Kickstarting Your Nonfiction Book – Creating an Author Roadmap with Geraldine Walsh

Course Summary:

Thinking about writing a nonfiction book but found yourself caught up in the overwhelming enormity of it all? Or are you ready and poised but stuck in those initial stages of developing your book concept and outlining its structure? Maybe you have no clue where to start at all, but you cannot stop thinking about this book idea. You may have translatable expertise in your field or want to explore a topic of special interest but don’t know how to get your ideas from your head to the paper. This course will guide you out of the overwhelm so you can pinpoint your ideas and get stuck into writing.

This course is suitable for those seeking clarity and focus on their nonfiction writing project, by aiming to guide the writer toward prioritising their writing, focusing their concept, and becoming clear on their project with motivation and enthusiasm.

Participants will be provided with action plans in the form of a questionnaire. They will work on these independently and in their own time as they gain clarity on their project by working through the questions in relation to their work. Action Plans are not submitted for review but are important to guide the writer in their progress.

Course Outline:

Week 1 – The Importance of Sharing Our Stories

This first week looks at the importance of our stories and expertise, why stories need to be shared, the motivation behind writing our stories, exploring our expertise, and finding the value in memoir and nonfiction.

Week 2 – Developing a Theme, Hook, Or Focus for Your Book

What makes a personal story stand out and capture an audience, what is a hook, why it is important, and how can we refine a books theme.

Week 3 – Laying the Foundations

While thinking about writing real people, finding the substance of your story, and finding your voice, we will also look at the boundaries of memoir/nonfiction writing, and why organising your book will avoid writer’s block.

Week 4 – Creating a Roadmap

Creating a roadmap that will consist of ideas and perhaps multiple identities for your project.

Week 5 – The Book Proposal

A book proposal can be a daunting prospect, but by understanding what publishers need to assess your work, we can take the pain out of pitching.

Week 6 – Where to go from here?

Developing a writing space, a writing practice, balancing your writing and home life, facing imposter syndrome, and beating writer block.

Course Outcomes:

This course is suitable for those seeking clarity and focus at the beginning of their writing project, by aiming to guide the writer in prioritising their writing, focusing their concept, and becoming clear on their project. At the end of each session, the writer will gain more clarity on their personal project and have the first draft of roadmap and book proposal to kick start their project.

Geraldine Walsh is an award-winning writer, journalist, and author. She is a frequent contributor to The Irish Times and Irish Examiner on a range of topics in the women’s health, mental well-being, and parenting spaces and was shortlisted in the Headline Mental Health Media Awards. Her debut book, Unraveling Motherhood (Hatherleigh Press, 2023), is part memoir and considers motherhood a tightly woven knot of physical, mental, emotional, and social changes and then seeks to unravel that knot. Geraldine’s fiction and poetry has appeared in Boyne Berries, Toasted Cheese, Agenda, Dublin Quarterly, and was highly commended in the Fish Anthology, Ten Pint Ted in 2009.