1. Learn why editing while writing can derail your creative flow.
2. Discover the secret to embracing your unique writing rhythm.
3. Get expert advice on building your author platform.
4. Unlock a free resource to kickstart your book-writing journey.
5. Understand how writing can channel your inner creativity.

Nikki's Valuable Free Resource (VFR):

https://nikkistarcatshields.com

Join Nikki Starcat Shields, an author and book midwife, as she shares powerful writing tips to help solopreneurs turn their book ideas into reality. Learn to align with your creative flow, build your author platform, and avoid common pitfalls. Don’t miss her free resource: Write the Damn Book!

02:24 Ideal Client:
Entrepreneurs, healers, and creatives with great book ideas but lacking confidence, time, or skills.

02:50 Problem Solved:
People with great book ideas who struggle to find the time, confidence, or skills needed to bring their vision to life are guided to overcome these challenges and create the book they’ve always wanted.

03:45 Valuable Free Action (VFA):
Stop editing while writing—let your creativity flow freely first.

05:20 Valuable Productive Action (VPA):
Track your creative rhythms to maximize productivity.

10:50 Valuable Free Resource (VFR):
Write the Damn Book guide—available free on Nikki’s website.

(Note, this was transcribed using transcription software and may not fully reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Welcome to the Goalbusters Expert Peak Productivity Tips podcast, where top business experts get just seven minutes to answer five rapid fire questions about what they do and how they stay productive.

Each episode is packed with actionable insights to help boost your efficiency and achieve your goals. Let's dive in and unlock the secrets to peak performance.

00:22 ROBIN

Well hello, everyone. My name is Robin J. Emdon, and I'm the creator of the GetResultsology system and an accountability coach. I help people harness productivity to achieve meaningful results, increase income, grow their business, and create success that resonates with their authentic selves.

My guest today is Nikki Starcat Shields. Nicky is an author, book midwife, and transformational writing retreat leader. Nicky integrates spirituality into her daily life and creativity.

She has authored six nonfiction books and is currently crafting a contemporary fantasy series.

With a passion for helping others bring their heartfelt stories to life, Nikki specializes in guiding writers to create engaging books that reflect their unique voices.

She's also dedicated to helping authors thrive by aligning their creative pursuits with their true priorities.

Nikki enjoys life with her family, cats, yoga, reading, and the magic of the ocean.

Welcome, Nikki.

NIKKI
Thank you. So glad to be here.

ROBIN
Yeah. I'm so glad you're here too. And where are you? Where is this ocean? Or where whereabouts in the world are you?

NIKKI
I'm in Southern Maine in the United States.

ROBIN
Oh, wow. So you've got Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow. I heard that's quite a big event for you guys. Just another working day for me though

NIKKI
We're having nineteen folks over for dinner.

ROBIN
Nineteen!

I think I'm having the cat. I have a cat that visits. That's about it.

Oh, that sounds fabulous. So thank you so much because it's obviously Thanksgiving eve when we're recording this. So thank you so much for giving up your time to do this today. So shall we crack on then if I start the clock and I'll start asking the five questions in seven minutes?

NIKKI
Let's do it.

ROBIN
Okay. So let's get the clock going.

There it goes. Nikki, could you please tell us who is your ideal client?

02:24 NIKKI – Ideal Client
My ideal client is an entrepreneur or healer or creative who has a really awesome idea for a book, but they don't yet consider themselves a writer necessarily or they're not sure how they can do it. They're just worried about making it happen

ROBIN

Perfect. Which leads nicely into the second question, which is what is the problem that you solve?

02:50 NIKKI
Usually, my ideal client has that book idea, and they may have even tried to write it, but they don't have the time. They don't have the confidence, and they feel like they don't have the skills to really write the book that they want. And so I can help them to learn to do those things.

ROBIN
Yeah. Because writing is hard. I can vouch for that.

NIKKI
Yes.

ROBIN
Absolutely.

That's brilliant. Thank you. So, you take them all through the whole process. Is that from the creative through right through to publication, or is there a point at which you step back and say this is something you can do?

NIKKI
I haven't really gotten involved with the publication part aside from helping them build their author platform, which is basically your audience that most publishers and agents or even if you self publish, you need to kinda have an audience. So we do work on building that as we go.

