106. Overcoming Dyslexia and Other Writing Obstacles with Author and Editor Josh Kelley

Overcoming Dyslexia and Other Writing Obstacles with Author and Editor Josh Kelley   He's been a pastor, bartender, and adjunct Biblical Studies professor. Josh is also a traditionally published author (“Radically Normal,” Harvest House), novelist, writing coach, developmental editor and ghostwriter.    After writing his own books, he now helps others write theirs. Josh offers free consultations on my website. https://www.joshkelley.ink/   It isn’t a sales call—you can tell him about your book idea and he'll give feedback. Based on past experience, you can be confident that you will walk away with something useful.   TRANSCRIPT Massiel: All right, everyone, welcome to How to Write a Book Podcast. I am so excited to meet with author, writer, development editor, ghostwriter, book coach, Josh Kelly. Josh, welcome to the show.   Josh: Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here.   Massiel: Me too. Me too. You know, just reading your bio, going over your book, your message is inspirational and especially kind of like your interesting story and your background. I mean, a little bit of everything. So before we kinda dive into your writing your process and everything about you, I'll give a little bit about you for our listeners in case they don't know who you are yet. So, Josh Kelly is a pastor, bartender, husband, and adjunct biblical studies professor. You are a traditionally published author of radically normal harvest house, a novelist writing coach, developmental editor, and ghostwriter. And you love communicating life-changing truths in an engaging way in helping others do the same, which is something that we do on the podcast. And even more about you is that you've been married for over 20 years. You have two teenage daughters and you've spent eight months driving around the country in a minivan; saw 40 States, two provinces and Tijuana. Wow. Oh my gosh.   Josh: Yeah, that was quite a trip. So the story behind that is, you know, I was a pastor for about 15 years. And then we had to close my church, which sometimes it happens; it shrunk down to where this just didn't make any sense to continue. And, you know, so like many people we'd always like joked about driving around the country; at that point, it's like, you know what, what do we have to lose? So a little more to it than that, but we kind of packed up our girls in the minivan and drove around. At that point, my first book, Radically Normal, just come out and, you know, you think that if you get a traditional publisher, like all your dreams are gonna come true and it's all gonna be awesome. And so I, you know, it was very like...  and go do kind of a book tour and speak at churches and do signings or whatever. And there was a little bit of that, but more than anything that trip ended up being more of a sabbatical for me.    After 15 years at being a pastor, I was really ready for that. But it was an amazing thing. I mean, it's hard to comprehend how big and how diverse this country is, you know, so I'm in the Northwest and you're in So Cal, right?    Massiel: Yeah.    Josh: Actually, you're not terribly far from Montebello, right?    Massiel: Yeah.    Josh: That's where my great grandparents...what's that?   Massiel: Oh, you're just a couple of minutes, not minutes, but a couple of hours. I mean, right.   Josh: So yeah, I actually did my undergrad down that area. My family's kind of from that area and my great grandparents lived in Montebello, down there, I think just yeah, kind of in that area. And so that to say, you know, traveling the country is really cool. It's a great perspective. I came back from that and just really didn't want to be a pastor anymore. I mean, being a pastor, I enjoyed it, but it's not the sort of job you do because for the money. There's plenty of jobs if you're just out there and need to earn a check, that's great, nothing wrong with that, but you don't want a counselor, you don't want a pastor, you don't want some of these politicians to be doing it for the money.   And so, at that point, what I really realized, I love to write and that's what I wanted to do. And as a pastor, I do a lot of writing as well, as well as having my book published. So I became a bartender instead and which was a lot of fun. I really did enjoy bartending. And during that time, that five years I wrote my novel, which I've got finished. I've been trying to shop around. Haven't had great luck with it, you know, it happens a lot. But then COVID came along and that kind of changed everything pretty substantially for a lot of us, well, just for the entire country, but, you know, over the past 7 months I've used that to kind of pivot away from the service industry into now being full-time freelance, ghostwriter developmental editor. And we can talk later, you know, if people want to know kind of with the different types of editing are and I'm starting to make a living at it. You know, certainly being a freelancer, it's a little scary but I've got some great contracts. And so I've been able to work with a couple of great people. And yeah, so that's kind of, I guess, the short bio   Massiel: That is awesome. That is awesome. And you know what, you probably know more about LA than I do because I'm actually from North Cal so then I just recently moved.   Josh: Where in North Cal?   Massiel: So close to San Jose. So like Hollister; we're like known for like the greatest biker rally, well, before COVID times, that used to be a thing. So in that area, so I've just recently moved down to LA just a couple, like literally weeks ago. So, you know, the map way more than I do.   Josh: I wont ask you any trick questions then about in and out burger and, you know, on which locations and all that.   Massiel: Right. You're right. Or people were already asking me like, Oh, like, so is it the I-5 or just I-5? And I'm like, Oh gosh, where am I going? Because the So Cal slang and the Nor Cal slang, and I'm like,   Josh: When I did my undergrad down there, I know this is so irrelevant, but the thing that's so weird for me is up here, every freeway is simply known by its number. You have a I-5, 405, 520, that's all you call it by and back in this day...so this is about 25 years ago, I went to college in Southern California, they never called any freeway by the number, ever. I'm now seeing where you're starting to hear it called by that but at the time you listened to the traffic report as well, Okay, traffic's heavy on the golden state freeway. You may want to take the, I can't remember the name, but you have to actually know the names of all these freeways. And they have names like from here to here would be this name. Then once you got past this point, change the name and then it drove me crazy.   