This month I’m inviting 30 magical authors to share how writing a book has created transformation in their lives as part of The Magical Portal Project.
And I was DELIGHTED to have a conversation with Marianne Cantwell, author of Be a Free-Range Human about her experience.
Take a look at our conversation below and you’ll also find a full transcription of the interview if you’re a reader, rather than a watcher.
Find out more and join the free Magical Portal Project here.
Nicola: Hello and welcome to this episode of Unbound. I’m Nicola Humber, author of Unbound and founder of The Unbound Press. And today I’m delighted to be joined by author of Be a Free Range Human, Marianne Cantwell. Welcome Marianne.
Marianne: Hi Nicola, happy to be here.
Nicola: I’m really excited and Marianne has a new edition, the second edition of Be a Free Range Human coming out very soon. So excited about that and it’s like the perfect Unbound book so I’m really excited to dive in and talk about what’s going to be in the new edition and he whole process of writing the book as well, because this month we’re focusing on the Magical Portal Project which is all about this deep and mysterious alchemy that happens when we write a book. And the often unexpected magic that can come out of it. So I can’t wait to dive into more around that.
But first Marianne, I generally start these conversations with the same question, because obviously the theme of everything I do is about being unbound and being our fullest, freest selves. But I’m curious to know if there was a time in your life or situation where you felt particularly bound and how you moved beyond that.
Marianne: Mm, I think there’s been quite a few times in my life where I felt particularly bound. I think like a lot of us, a lot of us who are drawn to writing, I have a very strong inner critic. A very strong inner editor even that comments on everything in my life. And so I find it very easy to slip into being bound which is probably why I stepped into the free range world in the first place. Because the idea of free range humans is really an attitude to life and to work and to creation that is very similar to Unbound. It’s about understanding who you are and staying connected to yourself. And one of the situations where I many times definitely did not feel this way, the obvious one to talk about would be when I was in a job and not being creative.
But I actually want to talk about something else. I want to talk about after my first edition of my book came out. When at the time it was every author’s well, every author that I know’s dream which was, it was doing really well. The press was great, even the Daily Mail had nice things to say which was unexpected on all fronts. I had all these things I thought I wanted and I felt the most creatively and personally constrained I had ever felt because I went from being someone who wrote several thousand words every week to my email list thinking you know, it was a few thousand people but it felt “private” it didn’t feel like that public. And then when eyes were on me suddenly I felt bound again, I felt constrained I was wondering, will I do something wrong, what should I do next? And every step was like a clunk in the woods. And yeah, that was a time where I definitely actually it took me I’d say at least a couple years to get over that phase. And part of it was actually through creation which we can talk about later.
Nicola: Mm, oh yeah, I really want to know how you moved through that phase. And that’s so interesting to hear you speak about it because I think that’s the side of ‘success’, whatever that means to us as individuals, that isn’t really spoken about. How that can feel really limiting in itself and really restrictive. But I’d like to go back actually and talk about the original inspiration for writing Be a Free Range Human. What made you decide to write the book in the first place?
Marianne: I always say I never decided to write the book. As I said, I had this blog, Free Range Humans, back in the day. I had this email list where I wrote my Friday love letters which was several thousand words every Friday. And so I really was honing my craft of writing. I was growing my online business off the back of it but I was always someone who’s more into the craft. So at university, little known fact, I actually did creative writing as one of my majors. I was more of a fiction writer. It was always a side project. So the second I started, again, back in 2009, whatever it was, started blogging and writing it flowed, like I got it. At the time it was my medium. I had an offer from a major publishing house early on ’cause they were sniffing around back in the blog days. That was where you got your authors from. Ended up not being a great conversation. I felt very, that was somewhere where I felt very constrained. I didn’t go ahead. Then I said I’m not ever getting published. I don’t ever want to do this. Books are unnecessary and difficult and I don’t like publishers. And then, and I wasn’t considering self-publishing at the time just because it wasn’t in line with where I was going personally with my project. Then I was approached by this woman who was an editor for another house, a smaller but a very niche, not very niche, very well established business house Kogan Page. She approached me, she said you should write a book. I said, absolutely no way. She took me out for coffee and convinced me I should say yes, and I did. And it was because of her that I wrote the book.
