Episode 99
Becoming a Prolific Writer with Kevin Tumlinson
Kevin Tumlinson is a prolific author who has self-published over 70 books. He developed a 30-day author formula to write a book a month and has written most of his books between 2014-2020. Tumlinson writes in various genres and experiments with different writing speeds, with his fastest record being a 60,000-word book in a day. He emphasizes discipline, daily word count goals, and recommends breaks between books to avoid burnout. Tumlinson incorporates marketing through social media, email newsletters, and personal interactions, and believes the book itself is the best marketing tool. He follows a daily routine, starting with journaling before writing, and uses a looping method to edit and write simultaneously.
LINKS:
- kevintumlinson.com
- Liz Wilcox's Email Marketing Membership at http://wmdeal.com/liz
- Get your FREE Move the Needle goal-setting for authors ebook at https://www.writingmomentum.com
- Write with us! Join Chris, Gena, and Rene each Wednesday at noon Central and let's get our writing DONE! https://www.writingmoments.com
Transcript
How can you become a prolific author?
Speaker:Hey, we can help with that.
Speaker:Hello, and welcome to the Writing Momentum podcast.
Speaker:I'm Christopher Maselli here with my wife, Gena.
Speaker:How are you doing, Gena?
Speaker:I'm doing great today.
Speaker:We're having a lot of fun talking to our guest.
Speaker:Oh yes.
Speaker:We have had Kevin Tumlinson on the podcast before.
Speaker:We're so glad to have him back.
Speaker:In case you don't know him, he's the award winning and best selling
Speaker:author, avid traveler, and accomplished podcast host, who's also known
Speaker:as the voice of Indie Publishing.
Speaker:He's known by a lot of people in the self publishing community as an influencer
Speaker:and the CEO of BookSweeps, which is an author and e-book marketing platform.
Speaker:You can learn more about Kevin and his work at kevintumlinson.com.
Speaker:How you doing today, Kevin?
Speaker:I am doing great.
Speaker:Thank you so much for having me back.
Speaker:Now, last time we were on, we had such a good talk about self publishing but one of
Speaker:the little things that you dropped was the fact that you have written over 70 books
Speaker:and most of those are self published.
Speaker:Yeah, the majority of books I have out there are self published.
Speaker:There's some traditional stuff floating around.
Speaker:And actually, in reality, I've written far more than 70 titles.
Speaker:I just have 70 available for sale right now.
Speaker:And most of these you wrote within how many years would you say?
Speaker:Just the majority of them?
Speaker:Yeah, I'd say, I started writing in I started writing and publishing in 2008,
Speaker:but there was, I kept taking two years to write a book, and eventually I came up
Speaker:with what I call my 30 day author formula, which I've written a book about by that
Speaker:title but that was a revelation to me that I could start generating a book a month.
Speaker:And I did a lot of experimenting and occasionally would write books
Speaker:much faster than that, which we can talk about, but I'd say probably
Speaker:between 2014 and 2020, that's when the majority of those books came out.
Speaker:Maybe 2016 was when they really started amping up.
Speaker:So that is on average more than about 10 books a year?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which is just mind boggling.
Speaker:And I know when I've gone through your website and looked at them, they're
Speaker:in all different genres, right?
Speaker:They're all different kinds of books.
Speaker:So you are definitely what we would call prolific.
Speaker:Yeah, there's a, I will claim that about myself, but I'm still in awe
Speaker:of there's certain writers out there Isaac Asimov, all the, my heroes
Speaker:were the Pulp Fiction writers.
Speaker:Who would do things like I forget who it was, I think it was Jack Kerouac, who
Speaker:wasn't a Pulp Fiction writer per se, but he would have a roll of paper, typewriter
Speaker:paper, going through his typewriter, and he would type the entire book and when
Speaker:it was done, he'd tear off that page, And roll up the next one and just start again.
Speaker:And a lot of those, a lot of the Pulp Fiction writers were like that.
Speaker:So that was who I was trying to emulate.