Massiel: You never know. Yeah. There might be a writer out there who needs to know what highways were called a couple of years ago versus now. So it's like, all right,   Josh: Which kind of that's an interesting thing. So the novel that I wrote takes place in roughly 1982 Southern California Azusa actually, it's not terribly far from where my college was. And so I knew the area and I don't know why, but that's why I placed it. But it involved the frame of research for me to find out which freeways are still where, even that amount of time ago. And you know, when it comes to research for novels, because my theory is that you're never looking for a hundred percent accuracy. The goal is not accuracy. It's I can never pronounce this word, verisimilitude  something like that. You want it to feel real. And so that's always my goal. So there's some things I know aren't accurate, but in general, just doing those...  that my book felt accurate and included things like yeah, whether they call freeways by names, numbers, that's just a useful, sometimes you have to visit a place or else call someone from there and kind of just chat.   Massiel: Yeah. You know, and that is awesome. That's actually one of the questions I was going to ask you was research. And I do want to get back to talking about radically normal, but let's just, while we're on this topic, research and you as a development editor, when we go to into research, sometimes it could feel like a rabbit hole and sometimes it can feel like it's not enough. And just like you said verisimilitude, where's like the line in that like, well, how do you know if you're in the sweet spot?   Josh: You know, there's a certain extent to which for me now, of course every person is very different. And so the way I'm wired, ADHD, dyslexia, I'm great at taking a ton of information. That's what makes me a good developmental editor as I can very quickly read a lot of stuff and keep it all in my head and then kind of help organize it. But I suck with detail. So you'd never want me to proof...I could proofread your book, but it's going to be painful for me and I'm going to miss a lot of stuff. But I'm also naturally curious person. And so there's an extent to where I just kind of follow my fancy. The trick is, I think, I understand what mode I'm in.   When I come in solid writing time, you know, we all know how hard it is to get to that spot where your words are flying and you're in the groove. The worst thing you can do is to be in a groove and interrupted to research something. So in my mind is I have a couple different, you know, mode, so to speak, you know, writing editing research. And at my best, I'll come to something and instead of like, Oh, I need to look that up. I won't...when I'm behaving, I'll just jot a note and just put like a, you know, research here, note in my manuscript and then in the afternoon. So mornings are when I write best. So I'm always going to do any interviews, anything like that in the afternoons.   So what I did, I would then come back where I'm in kind of unproductive time, where I'm more likely kind of click my way around the internet and just kind of let it go. And sometimes I'll find out some detail. This was like, well, I'll be darned, I never thought of that. And so again, that's why I say about in terms of letting your fancy, I just follow my fancy and just take notes. And I don't know if I'm going to use it, I may or may not. This is something from years of being a pastor. You know, for me, it'd be common for me to skim  when I'm getting ready to write a sermon - about a hundred pages worth of material commentaries, biblical studies, other sermons, and then kind of choose the best 10 pages worth of those notes, and then go write my own with all that in my head. But you have to kind of know almost sometimes it's giving yourself a time limit, you know, it's going to vary for each person but the trick is, I think, is to make sure you schedule your time. So you're not giving yourself unending research time. Does that answer the question? I'm not sure, I kind of went a lot of places.   Massiel:  yeah, it did. Actually, I think that ties in a lot to a theme that we have going on this month within the podcast, which is kind of following your muse, or like you said, your fancy and kind of knowing like where you're strong at and what times of days that you're actually like really on versus off. So totally, I think that was going to really resonate well with writers, especially because I think that right now we have this kind of interesting stigma that our writers should be a certain way. And we're trying to like, develop like, Hey, you know, you can be this kind of writer or this kind of writer or this kind of writer, and every writer is different and just kind of like exploring and trying to find that.   Josh: And it really is a big thing of know thyself. You know, you have to really be a student of yourself and to know how you work. So for me, I write from a coffee shop. I'm in a coffee shop right now, and they know me very well here. And so, for me, if I don't have a certain level of distraction, I'd get distracted. Home is typically the worst place for me to write that's me. And my best times are writing in the morning. When my daughters went to bed earlier, I could write in the evenings a little better but now by the time they're finally in bed, it's kind of late and I'm not going to be productive. You know, you have to know yourself and work with that. There's no good beating up yourself like, Oh, so-and-so does this, you know, Stephen King writes every single day, except for, well, no, every single day. Well, that's not you, that's okay. You don't have to do it someone else's way, you have to figure out how you work.   Massiel: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I totally get that and I understand that. I think that's super great that you said that because that's literally what we're talking about in this podcast. So based between the two books, cause you have the Christian book, then you have the non-Christian book, did you find what you were working differently or because you kind of know yourself, maybe you had similar patterns of writing; what did you discover?   Josh: Well, the second book, the novel, because it was a novel that did make it a very, very different thing. And I had to kind of teach myself how to write fiction. It's actually, I was reading one agent who said that in his experience, very few non-fiction writers transition well into fiction because there's such different things. The purpose of nonfiction is typically to tell, the purpose of fiction is typically to show, you know, show don't tell. And I took that quote of his and paste on the top of my document and so, I always kept on coming back to it. So it's more than, you know, Christian versus non-Christian. It was more just the type of stuff I was writing. You're going to change your language based upon your audience. If you know that the people you're talking to are writers, you are going to talk a certain way.   