I'm writing a book!
/I’m sharing about the process of writing my first book. I shared the full announcement on the podcast Ep 40: 10 Favorite Things Right Now + 2 Special Announcements.
I’m doing it! I should say, I’m FINALLY doing it, as writing has been my ultimate goal since I moved to Los Angeles in 2001.
And I have been writing for many of these years, it just didn’t look like what I imagined. When I started a mommy blog in 2010, writing on the internet was meant to be temporary, a way to learn how to write for an audience, a stepping stone to “real” writing. But I just kept doing it. And it just kept working (mostly). The opportunities that came up in those early years came through my blog posts and blog audience, and traditional publishing felt like a dinosaur.
Still, writing a book that would be in bookstores and that would be a tangible THING to hold in my hands always remained the goal. After years of personal blogging and also writing columns for other websites, I was tired of the online hustle and decided the next natural step was to write a book like I’d always dreamed. In 2015 I put together a book proposal and sent it around to various contacts, agents, and editors. The universal feedback was….not good. I knew everyone was right. I wasn’t excited about the idea or even what I had written in the proposal. I didn’t hate it or anything, but I knew it wasn’t great. I had falsely assumed that since so many other bloggers were getting book deals that it would be a natural next step for me, too. (I share more about this on Episode #112 of the Being Boss podcast.)
It was a humbling experience. Rejection always is, but rejection when you’re not expecting it has a special kind of sting. I was embarrassed and a little lost about what to do next. It wasn’t that the book idea I was floating needed some tweaking, the whole thing needed to be scrapped. It was that bad.
After licking my wounds for awhile, I knew that it was time to close the mommy blog and reroute entirely. I waited long enough to know that it wasn’t a rash decision, and that it wasn’t made out of shame. I realized that the reason the blog-to-book proposal wasn’t good in the first place was that I had lost my motivation for writing any of the things I’d been exploring over the early years of parenthood. I was ready for the next phase, and it took more than a year to understand that those book rejections were a blessing in disguise. If I had forced that idea into working, I think it would have taken me on a path I didn’t really want.
So not long after that, I officially closed the mommy blog and turned to using my literal voice as a the cohost on Sorta Awesome, the girlfriend chat show my friend Meg Tietz created. I really enjoyed working on that team with Kelly Gordon and Rebekah Hoffer and podcasting - which had started for me as a diversion and fun favor for a friend - increasingly turned into something I was passionate about. Hearing someone’s voice is a deeper layer of intimacy than you get with the written word and it was nice to talk and laugh in collaboration with other smart, strong women, after years of doing the blog thing solo.
Being a cohost led me to create my first podcast Smartest Person in the Room, which was a huge learning experience. It surprised me that using my actual speaking voice was so helpful in finding my new writing voice. The two things in conjunction were really beneficial to one another. Still, though, that project - as much as I liked what I created there and am proud of it - never felt exactly right for some reason. So I put it on permanent hiatus just months after I also took a step back from cohosting Sorta Awesome. I could see what wasn’t working but I was flailing a bit with a big picture plan. I didn’t have a direction or a cohesive direction. But I just kept trying things, one foot in front of the other. I figured if I just kept inching towards what felt right, I would eventually land somewhere I wanted to be. And I never stopped writing even though I closed the blog. I wrote in my spare time, just for myself. I journaled and told stories and continued to write many (many) words for the monthly Secret Posts emails that were read by thousands. So all that time I was still honing these skills I cared about, I just didn’t know to what end.
In the fall of 2018, I decided to launch the 10 Things To Tell You podcast as a companion to this blog that I had started (and never given enough time to). By then I knew enough about my own strengths, coupled with the habits of the internet and social media becoming like microblogs - that I wanted to be podcasting regularly again. And the idea for a book - a different book, this time - was already bouncing around in my head. What I wanted to say was starting to gel together. Once I started the podcast and it seemed to resonate with the audience, I finally felt like I was in the right flow. Because 10 Things To Tell You took all of the things I felt passionately about: sharing your stuff, introspection, and better conversations as a means to deeper connections.
On the show I could talk about books and anxiety and relationships. I could ask all the questions I wanted, and encourage others to share their lives and their thoughts and their stories just as I had been sharing through the annual #OneDayHH challenge and the new #10ThingsToTellYou challenge. A lot of things started to make sense.
Back when I was blogging, I had heard from lit agents every now and again. I know that this is lucky and historically this isn’t how getting an agent works. But back in the summer of 2015 when I was shopping the ill-fated blog-book proposal, I had a number of conversations with various agents about the project and about the career I envisioned for myself in general. By far and above, one of those conversations stood out. Lisa had been following my blog for awhile, and she really understood my voice and what I was doing (even when it was a mess). We clicked immediately when we talked, and I especially liked that she already got me - I didn’t have to pitch and beg and convince her that I was worthy. She saw something in me before I could articulate it as a strength or a message. And it is so encouraging to have someone believe in you. It makes all the difference in the world, actually.
So I reached back out to Lisa, with my tail between my legs a little bit. I hadn’t written much publicly in years. I had a podcast I was a proud of, but I wasn’t certain how to turn it into a book. She was so kind and in the spring of 2019 she walked me through the steps of putting together a (much better) proposal and how to talk to publishers about making a book from a podcast. (A tougher sell in some ways that pitching a blog-to-book, since people who listen to a show may or may not be likely to purchase a book. It’s a different medium, and a different audience.)
We shopped 10 Things To Tell You (the book) throughout the summer of 2019. After my first experience, I held the whole thing a lot more loosely. I was also in a different mental/emotional space (much different) than I had been in 2015, and so I truly believed that I couldn’t force it, and that if I was meant to write a book right now, those doors would open. By August, after many conversations, we had several offers on the table and I happily chose Zondervan, an imprint of Harper Collins.
(Fun fact: like my agent Lisa, Zondervan had also approached me when I was mommy-blogging. I didn’t feel ready then and didn’t pursue it, thinking I had all the time in the world. It is not lost on me that opportunities that had come my way YEARS earlier and that I didn’t follow through on - or didn’t think was right at the time - came together to be the right thing later. I don’t know how the universe works in that way, other than to say that it’s impossible to miss the boat that is meant for you. It will come back around.)
I signed a contract with a deadline to turn in my first draft of the manuscript in February 2020, with an anticipated release date in early 2021. I had about 6 months to write the memoir/personal growth book I pitched. As I type this blog post, it is the end of February 2020 and I have turned in that first draft.
I decided to write a series of blog posts about the process of writing/editing/marketing this book because for all 10 years of watching friends and colleagues do it, I’ve had so many questions and so many curiosities. Since the entire premise of this blog, my podcast, and the upcoming book is to share your stuff, I want to do that.
