“Art can’t be hurried. It must be allowed to take its course. It must be given its space—and can’t be rushed or checked off a to-do list on the way to something else.”

~Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller

Despite all the delays, naysayers, deleted files, money woes, sleepless nights, and writer’s block, many books are born every year. Millions, actually. Think about how many books you’ve read in your lifetime. If you were to try and count every book currently in existence, you’d be looking at eye strain of galactic proportions with around 134,021,533 unique books!

Though it’s not easy to write a book or get it published, the process is simple. There are steps and plans, and a whole world of people who take those steps and follow those plans and end up with a book with their name on it. And guess what? There’s always room for one more! We will never stop wanting riveting stories, memorable characters, or life-changing information. We’re insatiable. Stories give our lives meaning. Our brains are literally wired for them—it’s how we experience being human.

Countless hours of dreaming and praying and inexhaustible reading and writing time preceded my “charmed” delivery and the books of those of every author I know or have interviewed. I love hearing their voices crack or watching their eyes light up or water as they remember what it was like seeing their titles on the shelves or in the trades for the first time, and other big “firsts” that forever changed their lives.

“Eat Pray Love has taken very good care of me,” Elizabeth Gilbert says. Amen to that.

And it’s not just books that bless us when they’re born, but so many other dreams that spring up with them. Speaking and teaching. TED Talks. Radio shows and podcasts. Media of all kinds. Friendships far and wide. Nourishing community. Crackling conversations. Domestic and international travel. Newspaper and magazine articles. Expanded businesses. Follow-up products. Growth and healing. Rave reviews. Cash, too—all topics we’ll cover in Book 2. For now, know this. KEEP GOING. Writing and publishing won’t always feel glacial. When things heat up, you’ll be grateful for the prep time. Your book has its own destiny, and splendid surprises await.

“Congratulations!” Kim Weiss, the publicist from Health Communications, Inc., said as she handed me my finished book at an event in Los Angeles, my beaming father standing at my side. There it was—all 321 pages of it. The title, Lives Charmed, just as I’d dreamed it over seven years before. The HCI colophon proudly stamped on the spine. My name in huge type on the front. Color photos of my star interviewees and blurbs on the back.

Holding it for the first time, I thought: Hello, you. I know you . . . I think. But I’d expected to feel jubilant at this moment, over the moon even. Instead, I felt an odd (fortunately fleeting) sense of melancholy, as if they’d accidentally handed me someone else’s child. With the hurly-burly surrounding publication, I was surprised to discover that after all those years of work and expectation and focus and rejection, the hefty object I held at long last felt . . . foreign. I’d heard mothers exclaim that they looked at their newborn babies and thought, Who are you? You’re not my child! I hadn’t experienced that with Tosh, but I wondered if I was feeling a kind of postpartum book blues?

Tom Hanks

It’s a very personal thing. You just sit there, and you hold the book, and you look at it, and you think, Has this been created out of thin air? Has it been beamed to me? Look at all the molecules that went into this hardcover and these pages.

But the celebration of it was extremely quiet, and it was all by myself. Look, I’m not saying time didn’t stand still. It did. I might have just been standing in my office over my desk. Was I there for two and a half hours just staring down at this thing in my hands, or was it 2.2 seconds? I don’t know. Either one would have made sense to me. I think it’s because it’s yours. It’s a beautiful baby. You hold it in your arms, and you think, Look at the spine on this kid. Look at the beautiful lettering.

Tosca Lee

The first time I saw my name and book title in Variety or The Hollywood Reporter reporting a film or TV deal in the works, I remember thinking, Huh?! Wow! That’s really weird. But then, at the same time, you’ve been trying for this for so long and the conversations were happening for so long. So, in a way, it’s kind of like when you see your name on your book for the first time. It’s like, “Okay, wow, this is really real. It’s so cool. I’m holding it!” You went through all these edits, and you read through all these galley proofs, so you’ve already envisioned it and seen it happen a million times.

Thankfully, my mood quickly lifted before traveling to Chicago the following week for BookExpo America, the largest publishing conference in North America. By the time my editor, Matthew, and I strolled down Michigan Avenue on our way inside, I adored the look and feel of my book.

“Matthew, thank you for being my champion. I’m so grateful.”

“My total pleasure,” he replied. “You’re going to do great today. Are you ready?”