And actually, with my first client, I made things unnecessarily complicated cause I talked to her as if she were a writer and she's not. But when you're talking to other writers, you talk a certain way. If I know my audience is largely gonna be Christian, I'm gonna make statements that I expect a Christian is gonna understand. When I wrote my novel, one of my beta readers was an atheist with a PhD in psychology and I loved her perspective. Because there's times where within whatever your tribe is, it doesn't matter if you're talking 4H or, you know, Muslim, Christian you know, writer versus, you know, meat packer. I don't care. You have phrasiology, you have things that you just assume everyone else knows. And so like, she'd keep on saying things like, wait, Josh, wait, what's the difference between a evangelical and a fundamentalist again? I always think they're the same thing. Well, no, they're not; here is why. And I realized, okay, I need to clarify this in my book because a lot of people aren't gonna understand this stuff. Again, I'm not sure if I answered your question or not.   Massiel: No, totally. And so, first the mindsets were different because of novel versus nonfiction and, you know, it's so interesting that your mindset shift had to change, especially with what the editor was saying. And I'm curious, so were there specific things that maybe you did differently? So like say right now, like you're in the coffee shop do those like small habits change between the two books?    Josh: First of all, when I write nonfiction, I'm still using a lot of stories because stories work, I don't need to try and sell you on that. Just stories work for communicating truth or communicating information. So even like with my nonfiction, I remember at one point once I got through a certain level, like my third draft or whatever it is, I would just like do a red line or wall along in the margins, wherever there was a story. And I would just flip through and say, oh, wait, this red line is too long. It's time for a story. So let's say storytelling is already, I get it's power but being a novelist, you definitely have to be more playful. You have to really pursue much more of a what if and I think John Cleese did this really great thing about creativity, and I know he is borrowing someone else's research, but basically you're talking about these modes of editing versus creativity; open and closed basically.   And when you're in that open mindset, you're just letting everything run and then close it when you're okay, you've got your ideas; now you're dealing with them and you're implementing them. Fiction writing is going to involve a lot of that open what if, what if, what if, and just allowing things to play. I think what comes to developing fiction, that's something that's so different from person to person so for me, I'm not, you know, use the term outliner versus pantser or, you know, outliner versus organic writer. I'm definitely organic. I remember, you know, on Facebook writing one day that today I'm writing the scene where my female protagonist meets up with her black sheep, little sister, and I can't wait to write it so I can find out what happens. I walked through it that day; no clue. I knew they're going to meet up at... Burger on Grand Avenue. That's all I knew. And I just couldn't wait to find out. But that's how I function. But I do think that when it comes to novel writing, you just have to have a playfulness.    Massiel: I totally agree with you. And I might be biased because I am also a pantser. So I'm like, Oh yeah, let's just find out what's going to happen. And I love it. It's fun.    Josh: It is. You end up miswriting a lot of stuff because you don't always know where to go.   Massiel: Exactly. You know, you're like, Oh, that one dark cave that I went down; never mentioned it again. I'm just going to have to do something else with it or throw it away or something. Yeah. That's amazing. And that's such a great answer to that question because we do get a lot of questions on the podcast that people are just struggling again, like with this idea of, they have to write a certain way, they have to show up a certain way and if they don't do it that way, then they're messing up and then quote unquote, messing up. And I love what you've said here, which is, you know, not only are you getting to know yourself and that has its own nuances, but also between your two different, you know, books, that took two different types of thinking and approaches and that's totally normal.   Josh: Yeah. And it's always changing. You have to really give yourself permission that early on, you're figuring out how to do things. And yeah, you really have to have a lot of grace with yourself. I think back to some of the earlier stuff I wrote and I read it and like, Oh man, that's so bad, man. There's exhibition all over the place and I'm telling, not showing and all this stuff, but you know, that's where I started. And of course, this is where it comes in. You know, then you get into this later stuff about, you know, having beta readers, editing, killing your darlings and all that stuff. That's absolutely vital, but you never want to start there. You have all of Anne Lamott's shitty first draft, how important that is. If you can't write crap, if you can't just give yourself permission to go wander wherever, you're never gonna have anything that's any good.    Massiel: Right. And for those listeners who don't know Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird. That one talks about that first draft and just having at it and giving yourself, like you said, that grace of saying, you know, you have to work with something. So no matter how terrible it sounds at first, you know, at least you have something.   Josh: Yeah. I think it's in that book she said, but it's not unusual to end up writing something, and the thing that even inspired you to write in the first place ends up getting cut. And that's what happened with my novel, of my whole opening; the whole place the things started, the conversation that started it, one day, I just realized I had to cut it. Okay, there it goes. But you don't do that until later in the process during, you know, you have to, again, just playful versus work, you kind of go back and forth.   Massiel: What was your initial inspiration? And then at the end of your book, you know, how did that inspiration change or morph into what the end result was?   Josh: Basically for so many authors and this isn't all by any means, but you hear several authors who say that a book starts with a novel, starts with a picture, some sort of mental image. For CS Lewis, it was seeing a lonely lamp in a smooth forest and a font. That's a language in the order of started. When you have these different people say, this is the story, this is the picture. For me, it's a picture of a washed up or a disgraced pastor working as a bartender. And that's how it started. Now, at that point, you know, I was working as a former pastor working as a bartender, but I hadn't had an affair. I hadn't done any of the bad things that my character had done, but it's just an interesting, Hmm. What would this look like? And then just from there, it really wasn't playfulness. I didn't have any story. I just had this image of this guy. And then I say, well, what if the son he didn't know he has walks into his bar? Would that be interesting? Let's write that, let's see what happens. And then I just kept on trying things and the concept's all still there, but the nature of the story changed quite a bit.   