Blog Tour-Joyce Zook

Welcome Joyce, please tell us about your most Recent Book

I had self-published my newest book, God and Your Closet and prepared for a spring launch about de-cluttering our closets. Instead, I will de-cluttering my closets and house before we move to be nearer our grandkid in the near future. I am excited about the fall decluttering project I now have planned for the book.

God and Your Closet, takes readers through each step of decluttering their closets. I’ve learned from helping women sort through their closets, that our closets often resemble our lives. We attach memories, unresolved issues, and joyous occasions to our clothes. The six-week journal book presents one step a week to clear the clutter from our closets. Daily Scriptures verses and thought provoking questions help us determine why it got stuffed full in the first place. When we remove the fears and negative thoughts we have about ourselves and our clothes, we can see ourselves as God’s beautiful women.

To buy: https://www.amazon.com/God-Your-Closet-Joyce-Zook

Why do you write what you do?

The last twenty years I have spoken and taught Bible studies encouraging and helping women apply biblical principles in their everyday lives. When I finished a talk or workshop, ladies would ask if I had a book about the topic. Seven years ago I face my own fears and decided to write.

I developed a phobia about writing in high school and college due to the old typewriters we used. My spelling wasn’t good and I made mistakes as I typed, thus I retyped the pages over and over. It got bad enough that a friend paid to have my senior college paper typed for me as a birthday gift. Thirty years later I watched my husband write his books on the computer and discovered a whole new way to write. Mistakes can be corrected, words rearrange, and edited without having to start from scratch after each change.

Writing became a fun way to capture the stories and tips I loved to share with others. The challenges I faced and how I overcame them became the main themes of my wiring. Others tell me their favorite part of the books are the stories which, according to them, show I am “a real person.” My desire is to enable women to improve their marriages, time management, and self-image with biblical principles.

What are you currently working on?

My current work in progress is for the busy mom, who filled her days and weeks with so many activities until she lost her joy. It talks about how to simplify our lives allowing us to concentrate on the most important people and tasks.

Worn out and exhausted, I discovered Bible verses about God giving us rest. I needed rest, but I also needed to know what to do and not do. I didn’t want to randomly pick things. I wanted to follow God’s direction for my live. Through study, prayer, and experimentation I developed a system I used the last twenty years to sort through my options and pick the most important things. For years I taught this method to prioritize our lives at conferences, Bible studies, one on one, and workshops. Now it needs to be in a book. I’m in the process of adding stories to my draft and I writing the proposal a publisher requested.

How does your work differ from other work in its genre?

I write for women who like stories, action steps, and short chapters with a few Bible verses and questions. I want the person who reads the book to learn how she can change her life and conquer her problems with systems she can repeat. My style of writing includes real life stories, lessons I learned as a wife and mother, biblical references, and application for our lives.

How does your writing process work?

The talks and courses I presented in the past have become the outlines for my books. Articles I saved and books I’ve read provide reference material and new ideas. The editing process becomes a game as figure out another way to write the sentence or paragraph without using the same word multiple times. I have several beta readers who give me great insight and suggestions to improve my writing. One of the first comments I received said, “Joyce, where are your stories?”

My favorite time to write is first thing in the morning for about an hour. When traveling, I take my laptop and write in the car, airports or hotels, but my favorite spot is and sitting on my comfy bed at home.

Bio

Based in Texas, Joyce writes from the wisdom she gained through her life experiences as a homemaker, veteran home schooling mom, and military wife. When the kids left home, she followed her dream to become a life coach and writer. She shares the lessons she learned as she strove to lead a normal family life in the midst of constant chaos and change to include 17 military moves and multiple deployments.

She has published three non-fiction books. She is working on a book that explores how to simplify our lives and find the rest we crave when time management isn’t enough. Joyce and her husband, Aaron, have been married for 38 years, have two married sons, and four precious grandchildren.