter of the way through your work. And that’s going to rise to the top. So don’t fight it because if you’re going to send me your work, I’m probably on a blog; I’m probably going to cut out the first three paragraphs and the last three paragraphs anyway and I’m going to pull two gems from there. So basically, don’t stress over first sentences because first sentences come out of an amazing amount of freefall and are usually embedded way further in the text. We just think we have to write it. So yeah.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 17:08

Yeah. I am just working with another author – we’re getting very close to being published, publishing her book, “The Picture Wall” – and we did exactly that. We – the manuscript is almost done; it’s like ready for layout and proofread. And we just went through and about half the chapters, we found sentences that were buried about two thirds, maybe three quarters of the way in and moved them up to the top of that chapter. It was like, wow, that made a huge difference. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 17:38

Absolutely. Happens all the time. Yeah.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 17:41

So, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So – and that was my bad: I mixed up these two things. This is really – I think this is one of my favorites: the superfluous words. And full disclosure talking about words: I couldn’t decide whether to call this one superfluous words or overadjecting. I just love the sound of those two things: overadjecting, superfluous words. Anyway, this is that search and destroy thing: the therefores that I talked about in the previous example. And we all tend to do it to a certain degree. Usually adjectives but not always. Or usually adjectives and not always, in another little bit of foreshadowing. So, Marie, what do you say about superfluous words? 

Marie Beswick Arthur 18:24

I broke it into like a hundred categories but I’ll go with three: excess, redundant and weakness. And what happens is if you’re overadjectiving, you’re also overadverbing. So that’s was why I liked superfluous: because it covers it all under one umbrella. So when I listened to what you just said in your intro, we would never write that because you had “usually”; you had “certain”; you had all this – we would just take that and we’d probably take half – just like I just said “probably” – you would take half those words out. What people forget is we don’t write and read like we speak. So when you’re writing – you know, when you’re writing for radio, it’s completely different than – the spoken word is really different than the written word on the paper. So we have to remember that. When we look at excess words, I usually keep – “usually”: see, I did that again – but you catch it when you start talking about it. But we would sound so rigid if we spoke that way. But we don’t sound rigid on the page when we leave the words out. I have a list that I keep and at the end of a manuscript, I do a search on “very”, “just”, “also” and “additionally” and “therefore”. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 19:40

And “really”.

Marie Beswick Arthur 19:41

And I pull them out. Most of the time, pull them out. I feel the same way about exclamation marks but that’s another story. But also redundant words, like a really good example of this is the word “chai” means “tea”. So when we say “chai tea”, we’re saying “tea tea”. Now we’re used to that but we can do that in “hugely large”, you know: why would we say “hugely large”? We can just say “mammoth”. And so then we get into the lazy part of the superfluous words where we’re backing up our weak words: “He runs fast.” No, he gallops but “gallop” might not work well in a sentence where that’s not the way the character speaks. So you have to play with that. And in dialogue, it’s okay to use superfluous words if the speaker is speaking that way. So we see that more in fiction than in nonfiction. So definitely, work out like sentence by sentence on your final copy: take a look and read your sentences and just see how necessary – like if I say, “It’s very clear,” how is that different than, “It’s clear”? It’s not. It cannot be any more clear than “clear” because clear is transparent. So just really take yourself to task on saying, “Does every word belong?” 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 21:10

Yeah. My very first news director in my very first television-reporting job: you know, I think I covered a house fire and I wrote this radio story, the television story both – because it was a radio and television station – and I said something like, “The house was partially destroyed.” And he said, “Excuse me, how is something partially destroyed? What does the word ‘destroyed’ mean? The word ‘destroyed’ means ‘destroyed’. So if it’s ‘partially destroyed’, it’s actually ‘damaged’.” So in that case, the word, you know, “partially” was the superfluous word and it actually, you know, the meaning was all mixed up. The other thing I was going to say about the superfluous words is that sometimes as a writer, we can’t see the superfluous words so we can take apart every sentence as much as we want and we might not see it. Part of it is because we get too close. And part of it is because we think that’s how we talk and therefore we are not going to see it. So it sometimes takes somebody else looking at it. You know, the word “just” is an example. And I was going through a manuscript recently where it was like, holy, man, I think in every paragraph the word “just” appeared three or four times. And you know, and the writer had been working on this for quite a while and just didn’t see it. So do your best to have a look. But that is the kind of thing that it, you know, is very helpful for somebody else to take a look. And it probably is going to be easier for someone else to see.

