Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.
Today, my special guest is best selling international author, Allie Pleiter. She's honed her productivity skills in popular fiction where she's regularly releases 4 books a year. To date, she's sold over 1,800,000 books worldwide. Now, professionals around the world are using her unique momentum-based systems for time and task management to boost their productivity and creativity in a competitive market. Allie, what an honor it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
Allie Pleiter [00:01:26]:
I'm delighted to be here. Thank you.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:29]:
Allie, you are a successful prolific author, and you've created and mastered the chunky method writing technique. Let's start off there and sort of understand, in a nutshell, what exactly is this chunky method?
Allie Pleiter [00:01:48]:
The chunky method actually is a lot like it sounds. It's figuring out how to define your chunk as a writer. Let me get a little more into that. Your chunk is the number of words you could get down in a single sitting, in a decent situation. So if I were to put you in a room that you would consider to be a good writing environment and barred the door so that you were not interrupted, your chunk is the number of words you get down before your brain starts to sort of wander off, before you start to think about something else or you run out of ideas or you just run out of creative juice. It's different for every writer, but it's remarkably consistent. And I think that's the sort of moment for many writers when we go through the process. Is that most writers' chunks are consistent, even though they're very different from writer to writer.
Allie Pleiter [00:02:43]:
I work with writers whose chunks are 500 words or 400 words. I work with writers whose chunks are 3,000,400 words. And so there are some behavioral differences between those two chunks. But it's basically discovering what your chunk is and then using that to create a very sound, personalized, solid plan to how do you get to all the words that you need for the first draft of your manuscript. If you do this, you're sort of working in what you know you can do. So you're working from your strong spot. And when you use the chunky method to create a schedule as to when you'll get through your first manuscript, you're setting yourself up for success. You're not doing somebody else's idea of what a solid writing practice is.
Allie Pleiter [00:03:32]:
You're doing something that's built from the inside out, from how your brain works. That's why it's so successful and why it's dependable. They can be consistent if you build it the right way. And there's nothing more gratifying for me than to watch a writer sort of open up to that process and realize it and move forward with, confidence they just didn't have before.
Susan Friedmann [00:03:59]:
Thinking about that, I mean, it begs the question, well, how would a writer come up with, like, their ideal size other than locking themselves in the room and write him out for a limited period of time or however?
Allie Pleiter [00:04:13]:
I use a discovery process of 5 sample sessions, and that's literally what it sounds like. Sit down and write, but don't pay attention to the clock. Pay attention to your energy. You're sort of gonna come into the project, and then if your energy's gonna get really, really focused. And then at some point, you're going to feel your brain wander to I'm tired or I think I want a snack or any of those kinds of things that your brain knows it's sort of done concentrating. If you do that 5 times and take the mathematical average, sometimes just doing the 5 is an eye opening experience because the writers discover they really are consistent when they pay attention to their energy and not the clock. Then you take the mathematical average of that and twiddle with it a little bit, and that becomes your chunk. And there are behavioral characteristics for what I call big chunk writers, the chunks that are up above a1000, and there are behavioral characteristics for small chunk raters.
Allie Pleiter [00:05:11]:
That's one of the dynamics. And the second one is a little more of a personality trait. When you build all that together, you get a really highly personalized plan that basically just creates a path that's built on how your brain already works.
Susan Friedmann [00:05:24]:
However, you shouldn't beat yourself up if, let's say, 500 words is all that is comfortable for you versus you said you do 1200 words, and you have writers who do 4,000 words, which is beyond my comprehension, there's no sort of good, bad. It just is what you can do. Correct? No chunky judgment here. No chunky judgment. I love it. Sounds like a weight loss program.
Allie Pleiter [00:05:51]:
Yes. There's a reason I hand out chunky candy bars when I speak. But because if you try to do something that's not built on how your brain works like, if I decided I wanted to go off and have a chunk of 4,000 words, it wouldn't work. I would probably get 1200 great words and a bunch of other words that would either not be the quality I want or frustrate me. No. It doesn't matter. And actually, you're quite right. When I was writing and I would see these people who'd put on their social media or in their long weekend writing retreats that they'd knocked out 35, 104,000 words.
