A Letter To You,
RE: with the book you've always meant to write,
If you've found your way to this page, I suspect there's a story you've been carrying for a while.
Perhaps it's a novel you've turned over in your head on long drives.
Perhaps it's your own life, or your parents' lives, written down before the details fade.
Perhaps it's what forty years of work taught you that nobody else knows.
And perhaps, like me, you've started it before.
I carried my story for 8 years. I'd sit down, I'd think about it, maybe write a few pages, read them back and lose them in my computer.
The story was never the problem. I simply didn't have a way through it.
What changed was finding a method, and some modern writing software that quietly took care of the parts that used to stop me: the blank page, the structure, the rewriting.
The story stayed mine. So did every word I chose to keep.
I finished this story in 6 months. And my most recent in 3 weeks.
I put it into a system and call it the Green Lamp Method, and now I run small workshops to help others do the same. Let me tell you how it works.
We begin with a morning around a table in person.
A very small group. Bring your laptop or iPad and the idea you've been carrying around. If you don't have any of these – we help.
- At 10:30 we go around the room and you say your story out loud. For most people, it's the first time. It may even feel silly – but that's the point and it makes it real.
- Then we find the shape of your book: who it's about, where it begins, where it ends. What outline suits your story.
- We then work with you to plan every chapter, and write (minimum) your first pages with me guiding you.
- By 2:00 you'll have those pages of your first chapter printed and in your hands, and everything set up and working on your own device. The physical aspect is so important to our process – we don't want to be stuck at a computer all day.
Then we keep going, together, for 90 days.
Before the workshop, you and I have a one-on-one call about your idea. If you're not sure yet what to write, that's what the call is for.
After it, there's a group call every week where you can ask anything and hear how the others are going and find a circle of friends that are doing the same thing.
You'll have a step-by-step template for your kind of book, whether it's a novel, a memoir, a family history or a non-fiction book of what you know. We've written all of them this way.
And you'll have our contact and weekly calls, for the days it doesn't flow.
A few extras I like to include.
- When your book is finished, you'll have the option for our small boutique publishing house to publish it for you.
- A simple Family Launch Kit, with ideas and a printable invitation for presenting your book to the people who matter, if that is what you would like.
- A place in our yearly anthology, published under our Green Lamp Writers imprint, alongside your fellow writers.
- The option for an ongoing writers network where you can share your story and even get your first customers.
- If you belong to a senior sports or community club, we donate a sponsorship to your club.
What it asks of you.
I'll be straight with you. Come to the workshop. Join the weekly calls when you can, or watch the recording. Give it some time most days (and it really doesn't need much – I am talking like 15-30 minutes max). Bring those, and I'll bring everything else.
If you're worried about the computer side of things, please don't be. If you can send an email, you can do this. We set it all up together, in plain English. And if you need, you can even hire one for us for the workshop.
My promise.
If you haven't finished your book in 90 days, I'll keep working with you, one-on-one, at no extra cost, until you have. Most people finish in about 60.
Picture this.
It's Christmas, and you read the opening chapter of your book to the family. A few months later, you hand your grandchildren a printed copy with your name on the cover.
If you'd like to talk it over first, please ring me. Tell me about the book you've been carrying. I'd genuinely like to hear it, and more often than not my answer is, "Yes, we can get that written."
Warm regards,
Sam Schmidt
Head coach, Green Lamp Writers
