Want to write a book? There are plenty of experts who will tell you how. But Allison Fallon has an approach that’s different from all the others—at least, that’s how it felt to be. Allison is the guest for the 418th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and when you hear what she shares about the process of writing, I think you’ll agree, she does this a little differently—and it might just be the approach that works for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

The Power of Writing it Down by Allison Fallon

Write Your Story by Allison Fallon

Indestructible by Allison Fallon

Packing Light by Allison Fallon

Allison’s Website

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh: As a copywriter or a content writer or someone who is thinking about exploring these career paths, you’ve probably toyed with the idea of writing a book. Maybe you’ve got a great story that absolutely has to be told. Or perhaps you’ve heard that a book is the best business card and can open doors with clients who then hire you to write for them. Or maybe you’ve got a screenplay you work on for a few minutes after your client work is done. More likely… you’ve thought about one or more of those things, but haven’t yet put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.

I’m always thinking of ideas for books, some of which I have started, others I’ve put away for later. And to help me as I process these ideas, I’ve read several books about writing books… how to do it, what to include, all that stuff. Recently I came across another book about writing books that was very different in its approach. It changed the way I think about writing… books and other things too.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and my guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is author and book writing coach Allison Fallon. You’ll hear me say it in the interview, but Allison’s book, The Power of Writing It Down, felt more like therapy than another book about putting together your book chapters in a particluar order or writing scenes or character development. After reading it, I wanted to talk with Allison about her approach and what it means, particularly for writers who might be writing to a non-fiction audience. I think you’re going to like this interview.

Before we jump in with Allion…

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And with that, let’s go to our interview with Allison…

Allie, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I would love just to start with your story, and I know you’ve got a really great story, but how did you become an author, speaker, founder of Find Your Voice?

Allison Fallon: Yeah, I have always wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember. I often tell a story about being in fourth grade, and that was the first time that I really realized that I had a teacher who pointed out a skill I had for storytelling. And I just remember feeling like, oh, I can like something and be good at something and be acknowledged for it. And so that kind of started the spark for wanting to tell stories and in a longer format, like writing a book. I just can, through my high school and college career was always very focused on that I would be a published author someday. 

And then, you know, when I was in high school and college, I also had a lot of really well-meaning adults in my life who would say, that’s a great thing that you want to be an author, but you also need a backup plan because writers don’t make any money. And so I, at their advice, got a master’s degree in teaching and started teaching in the public school system in Portland, Oregon, where I’m from, and taught for about three years. My plan was to teach and kind of do the writing thing on the side. I thought like, well, I have summers off, right? Like two months off every summer, which is a misnomer. I mean, for any teachers out there, like you’re saints and you really don’t get – you don’t get that much time off in the summer. You’re curriculum planning. You’re, you know, especially as a new teacher, you’re like setting up your classroom. Like there’s so much to think about and do. And you’re probably working a second job on the side because teachers also don’t get paid very well. 

And so when I realized my plan wasn’t going to work very well, I took this giant leap, which I write about in my first book. My first book is called Packing Light. And I took this big leap out of the teaching profession to do the thing that I had been wanting to do forever, which was to write a book. So I didn’t renew my contract for the following year. And I did kind of like a gimmicky, stunty sort of thing with a friend where we both quit our jobs. We sold all of our physical possessions. We packed our stuff into a Subaru Outback. And we spent almost a year traveling around the United States. We visited, we drove to all 48 states and then in the end flew to Alaska and Hawaii to kind of check those off the list and wrote a book about that called Packing Lights. So that was my first, you know, published, published work. That’s how I became an author. And there’s a lot more that I could say, but I’ll stop there. What questions do you have about that?

Rob Marsh: I mean, first of all, hitting all 50 states is an accomplishment in itself. Now I’ve got to go back and listen to that book, because that sounds fantastic. But I’m curious, because as a writer today, what are some of the specific skills from teaching that translate directly into writing? And part of the reason that I ask this is, our audience is copywriters, content writers. There are actually a ton of people who have been teachers who move into writing for all kinds of reasons. And maybe one of the reasons is because, you know, copywriting selling in a huge way is actually teaching.

Allison Fallon: It is. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, capturing an audience’s attention, I will say, you know, as challenging as it can be to capture your audience’s attention in a book, or if you’re a copywriter, like in a sales sequence or something, it’s easier than capturing the attention of seventh and eighth graders. So yeah, so I took some of the skills that I learned in that teaching profession, I suppose, and transferred them to writing. Although, I will say since my teaching stint was short, it was just under three years that I was teaching. I think there’s a lot that I’ve learned as a writer that I could also maybe translate back to the classroom if I ever wanted to. 

But the biggest thing that I did, when I published Packing Light, And it hit the market, you know, as an author, a first time author, like you don’t have any idea what to expect. And so I went into it very blind. The book did really well. Like it’s sold, I think it’s sold somewhere around 30,000 copies now at this point. So it did well. It made the publisher happy, you know, it bought out my advance, all of those things that you want it to do. And what was shocking for me is that even though it sold really well and everyone’s like, yay, and I’m getting all these pats on the back, it wasn’t generating an income for me. And so I was like, oh, maybe all these adults were right who told me you can never make money as a writer. So