Emma Grant Interview: “My whole everyday life influences my writing”

This week I’m speaking to Emma Grant, a hypnotherapist and coach who writes self-help books, to find out more about her work and how she aims to help people with it. 

What is your career background and how did you get in to writing?

I’ve always naturally loved writing from a very young age, poems used to wake me to be written in the middle of the night as a child and even as a teenager I would write plays and short stories for my best friend. As I got older and settled down with a family and started running my Childcare and Hypnotherapy/Coaching businesses, there was no time to write. Then when I hit my thirties the muse came looking for me and gave me daily inspiration that turned into my latest two parenting self-help books.

Tell me all about your writing and how you came to create self-help books. What’s your motivation and why do you think your books can benefit readers?

In my role as a Hypnotherapist / Coach and Counsellor, I could only help clients one on one and over the last 16 years in my child care business, I could see parents struggling with the same issues over and over, so writing a parenting self-help book, seemed the most obvious choice to reach and help as many people as I could and share my experiences, knowledge and therapy skills.

What books do you like to read and how do they impact on your own writing?

At the moment I’m reading 3 books at the same time, one is fiction but focuses on a character that, as a therapist, I so badly want to help and is a character I’ve come across with the same issues in my hypnotherapy business. The 2^nd book is a memoir and I swear the author could be writing my exact life story and the 3^rd is a kind of spiritual, self- help, non- fiction, business PR and media book. My preferred choice and type of books I like to read, are non -fiction books that teach me something I don’t know, I just love learning! I always think they help me become a better writer of non- fiction, self -help because I always think – how can I convey what I know to my reader, who doesn’t know what I know, in an easy, simple to read and understand way, so they put the book down feeling reassured, uplifted, motivated and inspired in some way.

Is there anything else that influences your writing (places, people, films etc)?

My whole everyday life influences my writing; no person or experience is ever wasted on me. (Maybe I shouldn’t have said that? I’ll have no friends or clients now, through fear of becoming an example in one of my future books!)

If you could collaborate with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

There’s no question about this, I’d love to collaborate with my friend Jana because she covers both of those examples in your question (living and dead) and she has unique abilities that the world needs to know more about, in order to enjoy everyday life more in the present moment.

What’s next for your writing? Have you got any exciting plans to develop it that you can share with us?

My current WIP, my 3^rd book is a weight loss, self-love, self-help book. Its grounded in my nutritional therapist knowledge, so its practical with good weight loss advice, yet, it also embraces my therapeutic approach with a spiritual twist. I’m loving writing this book so much and its definitely changing me in profound ways.

Are there any new books or writers that you are looking forward to coming up?

Mary Swann-Bell, author of Post its and Polaroid’s, Snippets And Snapshots Of An Otherthought Life is a beautiful, honest writer. Katherine Turner author of Finding Annie is another raw and talented writer and Sarah Lloyd makes the practicalities of PR seem more fulfilling and authentic in her new book Connecting The Dots- Making Magic With The Media- Uplevel Your Brand On Your Terms. All three women are new authors that I’m sure will have many great books to come.

Anything you’d like to add?

What readers need right now is positive, uplifting books to comfort, reassure and help heal the world. I feel so blessed to be a writer, right now, that can help contribute to that. Thanks for inviting me to be interviewed. My books are available world wide from all good book stockist and you can find my parenting blogs here.

Thanks to Emma for answering my questions, it’s been great!