ROBIN
Excellent. Thank you. That's very clear. Thank you. So what would be one valuable free action that the audience can implement that will help them solve the this problem that you solve?

03:45 NIKKI Valuable Free Action (VFA)
My very favourite writing tip is to… and it's something that almost everyone does. We try to write and edit at the same time. And from my experience, that does not work. It slows you down or even stops you in your tracks because writing comes from, like, the right brain, free flowing, creative side of us that we wanna cultivate. And editing comes from that very analytical, critical left brain. And if you try to, like, do it at both at the same time, it's like driving a car when you you're pushing on the brake and the gas at the same time. It's two different things.

ROBIN
Yes.

NIKKI
So don't try to write and edit at the same time.

ROBIN
That is very sound advice. And having just finished my first nonfiction book, I can vouch for that. Absolutely. I did the creative thing first. I just did a complete mind dump onto the page or the screen, and then I started editing. And then I handed it over to my son who has a degree in English, and, we do not agree about editing.

NIKKI
Aw.

ROBIN
That was so much fun.

NIKKI
But, you know, we're taught to do that in school. We're taught to make it perfect as we go, and that just really makes it harder.

ROBIN
Yeah. I can totally relate to that. And I know that you're absolutely right, and I know you know what you're talking about. So who am I to say that? That's my own experience too.

So now we know a little bit more about what you do, Nikki, let's talk about GoalBusting, meaning how do you make the best use of your own productive time to achieve your own business goals, which for a writer I know can be quite a challenging thing. So can you share any tips or advice for someone looking to improve their productivity habits, please?

05:20 NIKKI Valuable Productive Action (VPA)
Yeah. So I have noticed with creativity, there's an ebb and flow. It's not like something where we're just on every single day all the time. There's an ebb and flow.

Sometimes we feel really creative, and we're just, you know, typing a lot of words. And you can translate this if you're an artist or a builder or any you know, your work, your creative work has this flow. And sometimes there's an ebb, and then we just don't we don't feel it. We feel blocked, or it's not the day to do that.

So what I like to advise people to do and what I do is track those things. So sort of create a process journal where you're tracking, you know, how long you wrote, how it felt. Maybe if you're into this kind of thing, what the moon phases are or what the astrology, you know, weather is like, how much sleep you got the night before, you know, whether you're feeling a little under the weather. And just sort of track those things and then look at them and say, oh, I noticed that at the dark of the moon, I just need to, like, relax and not try to do a bunch of things.

But when the moon is full, oh, I can write and write and write. So there's you know, whatever your own biorhythms are, you'll begin to discover, you know, those rhythms. And then you can embrace that and not just feel bad about yourself when you have an off day.

ROBIN
Yeah. I mean, off days, I mean, there's something that I'm when writing my book a nonfiction book about procrastination, of course, I came across people like the stories of… do you know Victor Hugo's story, the guy who wrote Les Miserablés?

I believe his story was that he got so far behind, he locked himself naked in his room and ordered his servant not to give him his clothes back until he'd finished his book.

That's a little bit extreme, I will admit. Probably not the best of advice, but that's the lengths that people will go to sometimes

.
NIKKI
Yeah. It also helps you to know your rhythms whether you like to write in a whole day. Just do the thing. Or if you'd like to write a little maybe an hour here and then an hour the next day, you know, you can find your own what works best for you.

ROBIN
Yeah. I think, authors, it's a special craft. I really admire people that can sit down and write. And I know there's so much goes into… it's all up here, isn't it?
And you have to… and if you can't get it that day, it is challenge. It's where people like yourself, a book midwife is what you call yourself. I absolutely love that. I thought, yes! That's exactly what it's like writing a book. Yes. Definitely.

So finally, I always love this question because I never know what's gonna come up, and it's always a surprise, usually a pleasant one. So what should I have asked you today, Nikki, that I didn't and your answer, please?

8:03 NIKKI
Well, you mentioned in my intro that I integrate spirituality. And so my question for myself would be, how is writing, like, channelling? So channelling being, like, bringing in wisdom from the nonphysical. And I think it's a lot like that because I think we all have within us a wellspring of creativity, and we might not have accessed it often or much.