Allie Pleiter [00:06:29]:
And I would sort of tell myself this lie that I couldn't be a serious writer if I wasn't doing that. When in fact, if I tried to do that, I genuinely think I would lose the sort of lightness and sparkle that marks my work because I'd be doing something that doesn't work with the way my brain works. Yeah. No chunky envy, no chunky judgment. Everybody's chunk is what it is. Now you can grow it over time with some tactics. When I first started 20 years ago, my chunk was 500, and it's grown up to 1200. It's my sweet spot.
Allie Pleiter [00:07:01]:
I can up it to about 1500 if there was a project that really warrants it or I've been asked to compact a deadline or something like that. It does grow. It's not a fixed thing. It's just highly individualized, and I think that's very freeing, Especially the little chunk authors who suddenly realize, I'm not distracted. I'm not not serious. I'm just a little chunk author.
Susan Friedmann [00:07:27]:
Yeah. Because some people just don't have the same attention span, and especially nowadays when attention spams are getting shorter and shorter.
Allie Pleiter [00:07:35]:
So why would you fight that? Why wouldn't you work from that strength and see it as the strength it can be instead of fighting it for what somebody else thinks a serious writer does?
Susan Friedmann [00:07:44]:
So I'm really interested in knowing how did you actually come up with this technique?
Allie Pleiter [00:07:49]:
It probably started from the fact that I did not start life as a writer. I actually started life as an actor, believe it or not. And I, long story short, ended up writing grants for, cultural organizations, which are very deadline, very sort of segmented writing. And I realized that if I wrote things in segments and little pieces, and then I figured out what was the best piece that I could get done without overextending myself or painting myself into a corner. So it started with nonfiction, which is why I do a lot of work with nonfiction authors. But it's absolutely the same. And the beauty of the chunky method is it doesn't really matter what it is you're writing because it's process based. I work with, nonfiction writers.
Allie Pleiter [00:08:34]:
I work with fiction writers. I have taught it to graduate students who are all but dissertation. So they use it to create their dissertations. I've worked with bloggers. It doesn't really matter what the content is because I'm focused on the process. When I figured out that my brain worked better in these small segments, then I got very analytical about it. What was the ideal segment? How could I build that? What happened when I went beyond it? It also doesn't hurt that I'm married to an engineer or project manager, and there's a lot of project management in this. It's really project management for the creative process.
Allie Pleiter [00:09:12]:
And people are always astounded that you can do that. You can't do that to a creative process that'll squash all the art out of it. Absolutely not. I believe completely the opposite, that you put that structure underneath it, and it frees up your creativity. And you're more creative because you know exactly where you are and your plan and exactly what you're expecting of your muse for whatever words you're writing every day that you sit down to write.
Susan Friedmann [00:09:39]:
Yeah. I go to my engineer when I need some structure because I'm the creative and he's the systems guy, so I know exactly what you're saying there. Now, what about this strategy technique? Would it help writer's block?
Allie Pleiter [00:09:58]:
I personally believe that the chunky method is the strongest antidote to writer's block for a couple of different reasons. First of all, I deeply believe that the most powerful knowledge of all is knowing what to do next. What's the next step? That is the most empowering knowledge. So if you get caught up in the totality of I'm writing a whole book, I'm writing a whole white paper or what have you. If you get caught up in that, it feels like too much. But if you use the chunky method, basically, what you're asking yourself to do is today's chunk, which is 500 words or 1200 words. And more than that, you're asking yourself to do something you've already proven mathematically that you're capable of doing. So it's really hard to talk yourself out of it because you've built it around what you already know you can do.
Allie Pleiter [00:10:54]:
Literally this morning, I was doing my 1200 words. I wasn't quite sure where I was gonna be when I sat down, but I knew I was capable of producing 1200 words. And I knew where I was in the path that I'd set from here to the completion of this novel. But I didn't really have the option of writer's block. And I think it can be a very easy excuse if you don't have the structure underneath you. But when you've got that structure built underneath you and around your path to completion, you really can't get into it.