And actually that’s a theme, my second edition was my new editor from Kogan Page coming back and saying it’s been years why don’t we write a second edition? I said, no. And she said, let’s talk about that. And so I always saw myself in any creative project I think we often have these Sherpas these people who, they’re always women in my life who are shepherding the project from like if you’re the channel for it, they’re the ones who are opening the door and showing you the way. Every project I’ve had someone, a woman, who has pulled me in and said we need you to do this thing. That’s where it really came from for me. I never intended to do it.
Nicola: Yeah, I love that. I love that how we receive this support and these messages from other sources that come to us. And I hear that a lot and I’ve experienced it myself and I’m really curious to wonder okay, well why do we need it to come from these external sources do you think? Have you got any theories?
Marianne: I have a lot! I’ve thought about this a lot because it’s so consistent for me. My TedX talk was a client of mine who was on the committee who said we need you to do this. I said no. She’s like, I’ll help you pitch it. It’s pretty consistent. So I was like, what is it that’s going on with that? I think there’s a few reasons. I think firstly, and I think this is probably the case for you as well. These things never come out of the blue. They come out of when we have done things, we have created things and other people are like, let’s take this another step. And I sometimes think that we get for me it hasn’t been about I can’t do it. It’s about I don’t want to push it. I’m very respectful, as you know, of the creative process. And I don’t commit to things I can’t deliver on as we’ve talked about. And I don’t take writing a book lightly. I don’t take creating a TedX talk lightly. I knew, for example, a second edition revision, I knew it would take me six full months on the second edition revision and because of that honoring of the creative space I think that’s one reason. And I also think that maybe when your role is to, I always see it as being a channel for ideas. All my best writing and creation, I don’t really know where it’s come from.
Nicola: Yeah.
Marianne: When that’s your role, I think stepping out of your role and seeing your next step is a really different energy. That’s why I think these Sherpas, and that’s why, I’m living in L.A. now so I’m seeing a lot of the movie industry. It’s almost like they’re the producers and you have the creatives and the producers. And they’re the ones who are saying if you spent your life working out how to produce the movie, then you wouldn’t be the talent or whatever. And I think it’s nice. Like I’m now, can we do things without other people? Sure, we get our projects going. And certainly I wouldn’t say to wait. But I do think it’s curious, I agree with you why we have that.
Nicola: Yeah, I love that. I love that way of thinking about it. And it feels so deeply supportive and like you said, we can do it on our own. But it’s just I think it’s so much more magical when other people, when we invite or allow other people into the process. There is that sense of alchemy you know, that can happen in the process anyway, but when other people bring their magic to it, it just all gets heightened and kind of activated in a different way. It’s wonderful. So I know that you believe that writing a book is one of the most transformational things that you can do. And I’m interested to know, Marianne, what kind of transformation did you experience both through the writing of your book and the second edition as well, and through releasing it into the world.
Marianne: So much. Most transformative thing I’ve ever done. So obviously mine’s nonfiction so I’ll speak from that. And my experience is number one that you know your subject better than you could ever imagine by the end. Even if you’ve been writing several thousand words for five years or whatever it was that I was doing. There’s something about the process of not just writing individual posts but of synthesizing something so that it’s a smooth journey from start to finish. I see it like you’re playing Tetris in 3-D. So you’re holding all these concepts and I actually think your brain chemistry has to change. ‘Cause it’s not about the paragraph that you wrote, it’s about how it all hung together. So the first thing is, I think that something switches and you understand the totality.
And the second thing is I think that my biggest thing in life and the biggest thing in Free Range Humans is knowing who you are out of all the possible versions of the person you could be. So for me that means when I’m writing the book there’re so many opportunities I’m a very fast writer. So I wrote probably ten times the amount that was in the book is in Word documents. I write really fast and very prolifically. I have also a very strong inner editor which means very little of that gets through. So out of all the potential writing that I have which part of it will serve what’s the thing that I’m supposed to be putting out in the world? What’s the thing that only I can really say in this voice? And when you’re writing something nonfiction around life change, business, all this stuff, about personal development there are so many angles and so many pieces to the individual reader’s journey. Which of those pieces are you going to step into? ‘Cause if you try to step into all of them, it will be a disaster of a book and it won’t work. And I often think when I’m going through other people’s work I think a lot of the time writing sort of, writing skills aside, a lot of our journey to become unbound and to really do our best work is a sense of understanding who do I want to be and who am I in this moment?