Marie Beswick Arthur 22:42

It is. If you’re going to write lots and lots of books and it’s, you’re not just a one-book person, get a list: take some lessons and get a list. And actually – there’s another one – and actually just do it. So if you saw that on your list, do cross out “actually” and “just”. It’s funny: when you’re speaking, you’re really aware of it. But I would definitely just have that list and say, “Okay, I’m going to do a word search for this.” And if you’re going to write more than one book or if you’re going to write a blog a week, take the time to learn those tips so that you don’t have to – like you may get an editor but you’ll be faster and faster and soon be able to edit your own stuff. That’s what I do with a lot of bloggers. I’ll show them where they are going wrong in a bit of a lesson. Everything’s like a teaching moment. And then eventually the things that they’re sending me are really clean. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 23:38

Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. Number six. Writer mistake number six: “but” versus “and”. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 23:47

Okay. You go. Because (crosstalk).

Boni Wagner-Stafford 23:48

So I’m going to pick this one up. Yeah. And you know, there’s a whole bunch of different ways we can look at this. But when I look at the words “but” versus “and”, it goes almost beyond a writer’s mistake and it goes into a mindset about the way things are and the way we humans behave. And it is, you know, there’s a communication skill or a communications approach where if you’re having a conversation with someone about, you know, who knows what, being conscious of when you use “but” versus “and” becomes really important. The word “but” can negate the other person’s experience or feeling and the word “and” can make them feel exclusive – or rather included and accepted. So in writing, recognizing that pattern of speech that we have and in writing, what it means is that when you use the word “but”, it represents an exclusion. It should be used on purpose to set something apart that either is highlighting a problem or creating tension. But often the word “but” – and I, you know, I just used it there – but often the word “and” is actually better because things can co-exist at the same time: contradictory things can and do coexist all the time. So they seem like small, inconsequential words that we use all of the time and we want to pay attention to how we use them and use them purposefully and in the right way. You had a great example just before we went live this morning.

Marie Beswick Arthur 25:45

Yeah. So this is the thing that we added to our list. So we just discussed it for about 20 seconds before we went live. And I didn’t know we were going to put it on there but it was initially one of the things that I said I’d love to have on the list. So the way that I work things is, I always say, “Explain this to m like I’m six.” So I’m going to explain it like – because if you didn’t understand what Boni just said, here’s what it is: “but” and “and” are little words that are joining words. And when you read a book, you are swimming in that author’s words and you don’t realize how much you’re processing. Now, I’m going to tell you the difference between “but” and “and”. If I say, “Boni went to the store and I went to the gym,” you are going to understand exactly that: Boni went to the store and Marie went to the gym. However, if I say, “Boni went to the store but Marie went to the gym,” that’s the way to make your mind go, “Ah, something’s wrong here: was she supposed to meet her at the store?” They’re not two – they’re two exclusive things. The “but” connects them because there’s, like Boni said and – I would say like, almost like a negative or a condition: something happened, therefore something else happened. Whereas the “and” is just telling me a series of actions. And so where I see it the worst – sorry to take so long – where I see it happening, where it makes the most difference is, let’s say you’re in something quite important – maybe it’s a medical book – and you use “but” incorrectly, it cancels the first statement before the next statement. So you actually think that that part isn’t important and the next part is. It should have been an “and”: “He gives the patient Tylenol and he gives the patient an injection of antibiotics.” “He gives the patient Tylenol but he gives the person an injection,” sounds like the Tylenol wasn’t important and he shouldn’t have given it. That’s just top of my head. But I think that we – I just used it again; we use all the time as a joiner and it actually has a really, really specific meaning. So …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 28:06

Yeah, absolutely. That’s absolutely right. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 28:07

So really, really watch that. A lot of times when you’re putting “but”, you really mean “and”. That’s the rule. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 28:19

Now, number seven. Oh, this is number one. You know, I just realized when I was making these slides, I, you know, I screwed up the numbering. So this is writer mistake number one; not number seven. No you notice if you’ve been watching from the beginning, you know that fear of starting was number seven and fear of finishing is number one. So fear plays a big role in the life of every writer.