Susan Friedmann [00:11:28]:
It sounds so tempting. If our listeners want to try this out, what's the first step that you would say? What is that first step that they should take to use this system?
Allie Pleiter [00:11:40]:
Well, I wouldn't be much of an author if I didn't say the first step would be to buy the chunky method handbook. But
Susan Friedmann [00:11:45]:
I've already done that. Yes. That was a good first step. Check. I've done that.
Allie Pleiter [00:11:50]:
The discovery process usually involves those first five sessions to sit down and figure out what your chunk is. That's the very first step. And then for a lot of writers, when you sign up for my newsletter or you hear me to do a presentation or something like that, I will give them access to what I call the chunky calculator, which because, you know, word people aren't really math people. So we've built a preprogrammed Excel spreadsheet. Where you can put in your 5 sample sessions, and it will average it for you. And then it's really there's no magic wand that I'm offering. It's really just the mathematics of if you know you write 500 words as your chunk, and you're looking at a 50,000 word manuscript, then you know you need to sit down a certain number of times to get there. And that's really the magic of it.
Allie Pleiter [00:12:45]:
I need to write a book, it's vague. You can't put it on a timeline, but if you can say I need to sit down 400 times, and I'm just pulling numbers out of the sky here, 400 times, 3 times a week to get my book done to its 70, 50000 word by the date that I want it. That is really specific. I call it giving your muse marching orders. You're telling your muse exactly what you expect of it. And it's also side benefit I didn't even realize was gonna happen. It makes it much easier to explain to someone else who isn't a writer, whose cooperation you might need, like a spouse or your children. To say, I need to sit down 3 times this week and write 500 words in order to stay on track to write my novel or my nonfiction book or my series of blogs, that a nonwriter can understand.
Allie Pleiter [00:13:42]:
It's clear. It's concise. It's got, like, clean lines around it. I started writing when my children were quite small, and they regularly heard, mommy will talk to you in 300 words. And they knew exactly what that meant. It's a way to take art and make it a very concrete next step. So to get that chunk, to put it in that plan is the basis of it. There's a lot of bells and whistles in terms of big chunk writers and small chunk writers and personalities that I refer to as marlins and dories.
Allie Pleiter [00:14:11]:
If you know the Pixar Finding Nemo characters, the marlin who was a straight linear thinker had to go from a to b, and the Dory who would go from a to q to r to x and back to c to use those as well.
Susan Friedmann [00:14:26]:
Yeah. That's very much me. I know that I go in all different tangents, and I'm like, okay, come back to what you need to be focusing on, Susan. That's something I really relate to. I love the fact of giving your muse their marching orders. That's beautiful. Staying in control of that. Now, something that keeps going through my mind, and I know you and I chatted a little bit about this beforehand, and that is I get a little bit sort of obsessed with the idea of the time.
Susan Friedmann [00:14:54]:
Yes. You've got maybe the 500 words that you do, but then it's like, well, is this going to take me 1 hour? Is this going to take me 30 minutes? What would you say to somebody with my dilemma?
Allie Pleiter [00:15:08]:
It is different for everyone. My 500 words could take a whole different time than your 500 words. After all the years that I've been writing, I do have kind of a genuine sense of how long it will take me. But the real power of that is you're taking your brain off of the block of time and into the output and the outcome. So your outcome based, and there's something about the difference between I'm going to write for an hour and I'm going to produce 500 words that makes all the difference. Yes. It helps maybe to be able to do a little bit of planning. And the great part is if you get your 500 words done in 20 minutes, hey, you can be done if you wanna be done.
Allie Pleiter [00:15:51]:
And there's something wonderful about that too.
Susan Friedmann [00:15:53]:
Something you and I talked about too prior to coming on the air is the idea of that dedication of doing it every day. This is just part of, let's say, a morning routine or an afternoon routine. That, I believe, is sort of part of your success, is the fact that it's that discipline. Correct?