So I’ll give you a specific example. For me, I know now, especially in the second edition that the biggest work I’m gonna do in the world is not to give people a bunch of specific tips on how to run their business. That’s not the work I’m doing in the world. There’s a nice little sprinkling to help people’s fears go to one side so they can take in the rest of the message. But the theme of this book is about being who you are in a world that tries to make you something else. The vessel it goes into is around creating a business or free range career. But it’s really a book about being who you are and understanding who you are. What do you do with that? And once I understood that theme, the chapters fall into place completely differently. So I would say the other things is that you develop a lot more humility. Because you can’t be everything and still be a great writer. But who are you in that moment? I think that’s the other thing that’s really transformational for me.
Nicola: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think there’s always a lot of things like you said, there’s a lot of things that we could write about. And especially if we’ve been doing this kind of thing for a long time, we probably have written about a lot of things and we’ve talked about a lot of things and shared. But it’s really distilling the magic onto the page in the most powerful way.
Marianne: I would add to that is when people say, I want to write a book, which I get a lot. I often don’t encourage people to write books. I might be a little different from you in that because I’m always like, you probably don’t, is my first response. But only because people don’t expect that response and I kind of want to shake them up a little. And I go, you may not. And my first question is are you writing right now? And if they say no, I say well how about you start writing first? Write and deliver chunks to yourself to your partners to whatever because it links to what you were saying just then. About there are so many things we could draw from. And your book is not the place to put them all in. Your writing, your individual posts, whatever it is that you’re writing that’s the place the amount of stuff that I’ve written about that isn’t my core stuff, is huge. Does it belong in your book? It doesn’t belong in your book. And you don’t know that. So when people go, I want to write a book. I’m like, don’t write the book until you’ve earned the creative right with whatever power it is that puts this alchemy together. And you do that by delivering. And you do that by showing up and delivering even to yourself or to others and then you can have all of this really cool conversation.
Nicola: Yeah, exactly. I think we gain that clarity about what you’re meant to be writing a book about if you choose to do that. And you can clear a lot of space. A lot of the writing that we do is clearing space for what really wants and needs to come through.
Marianne: Oh I agree, oh my gosh I completely agree. Do you find this, I find this in writing even a book I know the majority of what I write at the beginning is gonna be thrown out. Like I’m already cool with that. Yeah, it’s like it needed to come out. I have these beautiful chapters, I thought they were beautiful, they’re fairly disastrous. These amazing chapters that I wrote and I was like, they really didn’t belong anywhere in that book. But they needed, for some reason, several, maybe a month of work in this process was writing stuff that will never see the light of day. It just needed to, for some reason I felt like it needed to be out. It needed to be there so that I don’t know, maybe it inspired another chapter or another paragraph. Do you find that?
Nicola: Yeah, absolutely. There’s always, you know, what I’ve learned is there’s always a reason for it. You know? It’s not just that oh I’ve been doing all this writing and it’s all gone to waste. It never goes to waste. It may not directly be in the book but the energy of it can be in the words that are finally in the book.
Marianne: I totally agree. I always say with writing it’s not about the amount that you’ve written it’s about what ends up on the page. It’s about what’s finally there. So whether you have written ten pages to get to one paragraph, what does it matter? That you got to your paragraph. And there’s so much about that, about this idea of efficiency that I don’t think has very much I believe, I’ll go with you on that, the only way to be efficient in book writing is to be effective. To understand what your effectiveness is. So for example, for me, part of my transformation process was realizing that as a writer and as a creator it’s counter-effective to tell myself I have to create in a certain way when the evidence is otherwise, right? So like I’m very into patterns and going, well if my pattern is that I build up over a period and then I can’t talk to people for a week, I need to schedule that in and really honor that pattern. And that’s the only way I think to be super-effective is going, where did that page that worked, that chapter that worked? What state was I in? What conversations was I having? Replicating that I think is the only way to be efficient. I don’t think it comes from anything else.
