Five Things You Can Do to Help Your Child Write and Publish a Book with Special Guest Author D.K. Drake

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Thank you, Linda Wander and Shear Dynamics for your sponsorship of the No Problem Parenting podcast. You're helping us help more families. Hey parents, do you have a teenager out there that has a story in them that's really interested in writing and you kind of feel like their dream is far-fetched for their age? Well, in today's episode, you're going to meet author DK Drake and she's going to teach your kiddo to go from doubting their writing ability, feeling uncertain about the book writing process, or wondering if it's even possible to get their book published, to identifying and mastering the process for writing captivating stories and publishing book after book. Yes, even as a teenager. Let me introduce you to DK Drake. DK is the author of the Dragon Stalker bloodline saga and host of the published before college podcast her mission as a fantasy author is to bring you entertaining engaging wholesome adventures too packed with action to leave room for eye-rolling sappiness or mind-numbing fluff i love that your mission as a writing coach is to teach teens to own their author identity to craft captivating stories and publish book after book She is a Christian, an aunt, mom to four adopted kids, and lives with two of her sisters in the great state of North Carolina.

And DK Drake is her pen name. Her real name is Bonnie Jean Schaefer. Well, I'm super excited about this. I love your podcast, Bonnie.

Welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to be here. What inspired you to become DK Drake?

my writing dream started years ago when I was just a kid, but I didn't really believe it was possible. And so I kind of buried it and kept it hidden and just was trying to find just my one thing as a kid. I was engaged in sports and I was good at sports, but I wasn't great. And I was good at school, but I wasn't like the top of my class. And I was good at writing, but I didn't realize that I thought everybody was good at writing and that's just something that everybody could do.

And so then went to college, wasn't sure what I wanted to study in college. And so I just decided to major in Bible because I figured, hey, I would just learn about, you know, get a good solid foundation for life rather than study for a career. And then it was my senior year in college, February, and I was in class and my professor was talking about the difference between dreamers and doers and how dreamers just have these great big dreams, but they just dream about it. And doers, man, they get things done. I was like, oh, I'm just a dreamer. I've got these big dreams. You know, I wanted to write. I wanted to act. I, you know, wanted to just do all kinds of fun things, but I was like, I just don't know how to get it done. And then she quoted a verse, Psalm 37, or I believe it was, delight in the Lord,

and he will give you the desires of your heart. And I'm like, that's in the Bible. It's like, I've been focusing, I've been delighting God, and he wants to give me the desires of my heart. I can live my dreams. Well, I want to be a writer. I wanted to write screenplays, and I wanted to do all kinds of things like well I'm just going to pursue that dream and so that took me on a whole new trajectory I was like I'm just going to be a I'm going to be an author um and at first I was just going to be a screenwriter and my dad's like you know what most of the big movies they're based on books why don't you try writing books first I'm like well duh that's a great idea so So then out of college, I decided I'm just going to write books.

And so I started writing a novel and realized, huh, this is harder than I thought. But I spent a couple of months writing, living off my savings, and then realized I should probably get one of those job things to get some income in while I learn how to do this writing thing. That took me on quite the adventure. I had a series of jobs in my 20s just trying to find something to do to pay the bills while I worked on my book landed at Starbucks I think when I was 31 and I kind of stayed there for my decade of my 30s and that's where I transitioned to I got in a book published in my late 20s and it went nowhere it was like I'd written like four drafts of it and it got better every time and published it. And then nothing happened. I'm just going to give up on novels.

And I'm just going to, you know, just write short stories for a while. So I started writing short stories. And some of the officers that came into Starbucks to get coffee, one of them's like, hey, you should write a story about cops. Another one's like, hey, you should write a story about dragons. And I'm like, and they just kept bugging me about it.

I'm like, fine, I'll write a story. And I'll call it Cops, Robbers and Dragons. and so I'll just combine them all and I was like well if I'm going to write this story I guess I get to just make up my own little fantasy world about dragons and so how can I make that real where cops are involved so I developed my own little types of dragons the dragon stalkers and live in Xandador and we're in this they had come from the dragon dimension into this dimension and an author was went on a ride along with a police officer and they ended up finding some dragons i don't want to give the story away if you end up getting the short story that you can get on my website and so the author that was on the ride along with the officer her name was darcy and i was like well i'll just give her the last name of drake and i just gave her the the initial of K for Kimberly, who ended up designing the cover of my first book. So that's how I came up with the pen name of DK Drake. So it sounds more like a fantasy author name. It's easier to say and spell than Bonnie Jean Schaefer. So that's where DK Drake came from. And I ended up publishing that book. I expected it to just live in nothingness. I was like, I'm just going to get all four books in the series done, and then I'll learn how to market it. And I put it out there on Amazon and then people started buying it and sold over a thousand copies or so in the first couple

