Dima Ghawi, author of Breaking Vases, which won the grand prize in WD’s 26th Annual Self-Published Book Awards Winner. The author reveals how she found the strength to write her powerful personal story—and how she wrote and produced the book while also building her new leadership training and executive coaching business after leaving her day job at IBM.
Tell me about yourself and how you came upon the decision to write this book.
I always say I am Middle Eastern in my genes, and a global citizen in my soul. I was born in Turkey, raised in Jordan and I’m a woman with a story. I was raised to be silent. Somehow Breaking Vases helped me realize my voice through this journey. I got to shatter a lot of the negative stories told about me as a Middle Eastern woman, and really as a woman in general.
I call Breaking Vases the “choiceless choice.” The story wanted to come out so bad that I had no choice but to get it written. I always told myself, “I’m not a good writer.” But what happened is when I did speeches at conferences, a lot of people would reach out to me afterward and ask if I had a book to buy. So I decided to do an audio program. It’s two hours. I felt so empowered as I shared the details of this story. The magical thing is the producer of this program transcribed the whole thing for me. And I held it in my ands and felt, Wow, I could give this to audiences afterward. So I took that, edited it and started writing.
At first it was 15 pages, then I gave it to friends who said, “This is not enough.” Then I hired another editor and it became 40 pages, 50, 75. And the story just wanted to come out with all the details. Honestly, I believe if I didn’t make a timeline and say, “This is it,” there’s so many dimensions to it, it could’ve been double what it is right now.
Breaking Vases is a powerful personal story that you’ve described as a “healing experience.” Was it difficult for you to be so candid in your writing?
It was beyond hard. What a lot of people don’t realize is they think I just sat and wrote Breaking Vases. What really happened is I started going through a major healing journey eight years before—before I wrote one word. I blocked all the pain in what I call a “big black box.” And I tried to move on with my life. But this box was coming along with me everywhere I went and it would open once in a while and all the toxic would come out and I’d feel sick. So I decided to open that big black box and do something about it. I took one memory at a time, one fear at a time, one anger at a time, and it was so painful. I’d sleep for hours afterward. But I realized it was time for me to forgive, to connect with the pain that I blocked.
Enter the 2019 Self-Published Book Awards today!
Your grandmother’s story about the broken vase serves as a unifying theme throughout your book. Did you know before you began writing that the book would be called Breaking Vases?
I wrote Breaking Vases to share this specific story. I knew from the beginning that this story is going to be the foundation for everything. My grandmother gave me this powerful metaphor that is truly the basis of everything in my life. And now is the basis of what I teach people. Regarding the title, I was debating between Breaking Vases and She Shattered. A lot of people liked She Shattered, but Breaking Vases was the winner at the end.
I never thought initially that I’d share the details as much as I did in the book. And the first time I gave it was at a TEDx event in 2014. And that was because of my friend who kept encouraging me to talk about this story. I wanted to talk about global leadership. I wanted to hide everything related to my identity, because I had a lot of shame associated with it. But she kept encouraging. Everybody’s name changed in the book. But after the TEDx, the response I got was so powerful, so positive—I got messages from men and women around the world—and they say how they were crying when watching the talk. To me, it was just a powerful sign. My grandmother didn’t realize this metaphor would be so powerful for so many people.
Your family plays a prominent role in your memoir. Have any of them read Breaking Vases? What has their response been?
Initially, [my mother’s family was] not thrilled when they heard I was going to write it. I talked about the concept for so long, but then when I hired the coach and the editor, that’s when they realized, oops, it’s serious. They asked me why I’d even want to open the pain of the past: “Just move on.” But they didn’t realize there was something inside of me screaming, wanting to come out. But when Breaking Vases was published, my mom, my uncle, my aunt—they read it. And I believe it became a powerful healing tool for them as well. They became amazingly supportive. They were sharing it with everybody. They were buying so many copies and giving it to their friends. It made them feel so proud, and feel that through me they started getting a voice. I became the voice of the family.