Massiel: Wow. That's awesome and this is the book that you're currently still pitching out there, right?    Josh: Yeah, exactly.    Massiel: That is awesome.   Josh: In terms of like, and I don't know how helpful this is, but I guess this has to do with the kind of openness you need to have. It started as one book, you had this opening scene with the pastor, realizes that this kid is a son and just drop some expletives and kind of takes off. And then I ended up coming back to like 32 years earlier where he first meets the girl that becomes his wife and then the more I wrote, the more I started writing, I was doing third person POV because that's just what works for me, but close to third person POV, then I realized as I started to interact with this girl who had become his wife, Leah, I realized I really liked this gal. In fact, I think I like her better than I like Dave and so I made her become a POV character too. So now I have two POV's and so I'm writing their story and initially I just going to try and get through this the earlier part of the relationship fairly quickly, then move on to where it started. Then the book turned into two books because I realized there's too much of a story to be told, and that turned into three books and it stopped there.    But basically realizing that I have a good story to tell, but I knew what the story was and it just kept on evolving, but eventually I've kind of went on this first book is going to take from basically from when they meet to when they get married or shortly after they get married because I haven't had my final conflict and then the second book would deal with basically when things go South and then the third book would deal with he's been off running away from her all this time later. So I mean it's a fun process, it really is and at the points where I didn't feel pressure, I really enjoyed it.   There was the other part of me, it's like, well here, I'm making my family, I have this bartending job, it's not necessarily the best for family life that certainly it's a struggle and so the pressure to perform both worked for and against me in that I was driven, I am very driven. I think that sort of comes from ADHD, there's a lot of things with ADHD, especially feeling like you're never accomplishing anything and so you feel like you have to work all the harder to get it done. That works for me in times because I am incredibly driven, but also works against me relationally because it's very hard on my wife and we've had to really figure out a lot of that stuff out. But also sometimes I didn't enjoy the fun of it may be as much as I should have Massiel: And that's a really a good point, I think we were talking about this and in an earlier episode, which is that sometimes you do find these places, you have a lot of joy in the process and then there are these places where you're like, oh, this is really tough, I kind of don't want to sit down and do this. So how did you push yourself to finish it? Because you're talking about your drive, in those moments, what were you thinking? What were you doing to say I'm going to get it done? Josh: I treated it as a job. So I would actually say that I'm going to write, I'm going to work now. So I would have from this time to this time on certain days I would go and write for three hours and then I would go bartend and come home and it was my job. If you're going to be a successful writer, you have to treat your writing as a job. Because there is always going to be something to pull you away, always. Whether it's a well-meaning family or a leaky gutter or whatever it is, you have to treat it like you're punching the clock. So initially for a while, I actually kept track of how many hours I wrote and so I was treating it as a clock. Now, again, there were some levels of unhealth in there, that this ambition that was not entirely healthy, but it got me to the place where I developed the habits and once that habits formed, then it becomes more natural. So that's what worked for me; here's one of my big theories about so many things, but writing, especially is why are you doing it? What's your purpose? Why does this matter to you? And that's one of my first question is when I'm working with authors is why are you doing this? Why does this matter? Because if you don't have a strong reason, you need a strong reason to carry you through the resistance.   Now, if your reason is you just want to kind of have fun writing and that you enjoy doing that, that's awesome, there's nothing wrong with that. Then you can just kind of puddle along and that's fine. So for me, I don't think of myself as a creative first and that sounds kind of weird to say, I think myself as a communicator, I use creativity to communicate. Because of that I can be ruthless with my own editing because it's not about my creativity, it's about saying something, about telling a story that means a lot to me. So I'm ruthless with that because I know how much it needs to be. My life purpose is to communicate things, things think are important. Number one, I'm a father, a husband, my family, my relationship with God, those are like the center of my life, although a lot of times I get unhealthy and kind of walked away from that. But professionally communication is why I'm here and it's that drive. So an author needs to know again, why they're writing and if it's that important to them, that will keep your button on the seat to keep on writing and you have to keep that that in front of you. Massiel: Yeah. And I think that that is so important because on those downtimes, that's going to spark you and help push you forward and so I'm curious, so regarding your clients, since you do developmental editing and you do ghost writing, what are some of the most common reasons, the why's that you find?  Josh: The why's why people write?   Massiel: Yeah. Josh: Yeah, I don't know; I would say for some it's a business, like having.... So like a buddy of mine, he has a small publishing group and he and I are co-writing a book on writing, writing a book, publishing and promoting it and he's the guy who knows how to get things out there. He wrote a book on public speaking, he's actually the one turn me on to to Pod Match but this book he wrote it by himself, he self-published it, wrote it in like three months and all these things... whatever. I mean, the material it's solid stuff, it's not one of these for the ages type books. It's not like a, How to Win Friends and Influence People or An Element of Style but he sold more copies than I did of my traditionally published book, he's made more money than I have. So he's really good at that approach and also again promoting stuff. So he and I, that book we wrote for business purposes and...for writing for business purposes.   