of months it was on the Amazon bestseller list for in the top 10 for a good six months and I didn't do anything also so I was selling it I was like oh my goodness now I've got to write the next book and now there are expectations so it took a little bit longer for me to get the second book out because I wanted it to be better and so I had to improve my craft and you know so just striving to get better and better with every book. I've gotten three books out now. I'm working on getting that fourth one done. And I realized that I want to help teens learn how to do this. They don't need to wait until they're in their 40s to get to live their dreams. You can live your dreams now with the way, the opportunities that we have to get books out there and get them published. If you know how to write a great story, if you know how to, you know, design great covers and with the advent of the independent publishing world and with AI being able to design covers that way,

there are all kinds of opportunities out there. You still have to write a quality story. You have to know what a quality story is. You have to know how to package it in a quality way because we're not going to just throw junk out there just because we can.

Anybody can learn how to write. Anybody can learn how to publish. Anybody can learn how to market. You just got to know what the skills are.

And that's what I want to help teach. and I want to help. My mission right now is to change the lives of 100 teens. And I want to help them live their dreams now and realize they don't have to wait until they're an adult to live their dreams. They can do that now. There are so many teens and young adults out there that are like, I have a lot written. I just don't know what's the next step or what do I do with it? Or how do I finish it or all of that. So I love that today we're going to talk about you have five practical things that a parent can do to help their child or teen write and publish a book.

So let's get right into the nitty gritty of that. All right. Sounds good. So the first thing is to just normalize the dream. Say, yeah, talk to them about it. Hey, they want to write a dream.

Don't make it sound like it's this big lofty. Yeah, it is a big lofty goal, but it's doable. and just like anything if you put in the work you can make it happen and one of the things that I struggled with was talking about it because it sounded so far-fetched and so I kept things really close it was you know my they were my ideas and my stories and my characters and I didn't want anybody to tell me they weren't good and let them write a bad story let them get it out of their system, you can always improve it. But if you don't encourage that creativity, then it's just going to be locked in there forever. And it's going to be bad at first, especially if they've ever done it, but you can get better. On episode 165, I had Melanie McNally on a guest on, and we were talking about this very thing, those big lofty goals and how to motivate your kid. Well,

maybe they've been motivated already, but we've squashed the dream because we think it's too big And it's too unrealistic to think that, you know, our 13 or 14 or 17 year old is going to become a published author. And that couldn't be further from the truth. So I love that you're bringing it up. And it's very timely based on episode 165.

Parents, if you haven't listened to that one, go back and listen to that. And then be sure that you're paying attention to what Bonnie is telling us today, that that first thing is to really normalize the dream. I love it. And, you know, ask them questions about their characters.

Ask them questions about their world. Ask them questions about their story. Talk about it like it's a sport that they play, which brings me on to point number two. Just treat writing like a sport. In sports, we make time to go to practice. We make time to, we bend over backwards to get kids to practice often.

if they don't feel like doing it, hey, listen, you've committed to this. You've got to go. And maybe after this season, you don't want to finish. You don't want to play again. Okay, that's fine. But you committed to this season. So we're going to get this done. And so set up a season of writing for them. Hey, and set up practice times. Let them decide when they want to write. It doesn't have to be every day, but it should be at consistent times every week.

How often do they want to do it? I would recommend at least three times a week, depending on what their schedule is like. I'd at least 30 minutes at a time in order to just be able to get in the flow. So what is going to work for them? Let them choose when they're going to write and then put it on the calendar. Hey, this is your writing practice time. This is what you said you're committed to. And for this amount of time, hey, I'm going to do this for one month, for two months, however long they're going to commit to writing for. And then you honor that as their parent. Oh, this is on the calendar. Oh, it's writing practice time. Everything. All right.

This is, you know, Joe's time to go to baseball practice. This is Sally's time to go to writing practice. This is, so make it normal. And as a part of the family plan as to what you're doing every week and whether they want to do it or not, oh, this is what you committed to.

You've got to finish out this season. Now, if after this season of writing, you don't want to continue, okay. But you've got to commit for this time. The next thing is to invest in an excellent editor and cover designer.

So if you're going to publish the book, you want to make sure it's good quality. And those are the two essential things that you need to make sure it's going to be a good quality story. Let them write that bad draft and then get it to an editor. How can we improve it?