The other side, my father’s side, I haven’t talked to them since 2001. Just recently, just in the last week, they found out about Breaking Vases. And it has been intense. They posted negative comments online on every platform they could. Honestly, it sounds like they didn’t even read the book. They don’t know what it stands for, don’t understand what the metaphor is. But they’re still trying to discredit the story and the message. They’re trying to make me feel ashamed. When I read their comments online, I realized they were the ones who need [this story] the most.
Tell me about your day job. How did you make time to write Breaking Vases?
After my TEDx [in which I told the breaking vases story], I had tons of positive input from people. I started getting conferences and organizations asking me to speak to their employees. Which was impossible to do in addition to my day job at IBM in a leadership role. [At that time] I didn’t feel the courage to resign from my job—it was well paid with great benefits—so I just couldn’t. But something powerful inside wanted me to resign.
So after resisting for a year and a half, I resigned to write Breaking Vases and to build my business. My business—I’m a keynote speaker at conferences, I’m a leadership trainer and I’m an executive coach. I had to debate to myself: Do I want to write Breaking Vases first, or build my business first? It would be hard to do two big processes at the same time, but I decided to do both. So I built the business during day, but at night and on weekends, I was working on Breaking Vases. I had no life, but I’m grateful for that. I would be home with my door locked, working on the book any opportunity I had.
It took a lot of energy, so much investment to give birth to it. I felt toward the end that I was in labor. I don’t have children, but I thought, I’m sure this is what it feels like: so painful, yet so joyful. Then Breaking Vases was born, and I remember the first time I held the first copy in my hands. I felt like a mama.
Did you outline the book before starting?
That’s where having a writing coach helped a lot. I’m a businessperson. Yes, I had a high-level outline, but also I was confused. Do I take people through from the beginning to the end? Or start in the middle? All of that was very confusing. But by having a writing coach and multiple mentors that are so amazing, that helped. Having a writing coach helped me to organize a lot of these thoughts, while it was so painful for me to even link them together. She helped me see the bigger picture.
I hired, in my opinion, the best of the best: designer, project manager, editor. The best everybody. And I paid so much money because I feel that this story, this message, is so meaningful and powerful and I didn’t want to sell it short. I would keep telling myself, Whatever it takes.
What marketing efforts have you made for the book?
So much investment went into marketing. We did a countdown to get people excited before it was even published. We put the number of days [up on my website] so people got excited. And we had people pre-purchase it. And I wanted a lot of energy before the book was even launched—which was on Kindle, initially. Then I’d have excerpts; I’d pull sections and put them on social media. I had everybody who helped me review the book ahead of time write their testimonials that we started using to create short videos and social posts.
The day of the launch I did an event in San Diego, which is where a lot of the story happens, and I took the followers to various parts related to the story and would do short Facebook Live videos. “This is where I lived with my ex husband.” This way they’re not just reading, but able to see. In a way, it was like a tour of San Diego with the various sections that are described in the book. Now, it’s almost a year since Breaking Vases was published. It’s now in Jordan: Two bookstores are carrying it, so that’s a positive thing. And now we’re going to use the same process to promote it on Audible—a countdown, etc.
Why did you choose to self-publish?
Since it is my story, I am very protective of it. I wanted it to come out the way I wanted. I didn’t want an influence of a third-party to say what I should include and what I shouldn’t. So that was part of the reason I decided to self-publish.
The second reason is the turnaround time. I heard from other people how long traditional publishing takes, and they have no control over when it’s published. And I didn’t want to go through that. The process was not easy, and so much painful stuff going on, I just wanted it to be done on my timeline. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t publish with a publisher in the future.
The post Interview With WD’s 26th Annual Self-Published Book Awards Winner Dima Ghawi appeared first on WritersDigest.com.
from Writing Editor Blogs – WritersDigest.com https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/writers-perspective/writers-digest-news/interview-with-wds-26th-annual-self-published-book-awards-winner-dima-ghawi
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