Speaker:Now you even told us I want to get this out here because
Speaker:this is mind boggling to me.
Speaker:What is the fastest that you've ever written a book?
Speaker:My record and it stands to this day for me anyway there was a
Speaker:book I wrote called Evergreen.
Speaker:I wrote that entire, the entire 60,000 word first draft of that book in a
Speaker:single day while sitting in a hotel bar in Manhattan over Thanksgiving 2014.
Speaker:And by the end of the day, your eyes were red, your fingers were sore.
Speaker:Bleeding out of my eyes, my brain had leaked out of my nose.
Speaker:Yeah, and it was one of these scenarios where my wife, we were
Speaker:there with my wife's family.
Speaker:They had plans for some things.
Speaker:And they went off doing their stuff, and that left me for about a 24
Speaker:hour period with just kinda there.
Speaker:And I was supposed to go do a whole bunch of fun stuff in
Speaker:Manhattan which I did later, but...
Speaker:It started like getting snowy and slushy and just pretty bad weather and so I
Speaker:found myself not necessarily stuck, but not necessarily wanting to get out and
Speaker:so I bribed the bar staff and everything to keep me supplied with coffee and
Speaker:sandwiches and watch my laptop when I go pee and over the course of 18 hours, I
Speaker:chunked out a a first person narrative book that is hard to quantify genre wise.
Speaker:It's a paranormal adventure.
Speaker:It's about a kid who when he touches someone he clones their mind in
Speaker:his own head and all their skills, all their memories, everything are
Speaker:available to him for 30 minutes.
Speaker:And if he touches someone too often or for too long, he gets a
Speaker:permanent copy of them in his head.
Speaker:So he's got six people in his head, who share his little adventures with him.
Speaker:Split personality book.
Speaker:Very odd book, not like anything else I'd written.
Speaker:That's wild though.
Speaker:Okay, so that was in one day, but normally you don't write your books in one day.
Speaker:I'll tell you, it's a bit convicting when you hear someone say that, because you
Speaker:think, Okay, I've been working on a 20, 000 word book now for two years, and...
Speaker:I want to emphasize, by the way, this isn't something, A, I
Speaker:don't recommend this to anybody.
Speaker:I'll certainly never do it again.
Speaker:But B, if you are you should not be looking at other people's word
Speaker:output or anything to determine what you should be doing.
Speaker:I'm a very experimental guy.
Speaker:I as I mentioned, I wrote, the first couple of books I wrote and published,
Speaker:took two years apiece to write.
Speaker:There was a trilogy that I started my career with, and each of
Speaker:the books took about two years.
Speaker:The first two took two years.
Speaker:The third one, was actually, it came along during my 30 day author days.
Speaker:That was the point.
Speaker:I I'm like, if I want to do this for a living, everyone out there
Speaker:is talking about rapid release.
Speaker:Actually, no, none of that talk came until later.
Speaker:The whole rapid release movement was after.
Speaker:But, I recognized that I could make more money if I had more books.
Speaker:And I didn't want to spend 30 years trying to get to that level.
Speaker:And so I sat down and I'm like, okay, there's, everything's got a solution.
Speaker:Every problem has a solution.
Speaker:And for this problem, it was first, butt in seat, sit down every day, decide how
Speaker:many words it's going to take to do this.
Speaker:My target length for a manuscript in those days was 60, 000 words.
Speaker:Most of my manuscripts are probably more like 80, 000 in these days, but...
Speaker:I figured if I could write 60, 000 words in 30 days, how many words
Speaker:per day is that going to take?
Speaker:And, the truth is it's actually I think it was 50, 000 words was my
Speaker:target, which meant it was like 1, 700 words a day, every single day.
Speaker:If you did that for 30 days, you'd knock that book out.
Speaker:If you did more than that...
Speaker:Change the formula.
Speaker:I give a little formula in that 30 day author book, but it's change the
Speaker:number of words you're willing to write per day and you get the book faster.
Speaker:Makes sense.
Speaker:So you start with like your, the target word count and the target
Speaker:end date and that tells you how many words per day you need to write.
