Leaps and Bounds

Today was a great day.

Today, I moved from being a freelance book editor into being a woman who runs an editing business. Actually I’d go so far as to say a publishing business!

If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know I’m working through the processes in Jacqueline Harrison’s book How To Create A Business From Nothing. You may also remember I was already working as a freelance editor but my business was slow. Well, I think it’s about to pick up, and I’m excited!

About a month ago I was sent a manuscript that is essentially a biography. Without revealing all the content, I will say it included some extremely disturbing scenes that would have been exceedingly traumatic for the author to experience, let alone write about. As a reader/editor, it left me feeling pretty traumatised which put me in an interesting position. The book was written well so I was confident the author could produce great work, but the content just didn’t sit with me.

For a week or so I meditated on the situation. I realised I had two choices:

1) Take the book on as it was, tweak the structure and chapters and agree to edit it and help to get it published. (This was appealing as I could certainly do with the income).

2) Do something radical.

I chose door number 2.

I expressed to the author that I didn’t think her book was working (as it stands) and that I intuitively felt she would benefit from writing a completely different book.

Yup, I basically told a potential client that the hours, weeks, months and years they had spent working on their manuscript was not going to cut it, and that they needed to start over again and take an entirely new angle.

You can imagine how that would have made them feel.

The author and I spoke about this new idea today and she informed me that I’d thrown her a curve ball. Her initial manuscript “was 20 years in the making” and would have taken a lot of effort to write, due to the content. I assured her that all that writing was for a reason and certainly wasn’t wasted. But I stood firm that my idea, or at the very least, a transformed book leading from my idea is where her magic lies. I even think she could produce a bestseller.

She has yet to agree.

You might at this point be wondering why on earth I am boasting about making leaps and bounds with regards to my business goals, when in reality I still don’t have a bestseller on my hands and might even have scared off a potential new author.

Well, the author’s agreement to my idea isn’t the most important part of this tale. What stands out for me is the fact that I am backing myself. Really, truly backing myself – even if it means potentially losing a sale.

My decision to break through my emotional glass ceiling (as I wrote about in my previous blog You’re On), and Become All That I Am involves Being True To Myself, and that involves following my intuition, listening to my heart and acting on what I know to be right and true. Underlying all of that is my belief that World Peace is possible and must be at the core of every decision I now make.

The book that I know this author could write could absolutely change the lives of thousands of people if it’s delivered in the right way. And I am backing my instinct 100% that I know which way that is. Helping thousands of people by producing an incredible book has more chance of bringing us closer to World Peace than publishing an average book that pays my next rent.

Before embarking on this journey to follow Jacqueline Harrison’s book advice, I would most certainly have balked at the conversation I had with that author today. I would have made a few rewrite suggestions and taken the work on and probably felt good about paying my next phone bill and earning some much needed cash. Instead, I have a potential client who I know is sitting on a personal and a global goldmine if she chooses to write the book I can see is in her. Whether she does or not, is her choice. And whether she chooses to come back to me with her business is also, her business.

But either way I am standing at the top of my own goldmine right now. Because now I feel like I’m really “getting” it. I’m behaving differently, I’m having conversations that I would have previously avoided, or at the very least, watered down. As of today I have proven to myself that I do believe in World Peace. And more importantly at this stage that I believe in my ability as a great editor and publishing director.

I have proven to myself that I Believe In Me.

Finally!

My gut has always had a “nose” for a great idea but too many times I’ve chosen to ignore it because I was worried about the consequences of not making enough money, of not being “right” or of not being approved of. Or, as Marianne Williamson wrote in her famous speech that was spoken by Nelson Mandela, maybe I was afraid of shining.

But not any more, because as of today I am ready and willing to shine. And I am not going to stop shining my light on the world ever again.

Today, I made an enormous leap forward and I couldn’t have done it without Jacqueline Harrison and her invaluable advice to “think and operate from the space of being a millionaire blogger”. In her book, Jacqueline insists that we think from the future space we wish to be in and work from there. That’s what I did today. I spoke from the future me that is abundantly healthy, financially free, blissfully happy, filled with self worth and positively oozing with Love.

And I cannot express to you just how fantastically freeing and wonderful it feels.