Marie Beswick Arthur 28:54

Yeah. You know what? They could be one and seven because it doesn’t matter. As you said, they’re book-ended: you start and you finish or you finish and you start. And I had said, “Start at the end,” because if you don’t know how to start, start at the end. But this is about fear of finishing. And this is like the most common thing ever. When you get going on your manuscript, you do not know where to stop. In a novel, it’s, “How much happily ever after will I give them? And I need to satisfy my audience so I’ll keep writing.” But also fear of finishing mainly is about, “If I’m done, then I’ll have to turn it in to someone and I’m scared to show them. So I’m really not done.” And people, it’s a game. We can say it’s procrastination but that’s the fear part of procrastination. Think about race – going on a race and you’re racing and there’s a finish line and you’ve just done like 10 kilometers. You don’t cross that finish line and then up ahead, there’s another finish line. And up ahead, there’s another finish line. The finish line is the finish line. And so you cross it and you stop. You really have to be disciplined with yourself to say, “You know what? I’m out.” I have a friend who’s a famous artist. She lives in Costa Rica. And she said of her paintings – she’s done thousands of paintings in her career; she’s in her eighties – there’s one above her desk and she said, “You know, if there wasn’t glass in front of that frame, glass frame, I’d still be painting that painting like 30 years later because you can always add a brush stroke.” Yes. You’re always going to go back over your work and wish you did something else. You have to treat yourself as a parent treats a child when they say, “Get dressed.” The child says, “No.” And you’re like, “What would you like? The red pants or the blue pants?” You’ve got to make a decision and end it and know that it’s okay to end it and not be scared to show it to someone else. Does that make sense? 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 30:54

And there’s one other – it makes perfect sense and I agree one hundred percent. There’s one other aspect to the fear of finishing and epitomized by the journey of an author that we recently published: Yvonne Caputo and her book, called “Flying with Dad”. So it’s – when we are writing, let’s – memoir: it can be anything but in this particular case, it’s memoir – and Yvonne did an incredible amount of research about her father and his growing-up journey and his experience joining the Air Force and going through World War II. And her relationship with her father – even though he had passed away several years before the book was published, her relationship with him kept evolving through the writing of the book. And so her fear of finishing was around moving to a different emotional state. And she was fearful of losing the connection with her father that she had built. So the fear of finishing can take many different forms and in – the result is the same if you let it get in the way of getting your book out there and published. You know, Yvonne, as you say, she could have done all kinds of things and kept writing and adding new chapters and … But the book was done when it was done. And she has found a different way of keeping the connection going, which is being very active in the marketing of the book and promoting the book. So that’s how she addressed her fear of finishing. And you know what Marie we’ve gone over.

Marie Beswick Arthur 32:34

Yeah. We knew we would. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 32:38

So, we didn’t get any questions here while we’re doing this live. What I find is often, more people watch on the replay because of time of day and that sort of thing. I’m kind of selfish at scheduling this live thing in the morning, my time, during a weekday. But we do encourage – even if you’re listening or watching this on a replay, post questions: Marie and I will see them and we will get your answers as soon as we can. And we are contemplating more series like this. We’ve got lots of things we’d love to talk about in terms of the Better Writer series or a better writer series. So if you have any questions about or things you’d like to hear us talk about in the future, we’d love to hear that. And otherwise we just may come back with our own ideas. So, any final little wrap-up words, Marie?

Marie Beswick Arthur 33:33

Just to add to what you just said: we are really fast and (inaudible) talkers. So this is fast. People are – people will gain things from listening to it and then coming up with their questions. We’ve gone so fast with so many concepts. And I think that’s positive. So hopefully people will zero in on their own stuff. And if you want a list of superfluous words, I’m happy to send them to you. That kind of thing. Just, just, know that every emotion you’re feeling when you’re writing is felt by every other writer. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 34:10

Yeah, exactly. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 34:11

If you’re writing, you’re a writer. And don’t tell yourself you’re not. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 34:16

Perfect. Marie, thank you very much for joining us. Signing off. 

Marie Beswick Arthur 34:22

Thank you. It was really fun. Bye, everyone. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 34:27

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