Speaker:And that's what I did.
Speaker:And from there, it was just developing the discipline of coming back at it every
Speaker:single day to write that number of words.
Speaker:And then that, and it worked once I did it once.
Speaker:I thought, can I do it again?
Speaker:I wrote a second trilogy, completely unrelated to the first.
Speaker:I started writing other books, somewhere in there, I started
Speaker:experimenting, okay, if I can write a book in 30 days, can I do it in 15?
Speaker:Yes, that turned out to be true.
Speaker:Can I do it in a week?
Speaker:Can I do it a day?
Speaker:And I have not yet mastered writing an entire book in an
Speaker:hour, but, I'm still alive.
Speaker:That's the next check mark on the list, huh?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Okay, so does this all just come down to discipline?
Speaker:Is it as a matter of saying, okay, I'm going to set short goals and then
Speaker:I'm just going to be disciplined.
Speaker:And how do you, I can understand discipline.
Speaker:I'm going to get up every morning.
Speaker:I'm going to work this sort of thing.
Speaker:How do you maintain that over time?
Speaker:Especially like I would think it'd be very easy to burn yourself out when you're
Speaker:working that hard, that consistently.
Speaker:Plus I assume you had a life outside of writing these books.
Speaker:I think I did.
Speaker:I know that you attend a lot of writers conferences for work and
Speaker:you've been building your own business.
Speaker:You've got your own podcast, like you're doing a lot of things in your life.
Speaker:So how do you maintain the discipline to do that kind of
Speaker:writing over a long period of time?
Speaker:I had certain advantages when it came to the writing, because
Speaker:number one, I'm very fast.
Speaker:And I was a copywriter, a professional copywriter for much of my career.
Speaker:And that teaches you to write to deadline, but also you frequently
Speaker:would get these Hey, we need an article for this newsletter.
Speaker:800 to a thousand words, in the next hour.
Speaker:And so you learn how to manage that.
Speaker:And you learn how to engage flow.
Speaker:If you were familiar with the term flow, you learn how to
Speaker:turn that on and off at a whim.
Speaker:So I had that as an advantage, but I also had the advantage of like writing is
Speaker:something I've been doing my whole life.
Speaker:I tell everyone I wrote my first book when I was five years old, it
Speaker:was a big Chief notepad with one of those big fat practice pencils.
Speaker:I remember those!
Speaker:And I wrote five pages front and back and I, gave it a nice masking
Speaker:tape binding, I drew a cover, even back then I was making my own covers.
Speaker:And so that was my book.
Speaker:And I've been doing this stuff for a very long time.
Speaker:But the key is, it is discipline, but I'll tell you, here's how you avoid
Speaker:burnout I got into the habit of okay, I'm going to write a book, I'm going
Speaker:to release a book a month, so every time I'd finish one book, I'd jump
Speaker:right into the next one, and that is a process you can definitely dive into.
Speaker:But there is going to come a point where you need to stop and not
Speaker:write for a period of time with the intention of coming back, but what I
Speaker:discovered over the years, was yeah, I can continue writing daily and I do.
Speaker:But I have to shift it up a little I have to stop writing these
Speaker:thriller novels for a while and start writing some inspirational
Speaker:Nonfiction, so I switch that up.
Speaker:That's what I mean by stop writing.
Speaker:You don't necessarily stop the actual writing process you stop
Speaker:working on the thing you're working on because you'll tap out.
Speaker:You know there's that whole notion of sharpen the saw.
Speaker:I don't know if you've heard that Stephen Covey thing, where I think
Speaker:it was Stephen Covey you'll get through the tree a lot faster if
Speaker:you stop to sharpen the saw, right?
Speaker:You're gonna write more books you're gonna be able to write more and produce
Speaker:more in a shorter time period if you are willing to take the time to replenish
Speaker:yourself, to restore yourself and that might be taking a week or two off between
Speaker:books to just go travel to spend a week in a coma, to drink all the bourbon,
Speaker:whatever it is, I don't recommend doing anything that's going to cause
Speaker:you physical harm or health problems.
