Foot Reading with Jane Sheehan
Writing
The Foot Reading Coach
Despite having now written two books on the subject of foot
reading, I still find it hard to sit down and write an
article about it. Now don’t tell me that you’ve never
thought about writing a book. Do a quick straw-poll around
any office and I’m sure you’ll find that most people have
wondered at some stage whether they have a book in them.
This month, I thought that rather than inspire you to read
a foot, how about inspiring you to write your own
book?
My
first tip: Make it easy to start. If you
want to write a book, then you’ve got to start writing!
It’s a simple and as difficult as that. You think you want
to write, but then you procrastinate and suddenly find
yourself tackling all those other jobs that need to be done
but you never got round to doing. You sharpen your pencils,
you tidy up, you hoover under places that haven’t seen a
hoover in months. Instead of procrastinating, make an
appointment to start writing. Allocate time. Pick up your
pen. Write. Repeat each day until you’ve finished.
My
second tip: Don’t edit until you’ve
finished. Keep going. Editing at this stage will stop your
flow.
My
third tip: If you’re finding it boring to
write, then your reader will find it boring to read.
My fourth tip: Have generous and magnificent
people around you. When I wrote my first book, I told one
person my idea and she encouraged me to do it. A few years
later she admitted that she didn’t think there was a market
for it but she could see I was enthusiastic so she
supported me anyway. I was very lucky. How many people have
told someone their “great idea” only to have that person
discourage them? Choose your mentors well.
My
Journey
I started writing The Foot
Reading Coach a year ago. It began as a chronological story
about how I’d been learning to add different things to
enhance my foot readings. I was travelling an awful lot
and, after a rather enthusiastic start, there were great
gaps between my bouts of writing. Once I’d got 100 pages
completed, I toured Australia and the joy of being in a new
country with a new set of challenges meant that I totally
lost track of what I’d been writing. So I allocated
December and January as my time to finish the book.
Writing can be a very isolating and lonely task. I live on
my own and could go for days without seeing a soul, so I
arranged to stay at my parents’ house for my writing
retreat. This meant that I would be away from my own home
so I would avoid the usual distractions, interruptions and
minimise the opportunities for procrastination, plus I
would have a structure to my day. I would write my morning
pages, then be called down for lunch. (When I write at my
own house, I forget to eat or I use the preparation of the
food as an excuse not to get on with the writing!) I’d go
for a walk after lunch with my parents for an hour or so
and whilst we were walking I’d bounce ideas around with
them. Then after the walk I’d get back to writing until
dinner-time. I’d spend the rest of the evening relaxing,
visiting friends or chatting.
When I arrived at my writing retreat, I’d forgotten what
I’d written. I re-read the 100 pages. I didn’t like them. I
felt it was too bitty, had no discernable structure and so
I scrapped it and started again. I spent two days thinking
about how to structure my work and came up with the idea of
collating my coaching by order of which toe it would relate
to during a foot reading. This was just the breakthrough I
needed. Once I’d reorganised my ideas according to each
toe, the book was much easier to write and to complete.
By the end of January, I’d finished writing the book. My
folks did the first proof-reading which led to a lot of
reworking to make the text easier to understand. They
played “Devil’s Advocate” to make sure that I could back up
my ideas. The second proof-reading was undertaken by
Heather Doyle and then it was sent to the graphic designer,
Nicki Averill, to design the layout of the pages so that it
was optimised to get the most economical set-up for the
printers and to enhance the flow of the ideas. I already
had my ISBN number as you get ten of them when you first
apply. Luckily, Nicki already had the necessary software to
create the bar code accordingly.
Meanwhile, although we’d solicited testimonials for the
book cover, we had an awful time trying to work out what
the front cover of the book should look like. The cover we
finally chose was our 9th attempt!
I went to The London Book Fair with the intention of
gleaning ideas on what makes a good and a bad front cover.
The general consensus was that it’s the hardest part to get
right and no-one seemed to have a formula that they could
impart!
By this time I was badly in need of a rest from it! My
trusty pal, Sylvia Ferguson and I set off for a week’s
holiday travelling to Cornwall and back, staying at
different places each night. By the time we’d reached
Totnes, we’d been discussing my dismal failure at creating
a suitable book cover. Sylvia took me into Arcturus book
shop which is dedicated to holistic reading matter and we
spent a jolly afternoon soliciting advice from the lady
behind the counter as to what made a striking book cover.
We toured the shop and noted quite a few things:
• If
it has a spiral in the centre it draws your eye in to the
centre of the book
• If it has a path that is wide at the bottom and narrow at
the top and finishes in the middle of the book, then it
draws your eye in
• Anything with gold embossing attracts the eye
• Blue and Orange work particularly well together
Based on these observations, we hatched a plan. We needed a
cover with a pair of feet (That’s a no-brainer given that
the book is aimed at foot readers). The feet had to be
attractive rather than interesting to read because we
didn’t want to put anyone off given that a lot of people
don’t like their feet! We had to have something in the
centre to attract the eye to the centre of the book. It had
to stand out when placed amongst a lot of books. The feet
had to dominate the design so that anyone interested in
feet would easily find the book.
Sylvia woke up the next day with a complete picture in her
head about what the book should look like. She described it
to me and it sounded like a winner. We devised a plan to
mock-up the book cover ourselves so that we could show
Nicki what we had in mind. During our holiday we found some
gorgeous blue wrapping paper with gold stars which we
decided could be the background for our picture. On
returning home, I press-ganged my next door neighbour into
being my foot model and produced an orange gerberer flower
that would serve to draw the eye to the centre of the book.
Thankfully my neighbour agreed despite it being only days
before her wedding!
Once I’d sent the mock-up photograph to Nicki, she searched
some stock photography websites until she found a suitable
photograph for us to use. Thankfully, it was even more
beautiful than either Sylvia or I had imagined and that’s
the picture that you now see on the finished version of the
book cover.
It was only when I sent a copy to Sally at Universally Rio
that I realised it’s the same photograph that she’s been
using for my foot reading column! How funny is that!
Scary
stuff
OK, now you’ve heard about how
I wrote my book, you need to know the scary stuff!
• You
always go through a stage of thinking that what you’ve
written is not good enough and no-one will read it.
• This is your mind interfering and trying to keep you
safely in your comfort zone. Ignore it. If it was worth
spending months of your time writing it, then why give up
just as you’re reaching your goal. Feel the fear,
acknowledge it and get on with it. I use a process devised
by Julia Cameron called Morning Pages to explore the fear.
You write down what that little voice in your head is
saying – you know the one – it says “what little voice, I don’t
have a little voice in my head, what’s she talking
about?”
You write down everything that it is saying and after a few
pages you gain clarity.
• Once you’ve printed the book you will remember something
else that you’d wished you’d included
• This is a really annoying fact. Rather than delay
printing, just keep a note of all the things you’d wished
you’d included and then maybe it could become your next
book!
• Once you’ve had your first book printed, you’re almost
too scared to print your second book in case you ruin your
good reputation
• You don’t need to worry about this fact yet because you
have to write a first book before you experience this. So
what are you waiting for? Start writing!
Jane Sheehan is author
of Let’s Read Our Feet!
and
The Foot Reading
Coach.
Both books are available from her website
www.footreading.com
where you
can also see some of her TV and radio performances and a
list of the Top Ten Secrets that your feet reveal about
you.
