How to Write and Publish a Children's Book with Martine Hammar
My wife, Martine Hammar joins me on the pod for a special episode. She has recently published a children’s book and I chatted to her about the process.In this episode, Martine talks about:* What inspired her to write a children’s book.* What message she hopes to convey through her book.* Why she decided to self-publish.* The process of writing a book, from idea to bookstores. * The challenges she faced during the process and how to avoid them.* Resources you can use to write your own book.Links mentioned on the show:* A Little Piece Inside Me Is Missing* StoryPrompt: Video Engagement Platform🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple, or search “Unscalable” in your podcast app.▶️ Or, watch on YouTube.Full Transcript:Gavin Hammar: Martine thanks for joining us on the show. So you're a mom,…Martine Hammar: Thanks for having me.Gavin Hammar: you're helping me build story prompts and you start up from the ground up. I'm just curious.Martine Hammar: Well, for me,…Gavin Hammar: What inspired you to write a children's book in the first place?Martine Hammar: it kind of had nothing really to do with working together and sendable, you know, and story prompting that type of thing. It's just a kind of feel that sometimes in life, we go through things that We might not even realize at the time that can actually help people. And I think it's only when you actually stand back and…Gavin Hammar: You.Martine Hammar: reflect on things that and speak to people that you realize that You'll experience can actually help someone else and that's exactly what I went through. And that's what led me to create this book. Should.Gavin Hammar: So what message are you hoping to convey to the book? Then I mean Obviously you have some sort of story you want to tell some underlying theme to the book so maybe for listeners who haven't seen the book which most of them. Haven't, what's, what's the main sort of messages message that you're trying to give across in the story?Martine Hammar: Okay, well, let me go back a little bit. So, basically, what happened with with me in my life so in 2020, we were in lockdown, obviously a bit and everything. Now, I mean, you obviously know the story being my husband, but basically so Gavin and I moved from South Africa, our families win South Africa. And we were based in the UK. So we were really far and I think lockdown and covid, made people feel a lot further suddenly we couldn't just go, it wasn't overnight to see our families. So anyway, we got through the year and it was amazing and like we all reached December and I remember even saying to you We've nailed it. You know, this was a challenging year, we've done it, we managed homeschooling working from home have you know, transforming sandable into a remote company. We nailed it. And then basically I got a phone call to say that my mum had started coughing.Martine Hammar: Didn't think anything of it. You know, I remember talking to her and her saying, Oh, I must wash my vegetables. When I do any grocery shopping and they say to, you know, what? UBS neurotic as you want, we're fine. Whatever but please be, as neurotic as you want. So there she was, ironically washing her, you know, bags and vegetables and deliveries and everything and me laughing behind her back, but at least she was looking after yourself. So anyway, she started coughing right around her birthday, 69th birthday. And basically what happened was the next day, she was, unfortunately asthmatic, and the next day, she went into hospital because her sets weren't great and the doctor was concerned and even at the time we were like, It's fine, you know, you're being, you know, you're in the right place, you're with the doctors, they'll keep an eye on you. Now, granted, this was, I went to the beginning of covid, but it was the beginning of a new wave, especially in South Africa. My dad also head coach at the time, but thankfully, he was able to stay home.Martine Hammar: So she went into hospital and the whole time, you know, we had such an amazing relationship, she had and she was incredibly close to you and I she was incredibly close to our children, her friends. You know, she had an amazing support system. Very very well-loved member of the community in South Africa and you know, in our lives. So she kind of carried on the same, the same optimism, the same sense of humor. Everything she was sending me videos and photos of the cardboard. She said that she was eating in the hospitals, you know, the same banter. This everything was the same just unfortunately she was in hospital but it didn't let her spirits never never dropped at all. So so we were chatting all the time and then suddenly we got a message to say she needed to spend more time on her stomach. So then messages slowed down a bit, then she was moved to hide opinion see and was on a fast flow. I think it was called messages dwindled. A little bit that way and slowly slowly slowly.Martine Hammar: This person who was so much in my life, every minute of every day, I used to call her in traffic just to talk about nonsense or I would call her because the kids had some silly thing. They wanted to say, you know, this person started Unfortunately, vanishing from my life, like, you know, I didn't kind of know which way to turn. I was just so used to her being there for me and sharing things and having involved in our lives. Especially in lockdown. She was despite the the distance. So then, unfortunately she was moved into the ICU and they had to put on a ventilator. And suddenly, I went from this person who I spoke to every minute of every day, even in hospital to suddenly nothing, just no communication whatsoever. And for me,Martine Hammar: It just was, everything was all wrong. Not only should I have been there. I hadn't seen her, since December, 2019. I should have been there with her. I wasn't, I couldn't even speak to her. I was stuck in the UK, she was in South Africa. I couldn't get on a plane. Everything just wasn't right. As I said a world love member of the community should have been surrounded by people. She was on her own just it wasn't right. Nothing was right. And then unfortunately so basically three weeks after she started coughing, we got a message to say that she had passed away all on her own. I mean, this is like, if I had to think to myself, what I would never ever wish on anybody, it's this because it was just so black messed up. Basically, like I even remember saying to you, like this is not the way this is, can't be the right way. This can't be the way it happens. It just wasn't right. Like, this person was so crucial in my life this just wasn't right and obviously my00:05:00Martine Hammar: Rathers. I have two brothers. Also, they weren't with her. My dad