Nicola: No, exactly. And I love that what you say about patterns. I mean I talk about harnessing the power of our cyclical nature which influences the way we create and the way we want to write. And just trusting that, that sometimes I’m really in the flow and it’s all coming through. Other times, I just feel completely blank other points in my cycle or the moon cycle. And that’s okay, that’s perfect. That’s exactly how it’s meant to be. Other times I’m really in editing mode and that’s good too. Just trusting that it all comes round again and getting to know that just makes the whole process so much easier than trying to fight against it which is not efficient at all. So what I found through writing my books and also working with other women who are writing books is that when we’re writing about a particular area or theme or subject, it kind of calls us to embody that message at an even deeper level than we have ever done before. Which can be challenging in itself. And I wonder if that’s been the case for you Marianne?
Marianne: Yeah, for sure, for sure. The second edition was particularly interesting because you’re going back to an old version of yourself. And feeling into that and not wanting to and part of the game with that was that exactly what you said. The reason I was afraid of doing the second edition was I’d come so far personally since the first edition. I’m a very different person and very different writer. And I didn’t want to go back into that state which was a much more I’d say I was much more adrenalized then. And I didn’t want to do that again. And I also didn’t want to come in in my current state and break the thing that had helped so many people. And so I had to sit with this idea of and I think even if you’re editing your own manuscript you can have this experience yourself where you work on it for a long time, you’re going back and saying, me today is looking at me then. And me then had a lot of good stuff that’s helping people. Even if I, I wouldn’t have written that book today. Absolutely no way would it look anything like it looks. So I was going, what’s the intention of this? How do I hold my sense of self while also inhabiting the readers’ mind and feelings which is what I do when I write. It was very interesting.
So then I, I kind of cheated on this. What I did was I rely on a lot of people. I always say we when I talk about writing a book. People go, do you have a writing partner? I go, no, I just have a lot of people. So I was on the phone with a couple of people who changed their life because of my book and were now helping other people in similar work. And I’d be like, okay, so I think this, I’m gonna get rid of this because I don’t think I actually agree with some of this anymore. I want to put this in. And they’d be like, oh my god you can’t get rid of that, that bit changed my life, look at my notes from my original book they’d written! So it was really, number one, I think we take the pressure off ourselves to fully embody when we actually can meet some people.
Nicola: Yeah
Marianne: And the second thing, the more practical thing is more relatable no matter what book you have is that the sense of embodying your writing I think it is really important. And when I went through it the second time at some point I had to let go. I just was like I have to do this. And I really don’t want to ’cause if you read my book, there’s some painful, actually the new stuff is the most heartfelt. There’s new chapter called But What If I’m Not A Shiny Haired Super Confident Entrepreneur? And that chapter is me now. It’s so like I mean it was even stronger before we edited it down to work within the book. But that was me embodying a lot of my own journey and the journey of other people I’m close to. And that was something I had to let go of and really feel into it. And I wrote, the first page was I wrote a lot more than what’s in that chapter. I wrote very raw. Very intentionally and it was, you know, I was in tears when I was writing some of it. And that was the first part. And then I ran through it again and again and again and it was holding that embodiment, holding that sense of, I feel this, I feel you. That to me is what great writing is. It’s ‘I feel this and I feel you’ at the same time. Every point of my book, especially the second edition is that. It’s that sense of someone because it’s a life change book, someone finishes a chapter and if I, as the author, don’t have an idea of how they’re feeling, I’m gonna lose them on the next chapter. And so there’s no way for me to write without embodying. Which is why I’m very choosy about what I write because if you’re gonna embody someone who is feeling real fear and self-doubt you’re gonna feel real fear and self-doubt because it’s like method acting. You take it with you, you bring it to the fore. That’s my style. Actually everyone has a different style but I know that’s one of my gifts, and one of the things that I do, this is why it’s so important to know what you do is that I make people feel like I live in their heads. And that’s why if I don’t do that, my book’s not my book anymore, it’s just a how-to guide.
So yeah, I didn’t have a clear answer but embodying is so important. I think we have to do our best with it. But maybe my answer here is really time limited. I think that’s probably what my real answer would be there. I’m very lucky in that I have a publisher with deadlines. I’m very, very happy with that because otherwise it would spill. And so I went through and I knew what months I was really focusing on that. And I actually told everyone, I’m gonna be crazy in January, don’t expect to hear from me. And I had my diary blocked out as Marianne will probably be insane in that month because what I meant by that was I will have done the work of embodying so much that having conversations that aren’t in the book are alien. But to time limit that to a month or so meant that you can still live your life and you can still be but, yeah, I hope that answers what you were asking.