Speaker:But all of us need that reset button.
Speaker:And for me, it was switching up what I was writing.
Speaker:I'm never going to have a day where I'm not writing.
Speaker:It's just never going to happen.
Speaker:But I can have a day where I'm not writing an archaeological thriller
Speaker:novel, or sci fi short, or whatever it is I've been working on for a while.
Speaker:I want to come back to this, but I want to ask just in light of that,
Speaker:we know that marketing is very important to get your books sold.
Speaker:Did you also have a discipline in conjunction with your writing to
Speaker:marketing the last book you put out while you're writing the next book
Speaker:or did marketing just go on hold while you're deep into this or what?
Speaker:So I have a very flexible viewpoint when it comes to marketing because,
Speaker:my background is marketing, like a professional background.
Speaker:And from my perspective, like I'm a marketing hammer and everything
Speaker:is a marketing nail, right?
Speaker:So if I'm on social media, kicking around, having a good time, like
Speaker:my bios, I'll say I'm a writer.
Speaker:They all say where to buy my books.
Speaker:I don't necessarily broadcast like, Hey, go buy my books,
Speaker:but I will promote some things.
Speaker:I have an email newsletter that is the single most important
Speaker:marketing tool an author can have.
Speaker:You should build it as big as possible.
Speaker:And I engage with that group weekly.
Speaker:And when I'm promoting something when I got a new book or.
Speaker:Just a book on sale.
Speaker:I will, make sure that every email I send is what I call personable.
Speaker:Meaning I'm a relatable, engaging human being, not a salesperson.
Speaker:But somewhere in that email is say, hey, by the way, I've got a book
Speaker:on sale or I got a book releasing.
Speaker:I have a book on pre order and then I get right back to the fun stuff.
Speaker:So you don't have to kill yourself with marketing.
Speaker:Everything is marketing.
Speaker:Now, let me tell you.
Speaker:There, there are a million of my business cards and other things floating around
Speaker:out there from people I met while at the gas pump or at a convenience store,
Speaker:checkout or grocery store or whatever.
Speaker:I never stopped marketing.
Speaker:I have a t-shirt I created called have I mentioned I'm a novelist.
Speaker:And people will comment on that here's a card.
Speaker:That's very smart.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:I love it because it's, you've worked it in organically.
Speaker:You've worked it in it's just kind of part of the way you approach everything.
Speaker:It's not like you're putting on a hat.
Speaker:It's just no, this is what I do.
Speaker:And this is part of my job.
Speaker:This is part of what I do as a writer, as an author.
Speaker:I'm going to promote, even if it's just, reaching out to meeting new people.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you what writers need to realize also is that the book itself is
Speaker:their best marketing tool, right?
Speaker:We wanna do the standard things, make sure it's well edited, make
Speaker:sure it's error free as possible, make sure it's got a great cover.
Speaker:But, one of the things that a lot of authors forget is to do stuff
Speaker:like put a call to action for the next book in the back of the book.
Speaker:Or put a call to action for how to get on your mailing list.
Speaker:We have what we call a top of funnel offer or like a free short story or book or
Speaker:artwork or whatever that is an enticement for people to get on your mailing list.
Speaker:You know put that stuff in the book because that's where people are gonna
Speaker:discover it you know, if someone liked your book they're gonna want more and
Speaker:you want to build that mailing list give them a reason to get on that.
Speaker:So the marketing is just all part of it.
Speaker:When I'm writing, I'm thinking about the marketing while I'm writing.
Speaker:It's just part of the process.
Speaker:It's not like I'm crafting sentences where my character Dan Cotler is, enters a bar
Speaker:and slugs down a bourbon and, oh, hey, there's a Kevin Tomlinson book on it.
Speaker:I know I've done things like that for other authors, but
Speaker:I've never done that for me.
Speaker:But now I'm thinking maybe that would be a good.
Speaker:I think it would be so fun, why not?
Speaker:Very self aware book.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So walk us through a typical writing day then.