wasn't with the best friends, no one. So, So basically, it was like this. You know, it's kind of what I explain this. It's basically the Jewish religion allows you to have seven days where you said shiver and you just Think about things. I was so grateful for that. I never realized the importance of that but I was actually able to as much as I wasn't able to go. I mean, I wasn't even at her funeral, which is madness, really, but I was able to kind of spend their time Grieving, and you know, we were moving house at the time, which is, I mean, so I'm saying like I couldn't make the stuff up like and selling sandable at the time. So um, it kind of gave me this week to kind of focus just on what I was feeling and everything andMartine Hammar: It took me about a year to kind of really come to terms with what had happened with the shock of not being there, with the shock of…Gavin Hammar: It.Martine Hammar: what was, you know, how my heart was ripped out of my body, basically, and ripped into a million pieces to and not being able to go only way into a year later, which was a story in its own. Because I assumed, I'd be able to have a smell and her clothes and everything was gone, you know, I just missed that whole time. So basically, it gave me that time to kind of focus on a year later. It's still kind of raw. And and that's kind of the reason that this book came about because the book let me put a backstory. Yeah, the books called a little piece inside me is missing, it's a children's book and the reason I wrote it is because even as an adult people would say to me, How are you, how are things, how you finding things, and I'd say, You know, I'm okay, I'm okay, likeMartine Hammar: You have to get on with it, you over to your family, you go to yourself, you're over to the person more than anything, the most selfless person in the world would not want me using up my time and energy thinking about her when I've got people and a business and kids, you know, family and friends. And, you know, my own mental health. She wouldn't want me consuming my time thinking about her and…Gavin Hammar: If you.Martine Hammar: and not coping. So that's the thing you get on with it. You have to you over to them and you owe it to yourself and your family as I said. So that's the thing. So I would say to people, You know, I'm okay. But the thing is, there was always just this little piece of me that will never be the same. It's all will always be missing. And the thing is, is that even if somebody said to me, I'll give you a magic pull to make that little piece.Martine Hammar: Not not hurt anymore. Not not remind you of the person. Make you feel better? I would never, ever, ever take that because the thing is what this little piece represents to me. Is the fact that this piece is missing, means that I loved and I was loved. And for me, that why would I want to feel that? Why would I want to forget that? Like people say grief gets easier as you get on as you get, you know, as it goes by, I don't believe that at all. I just think you learn to deal, you learn to get on with it. How can this piece of inside me? Vanish, how can it just go away? And I forget if I had to forget that, I was loved and had this relationship with my mom. I would never forgive myself. Like, I always want this piece of me missing to remember how much she meant to me, and how much how real our relationship was. And so, basically, that's how I came up with the story for the book, but I wanted to adapt it to make kids feel okay about this process. Like when a childMartine Hammar: Somebody close to them. It's very different than when an adult does. But the thing is for a child is it's the same kind of process of there's this little piece missing, but there's ways that you can make that piece not hurt as much and…Gavin Hammar: If?Martine Hammar: you can make yourself feel better by remembering the person and by talking about them and never forgetting them and never had never being a taboo subject in our house. So obviously, so I've got, well, we've got two daughters. So one was very little at the time. She was only two. Very matter of fact. She she didn't really understand unfortunately, but we had an older one who's 10 now, she wasMartine Hammar: Eight of the time and she was absolutely torn apart by this because of her amazing relationships, she had with my mum. And, you know, when I read her this was when we discussed the story together it kind of opened things up for her because she didn't recognize that she had that feeling. And once we were able to talk about it, she realized that that's actually what she was feeling. She just didn't know how to articulate it and because of that,…00:10:00Gavin Hammar: If?Martine Hammar: we, as I said, we talk about things. Like we we still, you know, my mom because she was so like she had a great sense of humor and she was she didn't mind us mocking her. So we still do that. We don't suddenly feel like, we can't say those things that made us laugh at the time because that's the right way of respecting her. And that's the way that you can make this, this whole not hurt. You can, you can fill it with these funny things. These amazing memories is great experiences that make you not miss the person. Yes, but also treasure the time you had with them.Martine Hammar: So yeah, I hope that answers a question. I'm sorry for lengthy.Gavin Hammar: Yeah, that's Yeah, so obviously it was it came about as a result of your mom being unwell and…Martine Hammar: Yeah.Gavin Hammar: the sudden loss. So, if you were to just explain, like, where did the idea for the book actually come from, like, obviously this, this thing happened. He had these issues you were dealing with. Obviously, our daughter was a dealing with it. We're all dealing with it. What, what did you decide to sit down and come up with the idea and start writing the book was, It was a couple years later, was it straight after it happened? Where did you get this idea?Martine Hammar: So, a definitely wasn't straight after because it took me a while to process it. And it took me a while to kind of put my feelings into words and to kind of almost recognize how I was feeling and articulated. So it was about Nick coming up to two years after it happened. And I've always loved writing, I wrote a blog about called Scarred for Life. When our daughter was at when she had multiple livesaving surgeries, I kind of documented the journey also not as it happened but later on. So I've always I've always enjoyed writing. I've always founded an amazing outlet. So I didn't kind of think too much of it. I just kind of wanted to get something down and then I wanted to see what would come from it. And then when I,…Gavin Hammar: You.Martine Hammar: when I kind of wrote it down and I thought actually, hang on, this could