Allie Pleiter [00:16:17]:
Yes and no. In that I know there are a lot of people who say that if you don't write every day, you're not a serious writer. I actually disagree with that. I think especially if you're a big chunk writer, if you are, you know, up in the 2000s and it takes you a long time to get down into the process and stay there and then to eventually come back out. Sometimes it's really difficult to do that on a daily basis if you're not writing full time. I've worked with lots of authors who are big chunk writers, and they start beating themselves up over not being able to write every day when, in fact, that's really hard to do if you're a big chunk writer. And big chunk writers, one of their personality traits is they're really derailed by interruptions. You can't just go in and knock on the door and ask a question and for them to get back down into it, Sometimes it's difficult and perhaps even unrealistic to think that you can write every day.
Allie Pleiter [00:17:14]:
Whereas if you're a small chunk writer, now I draw the line between big chunk writers and small chunk writers at 2,000 words if you're writing full time, and 1,000 words if you've got other things that you have to do. Even at 1200 words, I consider myself a small chunk writer. I do have to write every day because I can't do this magic trick of going off to a retreat or a hotel room and banging out the last 20,000 words of my manuscript. I'm just not capable of it, so I better not count on it. It's that piece of it. Yes. It works every day for some people. And when you think about it as a writing practice, that practice may look very, very different for 2 different writers.
Allie Pleiter [00:17:53]:
1 maybe 2 times a week. 1 maybe every day. The trick is to know what is the right thing to ask of yourself so that you continue to make progress. And that's why I call it momentum based. You're piling little victory on little victory on little victory, achievement on achievement on achievement, and that starts to compel you toward the finish line in a way that I don't think anything else does it with that power.
Susan Friedmann [00:18:19]:
I love that. And it's funny you that you should refer to the hotel room because I have a colleague, and what she did is just say, Oh, I'm going to hotel for the weekend to write my book. And I was like, I can think of nothing worse and uninspirational than to go to a hotel room and write. I just love my own environment with my stuff around me that I know if I need something, it's right there at hand. Whereas, I know that if I'm in a hotel room, I'm like, oh my goodness, I need this. And that's in my office. So that conjured up all these memories of this colleague who did this, and she did it very effectively. And as you say, it worked for her.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:03]:
It works for some people, but other people need other techniques.
Allie Pleiter [00:19:07]:
One of my favorite things to do when I'm teaching the chunky method in, like, a seminar is to watch, especially the little chunk writers, their eyes just light up in the side that I am a serious fighter. I am doing it right. I'm not some kind of victim of poor concentration because I can't go off to this retreat. I'm like you. I would make it maybe an hour and I would be go looking for the nearest Starbucks. The whole point of the chunky method is if you increase your awareness of these elements of how your brain and your creativity works, then you make a way smarter plan. That plan is more effective. It builds success on success.
Allie Pleiter [00:19:44]:
That's I think the power of it. Is it it's not only mathematical, but it's kind of personality based in a specific way that's attuned to how writers think.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:55]:
Now, are there any special tools or resources that you would recommend for writers to use in order to be more effective and efficient with the chunky method?
Allie Pleiter [00:20:06]:
I don't think so. I'm trying to think if there's any consistency between all the different clients. No. I actually have some writers who work longhand. I have some writers who work with some of the standard word processing programs. It doesn't really make a difference. Because again, it's system based, not content based. I think 90% of them use some sort of word processing software.
Allie Pleiter [00:20:28]:
I happen to use Scrivener, which is a favorite among fiction authors, but I use it for my nonfiction works as well. And that it is easily segmented. But, really, once you start raising your awareness of what your system is and your method, then you'll make the best choices for whatever software or mechanisms you use.
Susan Friedmann [00:20:53]:
Yeah. I agree. I mean, I write very differently if I'm doing it longhand versus doing it on a word processor. I think very, very differently. Yes. It depends what I want. I mean, obviously, for journaling, the long hand is very different from than the word processor. Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:14]:
That's very true. I think very differently with both those methods. And there's a place for them, time and place.