You know, editor needs to be somebody who's going to help them to keep that voice, to keep their unique voice and their unique world, but just help them tighten up the grammar, tighten up, maybe improve the characters a little bit more, but just they need an excellent editor who believes in them. And then you need a good cover. This is not a place to skimp. Look at the top books in Amazon. What are the top books in your genre? Study the covers.

What do they look like? Those best-selling covers, what are the similar aspects of it? And then hire a designer who's going to get you a great cover. So those are the two investments that if you're going to go the independent publishing route, that you've got to save up for.

And if they're a team, hey, they're working. That could be something that they invest in. But that's an investment that they're going to need to make. And then the fourth thing is get a Notion account.

It's a free Notion account, and it's a place where you can organize all of your ideas. You can put all of your character profiles in one place, all of your world building activities, all of your outlines, all of your ideas, all in one lovely little place. I know one thing I struggled with was the multiple word documents that I had in trying to write. I was like, oh, man, where's this character profile?

Oh, man, I know I wrote down this idea. Where was that? Oh, I sketched this out. Where was that?

I have found Notion and it has changed my author life where I can just plug everything together. And I'm working on a template where I'm going to give away a free template, a Notion template where you can plug in. So it's just gives you a way to, gives you a crash course in Notion on how to use it because it's a really cool interface. But if you don't know how to use it, it can throw you for a loop.

Ask me how I know. I've learned how to use it. And now I want to help other authors just organize their life so that you can streamline the writing experience. Because if you're not organized, everything is just feels like chaos.

And then when you sit down to write, then your practices aren't effective because then you spend your 30 minutes looking for everything instead of having it all in one place. And Notion is free. I used it free for years. Then I used up my free storage and, you know, I think it's like less than 100 bucks a year.

Totally worth it. Another one of those tools that I would recommend you pay for. But you can get started for free, but to have some way to organize all of your documents so that everything, you know where to go to find your character profiles, to find your ideas. And what is it that you do with your ideas?

I've got ideas that come to me all the time. And now, oh, they're in this one database in Notion. If I get an idea, that's where it goes. And then the fifth thing is just to plug into a community.

Kind of ties into the sports aspect. but writing can feel very lonely and isolated because it's something that you do all alone at your computer or notebook and it's hard to find if you don't know where to look it's hard to find people who you can talk to about it and then you just get kind of drawn into your own little world you don't know how to share your stories you don't know how to get ideas from other people. I spent years and years just secluded in my own little writing world, but there's this whole vast world out there of other people who like to write and want to help you get involved in a community. There are, you know, you can start at your local library. Just go to, you know, go to any author readings or workshops or the local community college that have any, you know, often And they'll have free workshops or book signings at bookstores and kind of get plugged in.

And actually, you know, that whole in-person thing, there's all kinds of options online. I've got a we have the League of Adventurous Authors that I've got. Get involved. Find a community. Find a place where you can interact with other authors who have the same dream.

Just like you want to interact with other ballplayers and get out there and get involved. I appreciate that. I think that's that you're bringing up so many things that I'm thinking, again, of people that I've known that I've, you know, teens and young adults who have started to write and they want to share their story, you know, maybe get in family get togethers or things. they're sharing the story, but if the person listening isn't super interested in the genre or in that story, it can feel to the writer like, well, nobody's really going to care about this.

Nobody's going to really be interested in this. And that can be so negative and defeating. So getting yourself in attached to a group of fellow writers who maybe don't share your same interest in the subject, but they love writing and they're, they love being able to hear the ideas, the stories and help create and just keep you motivated and moving. I think that's, that's a really, really good point so that you aren't, you know, isolating as a teenager. I can imagine it could be a real game changer in finishing a book and having that supportive community around them. So that's awesome. And you do have the League of Adventurous Authors, that is your group that you have. We're going to have links to connect with you on that.

if somebody is looking for a group to learn that. So we'll share that in the show notes as well. Well, my gosh, those are five steps that I honestly wouldn't have even thought of one of them as you're sharing all of them. So this is great.

Normalize the dream, treat writing like a sport, invest in an editor and cover designer, get an ocean account for organization and plug yourself into a community from idea to publication. Can you give us that? That seems way too overwhelming for me, but is there a big picture kind of overview? All right. So in the big picture overview, you just want to prep your story. So you want to prep your marketing elements, which would be just a basic design of your book cover. You don't have to have a designer at this point, but just either draw it out or use some kind of graphic design program to design your own cover. What do you see it as? And then print it out or draw it out, put it up on your wall.

So that when you're writing, you can see what you're working towards. Before you even start your story, create your own book cover. And that way you have something tangible. Because when we're writing, we're just putting words and we can't see anything actually growing out here in the outer world.