One of my clients, he's a pastor, he wants to teach people how to lead a church, specifically if you have a church that's been around for a while, how can you help kind of light a fire underneath it rather than still letting it stagnate. So he's writing to first of all, pass on these principles, but also because he has a consulting thing that he does. So he wants to kind of build the reputation for that. Another one of my clients, she had a really awesome life and she did some really cool stuff and founded churches and all this and she wants to be able to teach people about faith and money for her is not an issue, she's doing just fine for herself. So a lot of people though, the message is important to them. There's something that they're wanting to say that they feel it needs to be said and so that is the most common thing I hear. Massiel: Yeah and that's awesome and that's something that we talk about in the podcast is what is the message? And just like you said, it's going back to the why, why you want to do this. Speaking of messages, so I just want to talk about also your book Radically Normal, so Radically Normal you don't have to live crazy to follow Jesus and it has an amazing amount of stars, some great reviews. So for our audience, can you tell us about this book, it just sounds awesome.  Josh: So I grew up, I'm reluctant to use the term evangelical because it's been so tainted lately, but in short, an evangelical is kind of in the midway in between like a fundamentalist who is like super conservative and a more liberal Christian who's like anything goes. I mean, that's really speaking very broadly but basically tried to take the Bible seriously, really loves Jesus and trying to do the right thing, tend to be more on the conservative side politically, but not always. But anyways I'm writing within that world, that evangelical world that people take their faith seriously, they really love Jesus, but what happens so often among Christians is that you get this mindset that if you're not like a full-time missionary in China, you're not really a good Christian. If you just have like a day-to-day job, that's okay, follow the 10 commandments, tithe to your church, do all this stuff, love your neighbor, but you're not really doing what you're supposed to be doing. And so that's a lot, what I'm trying to do is talk about how you can be a fully committed Christian within an everyday life and this story, this book was written while I was a bi-vocational pastor, which meant I was being a pastor who also had a job, in this case in Starbucks.    So I told a lot of stories about Starbucks and the struggles that I had being a pastor, now having a regular job and things like that. But the purpose is to help people realize, help Christians to realize how they can love Jesus without being crazy, but kind of the theme of it is, it's like, so I grew up, again, in a good church and in youth group, they would always talk about things like; the image you're given is like there's this path of life that you're walking down and on the side, there's this cliff and this cliff is things like sleeping with your girlfriend, listening to bad music, smoking, drinking and you have to really avoid this cliff. And I did that, I was really good at avoiding that cliff. I was the good kid in church let me tell you, there are really no skeletons in my closet and it's embarrassing, frankly. They didn't tell me, because I don't think anyone really understood that on the other side of the path is another cliff of self-righteousness of being judgmental, of thinking that you're better than other people. That's the cliff that I was cannonballing off of.    Massiel: Oh, wow.    Josh: And so what I really tried to do in this book is try to present this balancing picture of on one hand don't do all the dumb stuff, I believe in Christian moral..., if you've ever selfish, if you're unforgiving, if you're sleeping around, all these things are bad for our soul, they're bad for our life, avoid those things by all means. But also being self-righteous thinking that you're better than everyone else, that's also really bad for your soul. And one of the stories that Jesus tells, the parable of the prodigal son, which is most people have heard that term, but in that story, you have the prodigal son who is going off and doing all the bad stuff and by the end of the story, he's starving and he's feeding pig slop and wishing he could eat the pig slop and he comes back home to his father and his father forgives him. Well, he has an older brother who definitely is much more of this the legalist self-righteous side who was like, you shouldn't forgive my brother because he was so evil and Jesus is really telling the story, not to the prodigal sons, but to the older brother. Just speaking in terms of story craft, this is something you and your podcasters will understand, the story ends with the father saying something to the older brother, basically why don't you come in and celebrate your younger brother returning home, but that's where the story ends. So we all know if you end a story early, you're really driving a point home and you're basically saying when the older son is given that question, but it doesn't answer it, you as the reader, as a listener are being asked the question. So his listeners were the Pharisees and he was asking them all these other people they're coming into the kingdom of God, but you're not approving that because of all the bad stuff they did. Why aren't you coming in and rejoicing and being part of the family? Which is all another way of saying that the prodigal son when he was starving, he knew his life was messed up. If you have someone who's losing their teeth because of crack cocaine or meth, they know the life's messed up. You have the old lady at church who never smoked, never swears, but is just self-righteous, she thinks she's fine, but biblically speaking, her soul is in just as much danger, but she doesn't know it. So that's a long ramble, but that's basically, I tried to find ways to help Christians walk between that medium path. It's funny as one of my friends, he and his wife they're post PhD people doing work with lasers and MRIs and all this stuff in Atlanta and she's a Christian, but he's not. He's kind of like agnostic, Buddhist, but super cool guy. He said reading your book, it made sense to me, it's the stuff we got along semi track with, but it really made sense to me of avoiding these two extremes. So that's kind of the short version, I guess, as short as I can get it. Massiel: Yeah. That is awesome. I mean, just based also on the reviews and I mean, getting almost like five stars on Amazon, because that stuff, as all people might come to understand, it can be difficult, but it speaks to the message. And I'm curious, so then at what point were you like, I