Allie Pleiter [00:21:21]:
So And also one of my favorite tricks, if you're stuck, is to switch methods. If for some reason you're stuck and you write on a computer, write longhand. If you work on a a regular desktop, work on a tablet or a laptop. Go outside instead of inside to just sort of shake things up a little bit. It's one of my favorite tricks for when you're stuck is to just switch up some of those practical pieces of it. And it just sort of wakes your brain up into, I have to do something different now.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:49]:
What are the tricks of the trade out there that you could share?
Allie Pleiter [00:21:53]:
Well, certainly, one of the ones that I use most often, especially with nonfiction clients, is if you're stuck with something in your personal or professional life that seems to be sort of sitting in front of you between you and your words, is to start there, to start describing how you're feeling. Let's say you've had a huge frustration in work, To describe that and then think, alright, where in my work, in my fiction or my nonfiction, does this sense of frustration apply? And think about which chapter am I talking about is my character or is the case study that I'm working with or the story I'm telling in my nonfiction work frustrated? Then use that as the jumping off point so that you're not trying to get around the emotion when you're writing, you're actually using it as a launch pad. That's a tremendously powerful trick for if you've got some other thing off the page, as I say, some of those off the page problems that are standing in the way of you and what you need to do to sort of enter into your work through that. Use that emotionality rather than trying to get around it. That's one of my very favorite tricks.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:06]:
I love that. I've got a variation of that where if I sit down and I really I'm like, I don't know what to write about. Then I was like, well, I asked myself that question, well, if I did know what I wanted to write about, what would it be? And I sort of work with that, maybe as you say, it's an emotion. Oh, I'm feeling really frustrated today. Why am I feeling this way? What's causing this? And then I sort of go into that emotion, and that sort of starts springboarding into other things. And as you say and I say, well, how can I relate that to, let's say, book marketing or etcetera? So, yes, I love that. Allie, if our listeners wanted to find out more about you, your methods, your books, how can they do that?
Allie Pleiter [00:23:55]:
There's a lot to find out. I do a lot of different things. Alieplytor.com is the easiest way. Then you'll see a place to look at my coaching and my speaking, and then you'll have a chance to look at all of those books. There's a lot of them, which I think is really important. I just wanna say that that there's a lot of professionals out there who want to teach you their secret sauce. But I wanna make sure that you know that you're dealing with someone who's done it. That's why I'm so proud of the 65 books and the 1,800,000 sold in that I'm actually doing it.
Allie Pleiter [00:24:30]:
And so that to me makes me an especially effective coach. I'm being prolific. And prolific. Let's face it is part of what's required in the market these days. You need to be able to produce on a regularly consistent basis. And the fact that I'm doing it, I think, makes me a stronger coach. So AlliePleiter.com shows you all the goodies, and you can start wherever place you're most interested in and go from there.
Susan Friedmann [00:24:56]:
Perfect. And I'll put that in the show notes that people can just click right through to your website, had an opportunity to go through, and look at all those titles. And I'm like, oh my goodness. There's a lot of them. But kudos, and you're absolutely right. You're doing it. Yes.
So you can really talk from experience rather than say, well, I think I know what I'm doing, or I've done it once, and hey, that's going to make me a guru in this method. Ali, if you were to leave our listeners with a golden nugget, what would that be?
Allie Pleiter [00:25:32]:
I think it's still what I think is the basis of the chunky method, which is the most powerful knowledge of all is knowing what to do next. Big goals are lovely and they're terrific and they're motivating. But if you don't know what it is you need to do today, and then tomorrow, and then the day after that, to have that knowledge drill down to that level of specificity, that's where the power is.
Susan Friedmann [00:25:59]:
Beautiful. Thank you. I really appreciate you sharing this wisdom. I love it. This has given me a whole new perspective on writing, so I really appreciate it. And listeners, I hope you do too.
By the way, listeners, as you know, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expect it to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time that you got a return that you were hoping for. So go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com to schedule your free call.
And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