Nicola: It does, it really does. And again, I completely agree with everything you said there. I think it’s really important and it is an interesting process to allow ourselves to have our feelings and also put ourselves in what the reader is likely to be feeling as well and allowing ourselves to go there and experience those feelings. Because again that infuses the book and the words with this energy which is so, so powerful. And actually you’ve answered the question before I asked you about how you support yourself when you’re going through that process.
Marianne: Loads of people. A lot, I had several editors. I mean, so many people helped. And people want to help. It’s really, kind of do you find that? People really want to help. When you have something that’s a real thing. Yeah.
Nicola: Yeah, exactly. And you know, talking, like you said about the time boundary I think that’s really important to have that and kind of you know, putting aside time that is going to be devoted to writing, particularly when it’s this transformational writing, it’s so important because otherwise it ends up going crazy.
Marianne: I know, I always go when you know what it takes, I think you have more respect. To me it’s sort of respect because I’m like I know that writing, the writing you and I do very clearly, is not here’s an idea, let’s just put it down. It is transformational, it is embodying. And so that’s why when people go, I want to write a book, I’m like, just check that what you mean is you want to embody and you want to have this experience. And if the answer is yes, you should write the book. Like that’s what I would say. If you want to know your topic or even if it’s fiction, you know your craft deeply, if you want to go through a real journey to understand who you are even more fully when it comes to putting this down. A book is one of the best things that you could ever do. I firmly, firmly believe that. It’s not about the ideas or the words on the page, it’s about the journey and the embodiment. And then I always, to bring it full circle Nicola, I always say that’s the gift. Certainly it’s my gift, I think it’s yours, it’s the gift that we give, is the fact when someone, I want someone to read my book and say I already half thought all of this. But you just gave me the words for it. I don’t want them to say you just gave me an idea that has blown my mind because it’s so complicated. I want them to say, oh that’s simple. If I get bad reviews saying it’s too simple I’ll have done my job really. Because I actually, what you do is you do the work for the reader. I always think that. Whether it’s a story, and so much of my book is story. Whether it’s story or ideas. You’re doing the emotional work and my favorite fiction does this. It brings it out and it brings out this moment this line of experience that you half felt when you thought you were the only one and you’re not the only one and now you have something you can do with it. That’s what we do.
Nicola: Oh, I love that. It’s almost like helping the reader to remember something about themselves that they’ve forgotten or they’ve pushed away. You know, it’s kind of way down there and it bubbles up to the surface as they’re reading it. Oh, I just got tingles now.
Marianne: I think you nailed it right there.
Nicola: I could literally talk to you all day, Marianne. We both approach this in a very similar way so it’s great having this conversation with you. When is the second edition out?
Marianne: In the U.K. it’s September the 3rd. In the U.S. it’s September 28th.
Nicola: And what’s the best way for people to like keep in touch with you and find out more about Be a Free Range Human?
Marianne: For the book, I suggest because because there’s a first edition doing the rounds which I don’t recommend you buy, by the way.
Nicola: No, don’t buy that now!
Marianne: Wait for the second one. I’d go to BeAFreeRangeHuman.com if you’re viewing this before September 3rd you can pre-order, you can put your name down. If you just want a reminder close to the time, you can pre-order it now. If you’re viewing this after then still go to BeAFreeRangeHuman.com because it has all the international links so you can just get to where you need to go a lot more easily and you’ll get the right edition. It’s the pretty one with the white background. And so that would be the first one, BeAFreeRangeHuman.com.
If you’re an Instagrammer, I am all over Instagram stories at FreeRangeMarianne. But the best way aside from that to keep in touch is to get on my email list. You can do that, you can go to BeAFreeRangeHuman.com and put your name down, you can go to MarianneCantwell.com or just Google me. That’s very much, that and Instagram are where I tend to hang out.
Nicola: Perfect, perfect. We’ll put the link to the website below this video so people can easily get through and get their hands on a copy and find out more about you, Marianne, and connect with you. So thank you so much for joining me today. It’s just been such a pleasure.
Marianne: Thank you, this has been amazing. As I said we could talk for a long time about it.
Nicola: We could.
Marianne: Thank you.
Nicola: Thank you, bye.
Find out more about Marianne and Be a Free Range Human at: https://www.beafreerangehuman.com