need to write this book? Josh: It's one of these things that I had this idea kind of fermenting in my head. So now I said that like my novel started with this picture, Radically Normal started just with the title. I like that term Radically Normal and you kind of knowing that I had the sense that we need to find kind of this middle way and then now being a pastor, that means I preach a lot and so some of these ideas are coming out in my sermons, but basically a lot of us have been at this place where we keep on saying we have something in our head and we keep on joking it out, I'll write a book about that someday, I'll write a book about that someday. For me, the transition was when I read Stephen King's book on writing, which probably most of your listeners have read; it's one of the best out there. What he did for me was basically he didn't make writing sound easy, far from it. When he talks about his mail with all the rejection slips on it, but he made it sound possible, that basically writers aren't this special breed that are hand-selected, writers are people who just go and finally get off their butt and do it and that's where I kind of challenged myself to get off my butt and do it.    I don't want brag about this, but for me initially, I would go to Starbucks and I would spent a little extra on a coffee drink, so I was kind of treating myself and I started to write and when you first start writing there, it's that whole thing that it sounded so good in my head but when I try to get it on paper, it sounds like crap. And so I do that for about half an hour maybe, and then scroll around on Facebook and then finally give up. I did that a handful of times and then I would also try to write back at home in the evenings, after my family was in bed, because my wife goes to bed relatively early, at this point, my girls were fairly young and I had a big old bottle of Jim beam and I would drink a double or triple of that and as I sipped on that, it quieted the voices that said, this is stupid, you can't write, what are you doing? What made you think you can write a book? And I just start writing without really caring and then what happened is I come back to it and I just had fun. There's a power to routines by the way, sometimes how your routines just going to kind of get you in a mood. So I had a playlist I always used and Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons, my playlist always started with that song. So that song, when I heard the starting of that song, it said it is time to get to work and then I'd drink my whiskey and I'd write away and then I'd go and edit the next day and a lot of it was terrible, but there was enough of it that was good that I kind of built off of. I'm not advocating alcohol is a necessary tool for writing, the necessary tool is getting the voices to shut up and just write and again, that shitty first draft principle, you just have to get writing and so that's what I did. I did that enough, you kind of hit a place where it feels like critical mass, you feel like you're halfway done and so man might as well continue. In reality, it's actually closer to 10% done, but I thought it was halfway done and so at that point, once you get certain enough through project or kind of invested that that kind of provides momentum, it's when you're getting started with any project, that's the hardest. Did I answer your question there? Massiel: Oh yeah, totally, totally and going back to Stephen King's, On Writing, the nail with all the rejection slips, I'm like, wow, that is brave because I know I don't have the guts to look at that pile just going up and up and up. I'll be like, no, let's just put it away, that's what I would have done. So, I mean, you're so right about him just showing up consistently and creating that habit, as you said and then of course quieting that inner editor which I think is huge and you're right and there are different ways to do it, but really just trying to get words onto the page, which you did and that's awesome. So I like to talk about also, because you're a developmental editor, were you your own developmental editor for your books or did you go seeking out others and how was that process? Josh: So I did it all myself when, well, I use a lot of definitely beta readers, that's huge, but when it came to developing the material I did it all myself. It is again, we all have different strengths and weaknesses and [Inaudible19:58] dyslexia and all that and basically in short version, I'm really good at the big picture, just the way my brain is wired, I can see the really big picture, really well, find details I miss. I mean, to this day, if you show me a B or D just by itself, out of context, I'll have to think for a second to know which one it is, the fine details just are super tough. So between that and that whole process, I talked about Ryan Sermons of going through all that information. I just developed the ability to kind of find order in things, that's just the way I'm wired and unfortunately, there's a good book on being a developmental editor that I'm reading right now, I wish I could remember the name of it, but basically called how to be a developmental editor that can be very helpful, but as I read it, I realized most of the stuff that talked about I'm innately doing. But I'm a little weird in that most people become developmental editors start as proof-readers and copy editors and work their way to being a development editor, I did the other way exactly.    So more that I realized that this is something I'm capable of doing is holding a ton of information in my head and then being able to organize it. So one of my current projects, this guy this pastor, he paid someone 15 grand to ghost write his book and on a sentence level, the writing was fine, but on the paragraph level, it was a mess, it was all over the place. Things would be repeated, he'd have stuff that really should be in this chapter is in that chapter and I was trying to land the clients, so I basically said, hey give me three days on new book on oh, it's way too long. So the pastor knew that the book was way too long and it just didn't feel right and so I said give me three days and I will cut the content by 25%, because after skimming through, I knew I could do that. So that's what I did, which I don't really advocate working for free, but in this situation, I thought I had, it seemed like a good idea and also I had the time at that point. So by doing that, I was able to cut all that and kind of rearrange it and that's where he could really see the value of hiring me.    