Speaker:So I, I get up in the mornings and I take my dog out.
Speaker:That's usually around 5:00 AM and I do all my S's and you can let your imagination
Speaker:wander on what all that stuff is.
Speaker:And I make my coffee.
Speaker:Once the coffee is made, that's when I come upstairs to my office
Speaker:and I sit and get some music going.
Speaker:I do some journaling.
Speaker:I got three or four different journals.
Speaker:I'm a man of Christian faith, so I do a bible journal, I do a philosophy journal,
Speaker:I'm going through meditations right now.
Speaker:Once all the journaling stuff is done, that's usually 45 minutes
Speaker:or so, then I start writing.
Speaker:And I have my...
Speaker:Daily word target.
Speaker:The daily word target can change depending on what's going on in my life.
Speaker:Right now I've been assuming the role of CEO at BookSweep.
Speaker:So it's been that's made my days slightly busier as I learn the
Speaker:company in and out that sort of thing.
Speaker:I get work pressure too.
Speaker:But the point of my writing is, okay so today I'm only going to do 2, 000 words.
Speaker:Two weeks ago I was doing 5, 000 or 8, 000.
Speaker:For the sequel to the book I wrote in a day, I decided I would write it in
Speaker:10 days, or actually, no, I decided I'd write it in one week, and for
Speaker:eight days, I wrote 10, 000 words a day and finished the sequel to that book.
Speaker:After years, almost a decade has gone by since I wrote the first one.
Speaker:So it was interesting to get back into that world, but that's, so the real point
Speaker:of this is you as a writer, you should be thinking about your work strategically.
Speaker:If you are working a day job and you got two kids to manage and you got,
Speaker:your spouse to manage and you've got church or you've got whatever, and all
Speaker:that stuff adds up and eats up your day.
Speaker:If you only have 30 minutes a day to sit and write, then you need to decide.
Speaker:I can write 100 words or 1, 000 words in that time whatever it is.
Speaker:I'm gonna do that.
Speaker:That's what matters.
Speaker:It doesn't matter that you can't write 10, 000 words or even 2, 000 words that day.
Speaker:It matters that you consistently come back to it.
Speaker:Sorry, I lapsed into advice for writers.
Speaker:You asked about my process.
Speaker:That is my process.
Speaker:It's like I, I strategically decide, okay, right now I can
Speaker:afford to do this amount of work.
Speaker:So I'm going to do that consistently until I have a book.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:There's got to be a certain amount of satisfaction too that comes
Speaker:from just finishing a title.
Speaker:Even if it's in, a week or two weeks or 30 days and just knowing that,
Speaker:okay, that thing is not going to be holding me down for two years.
Speaker:I'm just, I'm going to go ahead and get that rough draft done because
Speaker:we're not talking about actually having the book finished and
Speaker:ready to go to print at that time.
Speaker:It's just having it written, having that first draft done.
Speaker:So then you can move it along the process from there.
Speaker:Yeah?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Editing is very important and that is a part of the process.
Speaker:And when you're factoring in like release times, Yeah, that's the thing
Speaker:you need to pay the most attention to because edits and rewrites.
Speaker:I use a process I call looping Which I completely stole from Dean Wesley Smith
Speaker:Because he has one called cycling but he so he writes 500 words and cycles back
Speaker:edits those 500 words and keeps going and it builds momentum for his writing.
Speaker:So I like momentum.
Speaker:So what I do is I write my 2, 000 words on Tuesday.
Speaker:On Wednesday, I read and edit those 2000 words, add to it as
Speaker:needed, and then continue on to come to a new 2000 word total.
Speaker:So the words I add while editing count towards that 2000 word total.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So in that way, like I keep looping back and that allows
Speaker:me to edit as I go in a way.
Speaker:And, but continue the progress and I always know where that story left off
Speaker:so that I could because I you know, I edit my way up to it and now I know
Speaker:what to write next and so that's how I build momentum to keep going every day.
Speaker:I you know that I do have another story.