So put that book cover up. So prep your marketing materials. And it all starts with a good cover. So that's where you're looking at Amazon, looking at those other covers.

What do they look like? And then try and create one. Like I said, at this point, it doesn't have to be good. just something to give yourself an idea of what you're shooting for and then you want to prep your story elements which is you're going to develop your characters your world your premise and just getting all those pieces together and then you're going to build your story framework which is building your outline so just getting all that prep work done is going to make the writing process a lot easier and then step two you just want to write a lousy first draft as fast as you can. And let it be lousy. Just get that rough draft out. Step three, want to revise your story. And then let an editor provide feedback. And then revise based on the editorial feedback. And then step four, publish. Finalize your cover and your interior formatting. And you're going to proof your print copy if you're going the print route. And then you're going to publish your book, and there's a whole process on how to launch it effectively, and then you're going to have your promote. This is where you're going to consistently promote your book while you're working on the next one, and I thought about putting promote before publish, but hey,

publish, there's the launch process, and then you don't want to forget that, oh yeah, I need to promote this on a consistent basis, and so then you just start over while you're promoting, then you're up on the next story and you're right and you revise then you publish and you just keep going and going and that's just the those are the five basic steps of the process I love it awesome awesome so I think if there is anyone I know there's got to be people listening right now that have tweens or teens that are writing their story they're all they're super energized when they talk about it it's just the parents going I have no idea how to do this and it seems unfathomable to have them actually be a published author at this point. And with you, Bonnie,

you are saying it is not impossible and it is the best time to encourage them to get a book out there, which is really why you started the Published Before College podcast, right? Yeah, you can live your dream now. It's just a matter of doing the work. And in order to do that work. It's helpful to have accountability, helpful to have a community, and that's what I provide through the league is we get together every Monday, talk about what we did the week before, what we're aiming for for the coming week. We get together every Friday. We have question and answer time, any challenges that you've been facing. So it's not so much of a training in the league, it's a community and keeping each other accountable. Training is there. It's part of it. But the big part of it is those get togethers to talk to other people who are going through what you're going through. And none of us are doing this full time. I still have a full time job.

And so it's a so I understand what it's like to want to have this dream and be able to have to fitted in among life and how do you balance your life? How do you have this dynamic balance and do everything that you want to do and still pursue this dream? Even if you only have, you know, three to five hours a week, how can you make it happen? How does someone get in touch with you and learn more about how to hire you as the coach for this sport, for this writing sport?

All right. You can visit my website. It's just authordkdrake.com. All kinds of fun information on there. You can get a sample of my writing, get the DK Drake Starter Library.

You can get the download of the publication checklist, have workshops coming up. It's going to be exciting. Totally free. Come join us.

and if you just want to shoot me an email it's just dk at author dk drake.com it's probably the best way to get in touch with me because i'm not very big on social media i've got lots going on and i just don't have time to mess with social media so shoot me an email i respond to that dk at author dk drake.com if you're interested in getting some i'm opening up a couple of one-on-one slots for coaching in september i don't have many much availability because i do have you know that full-time job and kids and got to run doing a half marathon this weekend. So I got to keep up with my own fitness level, but Hey, I'm opening up a couple of slots to be able to work one-on-one with some people, or if you just want to join the league and join the group and make some progress that way, authordkdrake.com backslash league. And people can listen to published before college podcast. I absolutely love the podcast. You are so intriguing and exciting to listen to. I love when you read little excerpts of your stories and things. It's just absolutely so fun. Again,

we're going to have a link in the show notes for the Published Before College podcast. Lots of tips and tools, resources, ideas on how to get your book published. Get it on paper and then get it published. If you've got a dream in your heart, go for it, make it happen, respect your strengths and just do the work it takes. Well, I really appreciate you sharing this resource with my no problem parent listeners today, Bonnie. I appreciate your time. I just really encourage parents, homeschool parents, parents who have kiddos that they, you know, really want to be in a sport and the kids like, I'm not interested in sports. I love reading. I love writing. I have I love adventure. This is a great outlet for kiddos and you have the perfect platform for them to really feel like they belong and make their dream a reality. So thank you so much for being with me today. All right. Thanks for having me. It's been fun.

All right, parents, that's it for today. Make sure you head over to the website, noproblemparents.com. Sign up to get our emails. We're going to be giving away tips, tools, techniques, and resources, updates on podcast episodes, round table events, and more. Check out noproblemparents.com. For now, hugs and high fives. You got this. Digital Audio Health by Cymotrax.