Unfortunately I didn't get nearly the amount that he hired the original guy for but I was able to go in there and just kind of go through and figure out, wait, this goes with this, this goes with this and again, you have to know whether or not that's, this is more of a writing non-fiction, but you have to have a sense for whether or not you are the one who can kind of make sense of it, or you could ask someone else. When it comes to story, developmental editors, they have the old mental editors for fiction as well, but that's a different thing. That's going to be more, just a sense of whether or not a story works, knowing arcs and things like that and that's good for me, that's going to be  more by feel and less by any sort of structure, just like, yeah, this story just doesn't work and I think this is why. Massiel: Yeah, yeah. That is awesome that you're talking about the different types of maybe like mind, not mind-sets, but some people are more attuned to proofreading, some people are more attuned to developmental editing and it's talking to your strengths and actually, so one thing that I hadn't mentioned, but you have been touching on it is your dyslexia and ADHD. Now I know some of our listeners, they are going through some other things like similar to that or really similar to that, can you talk about that? When did you find that out and also how has that played into your writing? Because it also sounds like it's as if you're using it as like, hey, I'm going to use it as a strength and pop up this way. Josh: Yeah, exactly. So when it came to ADHD that I figured out, gosh, I'd say about 10, 15 years ago, I was probably 35. So about a little over 10 years ago, which was kind of weird to learn that so late in life because this is what I do, this seems normal. I mean, isn't everyone this way, doesn't everyone panic when they have to put their shoes on because literally getting my shoes on can send me into panic because I get really flustered about which shoe and do I do this first and all these thoughts are going through my brain. But I joked about it enough and I basically got my leadership team, I'd have them give me annual reviews because I really believe in learning and growing. And they gave me some stuff that I finally said, you know what, I'm going to stop joking about this and just find out. So I talked to my doctor and he said I can ask you questions, but there's no like medical blood tests to see if you're ADHD, tell you what I'll give you a subscription, I'll give you some Ritalin and if it calms you down, then you have it. If it sends you a higher than a kite, then you don't and I'll never forget that.    First time I took it and driving on the street, realizing I wasn't having to look at every person that walked past me and I went to this church and there was this marriage video thing and about halfway through the day as the Ritalin started to wear off realizing, wait, I don't know what this room looks like. Because typically when I walk into a room, I check everything out and wait, I'm feeling the chair on my fingertips again, these are always things I normally do, I normally feel all these things, see all these things and so that's been a challenge just trying to learn how to work with my waves of the hyper-focus that comes with ADHD. If I can get on a wave, man, I can ride that thing; at the same time, it has huge relational issues, ADHD can be a huge cause of divorce, quite frankly and without people realizing it. Because my focus is so much on everything that I have a hard time paying attention. So the number of things my wife tells me that I just simply don't hear is huge. It sounds funny, it makes for some good jokes, but the reality is if you felt like your spouse was never listening to you, it's actually not that much fun. So that's on a personal level I've been working with that, but then in terms of a writer, just trying to know my cycles, I have to, again, write in the morning, knowing what works for me. The dyslexia is a much more recent thing, this was gosh, less than a year ago, six, seven, eight, nine months ago, my daughter, my youngest daughter comes up to me and says, dad, I think I have dyslexia. And I'm like, oh, okay. So I did some research like crap, I think I have it and it's actually massively hereditary. And because I always had dyslexia defined to me as like words moving around on a page, that doesn't happen to me. So I just never even dawned on me to even ask the question and because I'm a good reader, I thought, again, didn't even enter the question. Well, I'm actually not really a good reader, I'm a great skimmer. When I read a book, any book, whether reading Harry Potter or Elements of Style or whatever. I'm probably only reading roughly a third of the words and picking up about two-thirds of the content and being quite happy to miss that other third, I don't care about it.    So that does mean, again, it's the ability to take in a lot of information, but miss a lot of fine details. So I've learned to work with it. I've learned tools, one of my most important tools is Microsoft Word products have a read aloud feature and I have a short cut on all my programs and so when I write an email, if it's a mean email, then it's sort of significance like, when I wrote to you or a potential client, after I write it, I will listen to it because it seemed much easier to pick things up listening to it than reading it. And the number of errors I could either feel really stupid for the stuff that I miss and I fight with that sometimes because I mean, just the errors that I make are like, good Lord, you look like a ignoramus, but the reality is that's the way my brain works, it's going to miss stuff. So mostly, I'm good with laughing at it, there it is. That's become one of my most important tools is using that read aloud feature and there are some websites that do that without having to actually have office three 65 because there's a lot of stuff there. Did that capture most of what you're asking? Massiel: Yeah and even this in itself, I could see this being a whole other interview because you're talking about your strengths and you're talking about the obstacles that you have really like faced or didn't even know were going on and yet you still used that to say, okay,  maybe this is not super strong, but this is strong and I'm going to go ahead and help people and use that to see the bigger picture, like you said, and get them organized and just really have that as a huge strength. I mean, that's fantastic, especially because some of our writers they do feel like, oh, well, if I have this or I don't have that, then might as well not be writing and that's not the case. Josh: There's such a thing to come to just appreciate, it's definitely a biblical value and that is grace which is basically recognizing roughly God loves you no matter what, and that your value doesn't come from what you do, but from who you are, that you're a child of God. And so from that, on my best days, I can see my weaknesses and just be fine with it, try and improve where I can, but this is who I am, God still loves me, my wife and my kids still love me and I'm just going to do my best and I'm going to, this is the other really important thing, find people who can shore up what I can't do. That's just so crucial that you can be asking for people to make up what you're not good in. You just have to be able to do that and for that, you need to know you're not good in, and you have to be honest enough and that takes a certain level of humility, but also it takes a great deal of strength to say, yeah, I suck at this. Can you help me?    