Episode 234: Does Your Story Matter? (More Than You Know) with Catherine Nikkel
Catherine Nikkel is a ghostwriter extraordinaire and a woman on a mission to help you know and understand that your story matters. If you have been thinking about whether or not you should tell your story, or if it's time for you to write that book -- Catherine gets her clients from idea to first draft in 120 days.
She’s authored 15 books—including memoirs, biography, and business books—and thousands of blogs and emails for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and influencers.
She believes everyone has a story to tell. Drawing upon her extensive 15-year background as a former social worker, she empowers people to use their voices to make an impact—within themselves, their relationships, and their communities.
Why your story matters
“There's a quote I always refer to and I still can't find who wrote it […], ‘Our story could be the key to unlock someone else's prison.’ And I just feel that. Don't be selfish with our stories, because it could really change someone's life,” she says.
Her goal is to get people out of their head. Some might think they aren’t a good writer; others might be caught up in the vulnerability.
“When we’re sharing our stories, we’re putting ourselves out there to be critiqued to be judged, to be shamed. But on the flip side, we're also there to be celebrated,” says Catherine.
She says it’s exciting and humbling to be a guide for people who are gearing up to share moments they might not have shared with anyone else or vocalized before.
Sharing trauma
When working with people who have been through a traumatic event, the first thing Catherine does is talk about the vision. That means looking at what the author hopes to get out of the story and who they picture reading it. What impact is the author looking to make?
“When we think about the pieces of our story we want to tell, especially in the world of memoirs, it doesn't need to be a whole chronological ‘here's my whole life story,’” she says. “It's what are those inspiring and impactful moments in a slice of your life that are going to lead to that main North Star? Because before we do anything together, we need to know what that is.”
Writing can be a cathartic and healing journey, but that doesn’t mean you have to share everything. Catherine says some people might write the book and then decide not to publish, and that’s okay because the goal was to write the book.
“Sometimes we're still healing and it's really tough to publish and put yourself out there where your end result, for whatever that means, may not be the same in five years. So their main goal is let's just get the book and then decide the rest from there.”
Transferable skills
Before Catherine started ghostwriting, she was a social worker. She worked in non-profits and faced a lot of red tape and politics. Seven days after she quit her job, she was in the hospital and paralyzed from the waist down. She had to have spinal surgery and learn to walk again.
She said the doctors said the cause was likely that she released so much tension she’d been carrying for years. Catherine describes it as the best worst thing to have ever happened. She thinks it was the universe saying you shouldn’t be an insurance agent, which was her next move.
She realized thought that there were so many transferable skills in moving from a social worker to a ghostwriter. Everything from not needing credit to the interview process working with authors.
Working with a book coach
Writing a book is hard and having someone who can get you on the right path – even if it’s just working on an outline – the accountability piece is key. Constructive feedback coupled with helping an author meet their deadlines can be the difference between someone saying they want to write a book; and actually writing it.
It can also be helpful to have someone help pull out the story because authors can be so close they might the details the reader needs to know.
“And if you can take some of your story and just inspire someone else, you know, again, those cliches, those that trauma to triumph, people are so inspired by that and people deserve to hear your story,” says Catherine.
Free gift for listeners
Catherine is sharing a book outline called the Write Track. It's a copy of a similar outline she uses when ghostwriting a book and, with book coaching clients.
Connect with Catherine:
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