And if you have done something creative where you've been in the zone where you're just like, oh, you're just creating something and it's so fun. Time goes flying by. That's when you were kind of channelling your own inner wisdom and your own creativity. So if you get yourself aligned with your, whole self and doing things like, you know, not, you know, honouring your ebb and flow and having a writing ritual and things like that, you can then it'll become easier because you're gonna access that inner creativity that flows more freely.

And it really to me, it is like channelling, whether you're passionately writing, you know, about what your expertise is in your business. Or if you're writing fiction, you just close your eyes and you see a scene and you, like, type it down. It's like bringing it in from your imagination into the world. And it's for me, that's easier and more fun than trying to really agonize about it with our conscious mind.

ROBIN
And I think that, if I'm right, circles back very nicely to your point about don't edit, just write.

Doesn't it? Because I know so many times when I was writing my book recently, I'd read back what I'd written the next day or even a week later and I go, who wrote this? I don't remember writing this. You know?

NIKKI
Yeah.

ROBIN
And then as soon as I start editing, you know, it's like, oh, it's every word, every comma, every full stop. The amount of arguments I have with my son about commas, unbelievable.

Not really conducive to creative writing but it does have to be right when you are editing so but get it get them getting the words down. So I really like what you're saying. You write about getting into flow and whatever you call it, channelling, whether it's just focus.

There is something extraordinary that happens when you're just writing and writing and writing. Is that right for you?

NIKKI
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's like I said, it's so much more fun, and it's so much easier than trying to agonize over it.

ROBIN
It is easier because you literally you go back and you go, you know… I've got my book here with all the all the tabs in it… I've gone back, you know, and it's because this is the draft, and it's like, yeah, but I don't remember writing most of this stuff, and yet there it is.

NIKKI
There it is. Your inner self is bringing it forward.

ROBIN
Absolutely. And then my son. Enough said.

So, Nikki, how can people reach you? And, are there any… I always like to say, you know, are there any nice, juicy, valuable, free resources they can pick up? Because that's a really good way of connecting with you, I find.

10: 50 NIKKI Valuable Free Resource (VFR)
Absolutely. So, if you visit my website, NikkiStarcatShields.com and you click on join, for joining my mailing list, I am gifting you a PDF that's a guide called write the damn book. And it will give you tips, some of which you've heard today and some others, about how to get started.

ROBIN
“Write the damn book”. Someone actually screamed that down the phone at me one day. I mean, I was saying how busy I am with the book, and it's taking forever. And they said “write the damn book!”… but they didn't use the word damn. So I'll leave it at that.

NIKKI
Yeah. Well, there you go. There you go.

So I completely relate to that. Nikki, that's been fantastic. Thank you so much. I've learned so much, and I and it really reminds me about writing, and I know that what you're doing is really, really, spot on with what you're doing. So I think it's a hugely valuable service that you provide, Nikki. So thank you for sharing with us today.

NIKKI

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

ROBIN
Oh, it's been my pleasure! Absolutely. Thank you, and bye bye.

OUTRO
Thanks for tuning in to Goalbusters. If you're enjoying it, please subscribe, rate, and review it on your favourite podcast platform.
Your support is very much appreciated!

And if you're ready to boost your online profits, skyrocket your productivity, crush procrastination, and see a positive change in your bank balance all within just thirty days, this is your opportunity

Take my free five day challenge at skyrocketyourproductivitychallenge.com

Robin J. Emdon is an accountability coach and creator of the GetResultsology® System, a comprehensive guide designed to help people overcome procrastination and achieve their goals.

Robin’s journey started in his family’s retail business, but he soon realised his true passion was empowering others. In 2001, he trained as a life coach in the U.S., which led him to specialise in accountability coaching and eventually create the GetResultsology® System.

During the 2020 pandemic, Robin faced his own challenge with procrastination. Despite years of coaching experience, he still struggled with distractions. Determined to find a solid, permanent solution, he developed the GetResultsology® System to help others and himself boost productivity.

Based in South Devon, England, Robin helps clients all over the world boost their income and profits by achieving extraordinary results through accountability coaching. In his spare time, he enjoys sharing his passion for local history.

© 2024-2025 GetResultsology®. All Rights Reserved