And if you can't do that, gosh, I know writers who don't want anyone to read their stuff before, the things you are going to submit to an agent, huh? No, everything I write goes through other people for multiple reasons, you have to bring other people in and that takes humility and like, again, just back to the main point. Don't freak out about it, find people who can help you there, it works great. And that now is a lot of what ghost writing is, I've spent 15 years honing my ability to write, between sermon writing, book writing, all these things, I've spent all this time and I can research the crap out of anything. I mean, my bookshelf has so many books about anything that whatever happens to be of interest to me. So I spend a lot of time developing this. Now you take someone like a pastor who spent all these years of being a pastor or a politician or athlete, an actor who has spent all this time honing that craft. Well, they have a story to tell or they maybe have some great business principles, whatever it is, but they're not great writers. So there's nothing wrong with that, there can be like the sense, well, you should write your own books. Well, now I've spent a lot of time honing this craft and it's kind of silly for someone else to think that they can just pick up a pen or sit down on a computer and do what I do because I spent all this time doing it. So at best, ghost writing is a great partnership where it's like, you have the skills, you have the experience, you've lived this life, you have these principles, but now I have this ability to write and I also know how to interview, how to pull things out of you, I know how to craft stories, I know where to use stories and which stories work best to illustrate which things, so let's work together. And so that's kind of the ideal ghost writing situation. Massiel: Yeah. That is beautifully said and it's beautifully said because you're talking about your value is outside of that, like you're a child of God, you are valuable and then saying, okay, now that you know that, go ahead and you can have the humility to say and the vulnerability to say I need help with this and that is fantastic. And it sounds like you, as a developmental editor and ghost writer, you are taking care of the story, you will have that love of story, you can totally tell that you're like, let me take this person's quote unquote baby and I'm going to take care of it and help you tell us the best way that we can. Josh: I want make people shine. I mean, that really is what it is. Massiel: Amazing. And I can totally tell, I could totally tell. Oh my gosh, this has been amazing and to be honest, I'm going to tell you, look, I had a list of notes that we hardly touched. So hopefully we can meet together again soon because I think this was fantastic. And so for listeners, you know, go ahead and tell us, where can they find you? Where can they find your services too? Josh: Absolutely. So my website is Josh Kelley, and that's J O S H K E L L E Y. There's a second E on the end, that's what always messes people up, joshkelley.ink, I N K, like the stuff you write with. If you dot com, you'll get Josh Kelly, the musician, I don't play any instruments, you don't want me be on that. But so joshkelley.ink, again I N K and if you go there, you will find out a little bit more about me and something that I enjoy doing that offers like a free coaching session, because I've discovered this ability to very quickly be able to ascertain what people are doing and basically give them some really good content, add some value very quickly and if I'm able to help them just like half an hour, 45 minutes and give them something good to go with and that's it fine, I'm great with that. But also that may uncover some ways where like, we can work together. Like if you're needing a developmental editor, like you have all this information but you just know it's not fitting together and I do everything from like a full editing where it's like a per word charge and I go through the whole thing or do coaching, like hire me at just kind of on a shop rate basis, like, okay, let's do X amount of hours a month, I'll kind of work with you and I'll coach you through some stuff, I'll give you some assignments, you bring it back to me.    I'm a line editor as well which means I do very good at crafting words. So I might be able to show you some tricks, like, hey, you keep on start with having this phrase at the beginning of statements, get rid of that or all these things that you write enough and you just get used to doing it. So there's a lot of ways I can help people kind of a lot of variety of price points, but if nothing else there is that free coaching session and seriously, no obligation, but I will let you know, hey, here's how I might be able to help you. But if nothing else, you might gain something new from it. So that's joshkelley.ink, that's going to be the best way to get ahold of me. Massiel: That is excellent and for all our listeners go and take advantage of this because to have a professional writer share their knowledge, share their expertise and not just that, but to come from where you're coming from as a developmental editor and the ghost writer, I mean, that's a unique perspective. So everybody who's listening, jump in there, so that's joshkelley.ink, you will find him there and Josh, this has been amazing. Thank you so much joining us. We'll close out here. Josh: It's a lot of fun for me to talk about the stuff, I really appreciate the opportunity. Massiel: Excellent. Excellent. All right, everyone, thank you so much for joining us. Josh, thanks again and hopefully we're going to see you again really soon, so thanks.   ------- Don't forget to get your FREE consultation with Josh Kelley at https://www.joshkelley.ink/ ------ MASTERCLASS SIGN UP  https://mailchi.mp/6dd48c2dbf8e/masterclass   Follow me on IG where I share even MORE WRITING TIPS! https://www.instagram.com/massielwrites/   *READY TO START WRITING?*  https://linktr.ee/massiel_valenzuela **** PATREON ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP  https://www.patreon.com/massielvalenz?fan_landing=true ** PS: New VIDEO Training to SELF-EDIT YOUR BOOK in Less than 12 Minutes!*** https://mailchi.mp/985948b68e0f/black-hearts-studios **Check out the Podcast on iTunes or on your favorite podcast app** https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-write-a-book-podcast/id1476562705 !Follow us on Facebook and get all the goods! https://www.facebook.com/Blackhearted-Story-Studios-LLC-101335505283671 Catch up on Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/massielwrites/     RECOMMENDED WRITING TOOLS (I do receive a small portion of the sales from the following links at no extra cost to you. 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