Speaker:Yeah let's hear it!
Speaker:About writing so because I go to these conferences.
Speaker:One year I was at a conference in Orlando, and four days after that conference was
Speaker:a big conference I always go to in St.
Speaker:Pete's Beach, just outside Tampa.
Speaker:When you have four days in Orlando to kill you are required by
Speaker:international law to go to Disney World.
Speaker:If you don't, you will be beaten soundly.
Speaker:So I went to Disney World by myself, which I, if you've never had the opportunity
Speaker:to go to Disney World by yourself.
Speaker:I highly recommend it.
Speaker:I was able to do whatever I wanted, eat whatever I wanted.
Speaker:It was my favorite time.
Speaker:But there was a point at which I was in line for a ride called Flight of the
Speaker:Avatar, which was fairly new at that time.
Speaker:It had been around for about a year.
Speaker:It was a four hour wait.
Speaker:And I'm in line and I'm surrounded by German people.
Speaker:Everyone in the line speaks German.
Speaker:Nobody can talk to me.
Speaker:And so I decided, you know what?
Speaker:I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a little writing.
Speaker:So I took out my iPhone.
Speaker:And I started typing a story, and by the time I got on the ride, I had finished
Speaker:the story, I had used Canva to create a quick cover for it, and I had uploaded
Speaker:all of that to Draft2Digital and formatted it as an ebook and made it available
Speaker:for sale before I got on the ride.
Speaker:Now that, that book is called The Jani Sigil, and it is the offer on my website.
Speaker:When you go to my website, you can get that book for free, and download it for
Speaker:free, and you get on my email newsletter.
Speaker:Yeah, there are no excuses for not getting your writing done, are there?
Speaker:Nothing!
Speaker:When you can stand in line.
Speaker:Nothing!
Speaker:You're right.
Speaker:I talk about that all the time.
Speaker:There's no barrier to entry anymore for writing.
Speaker:Me being experimental, I've done things like...
Speaker:One day I decided, I'm going to write something, a short story, but I'm
Speaker:not going to carry any pen, paper, laptop, phone, anything with me.
Speaker:I had my phone, but I won't use the phone.
Speaker:But I'm, I have to find a way to write a short story this morning.
Speaker:So I took a little walk.
Speaker:We were living in a kind of a town center at that point.
Speaker:There was a donut shop close by.
Speaker:And I found, Someone had dropped their receipt, and it was one
Speaker:of those super long receipts, and the back of it was blank.
Speaker:And then I found, on the ground, as if a miracle from on high, a Bic pen.
Speaker:And I grabbed that, and I went and sat down in the thing, got my donut,
Speaker:got my coffee, wrote a short story on the back of that receipt, and took
Speaker:a photo of it, and posted it online.
Speaker:So I just published.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:Oh, that's great.
Speaker:That is awesome, Kevin.
Speaker:Hey, thank you so much for coming on the podcast again.
Speaker:We always love having you here.
Speaker:Where can people find your 70 plus books for sale today?
Speaker:You sail right on over and this, I know I got a tough name
Speaker:to spell, but kevintumlinson.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:And that there's a tab called books and that's where you'll find all of it.
Speaker:But if you type my name into Google, you will find me.
Speaker:I am unavoidable.
Speaker:I'm as, Thanos says, I am inevitable.
Speaker:So go check out my stuff.
Speaker:Thank you again.
Speaker:And hey, if you have enjoyed this podcast, I one recommend that you go back.
Speaker:If you haven't yet heard our other interview with Kevin,
Speaker:please go back and check that out.
Speaker:It was great content there.
Speaker:But also if you would.
Speaker:Please rate this podcast, review it, subscribe to Writing Momentum and to
Speaker:this channel and share it with a friend, definitely share it with another person
Speaker:who is either already a writer or maybe they're considering becoming one.
Speaker:We love working with new writers, people who are new to the industry we love it.
Speaker:It's our thing.
Speaker:Because why, Chris?
Speaker:Because together we have Writing Momentum.
Speaker:Bye bye.