“Um, yeah!” Only seven years ready.* Matthew led me through the maze that was the McCormick Place Convention Center. Twenty-five thousand booksellers, publishers, authors, and fans were gathered at booths for signings, meetings, and discussions. I was now part of the literary community that included authors around me like Alice Walker, George Stephanopoulos, Peter Jennings, Tom Wolfe, and Catherine Coulter.

“Close your eyes,” Matthew said as he led me around a corner by my elbow. When I opened them, I gasped. The folks at Health Communications had erected a huge backlit blow-up of my cover, my beautiful cover—the one Jesse and I had helped design with a picture he’d taken 35,000 feet up in the air. We’d been on our way home from his acting gig on the island of St. Martin when I looked out the window of the plane to see the pinkest purpliest puffiest cloud formation I’d ever seen. Now that image was illuminated in lights with my name in big, bold letters like something my mother would have crafted in heaven.

Peter, my co-publisher, came up and gave me a big hug. “There’s our star!” he said. “You look beautiful, Linda. Have a wonderful signing. We’re so glad you’re here!”

And with that, Kim, our publicist, led me to a long table, gave me a pen, and began handing me books from several tall stacks. The line of smiling faces went on and on. I didn’t recognize anyone but wanted to hug every single sweet soul. Except one face stood out—the Chicken Soup man himself, standing in my line! One of the more surreal moments of the day was signing a copy to Mr. Jack Canfield as part of the house that Chicken Soup for the Soul built.

I wished like hell my mother were alive to celebrate with me. But something told me she wasn’t far from view.

Just a little over two years prior, I’d been outside gathering kindling on my first birthday since Mom passed, bawling my eyes out, missing her like the ground misses the rain. Princess Diana had died that morning, and the entire world, including myself, was in mourning. As I doubted that my special day would ever feel special again, a helium balloon floated over my head from the south. I was standing thirty-five miles from the nearest store, with no houses in that direction for as far as the eye could see, the words HAPPY BIRTHDAY bobbing above me dancing in the wind. I wiped the snot from my face and laughed out loud. For all her environmental leanings, Mom was a birthday balloon person. I still have a bag of them she’d ordered with Dad’s name printed on them that I’d found amongst her things.

Standing in my publisher’s booth—my publisher!—I sensed that Mom, the biggest reader I’d ever known—was smiling down on this whole book-lovin’ scene.

Elizabeth Lesser

The power of writing memoir for me is that I’ll always remember things that I otherwise would’ve forgotten. I forget everything. So, writing about an intense experience is like a memory-booster. In writing the story of my sister’s death [Marrow], I feel like I’m walking with my sister’s soul linked with mine. We shared our blood, our marrow, and then we did what I call in the book our “soul marrow transplant,” and that’s forever.

I do feel that she’s with me and helping me walk strong in the world.

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh

A story can crisscross the globe. Look, I’m crazy about ideas which come and go, but tell me a story and I will never forget it. Tell me a story about something that’s happened to you in your life or something that happened to somebody you love. Somebody who thought things were going to go one way, but then they went a totally different way. That leaves a tattoo on my heart. That’s what moves me beyond. I think ideas are extraordinary. I’m an ideas junkie, but it’s a bit like junk food—good in the moment but isn’t going to nurture or sustain you in the long run. But storytelling has the ability to transform us at our very core; what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about each other, what we believe about the world, and what we believe is possible for the future.

Jodee Blanco, the outside publicist HCI had hired, was making magic happen.

“You’re going on Extra, Lin! That’s so unbelievable!” screamed Diane.

“I know! It’s a miracle!” I said. “We’re shooting a day at Paul Williams’s house, and then at Catherine Oxenberg’s.”

“I’m freaking for you! What are you wearing?”

“I have no idea!” I was so punch-drunk tired/nervous that I started laughing like a lunatic . . .

Di said, “Get yourself together; you’re on Extra in two days! You can’t wear your country duds on TV! And you need a new hairstyle. Granola’s great for the forest, but not for TV!” (“Granola” was our code word for Don’t you dare go out in public like that!)

Swooping in to save the day, Di overnighted a box of clothes from Atlanta, where her husband, Chris Chandler, was still playing for the Falcons. Di hired her favorite LA hairdresser to meet me in Los Angeles for, miracle of miracles, my Leeza show taping. Leeza had made good on her promise and was dedicating most of an episode to my book, including interviews with Catherine Oxenberg, Paul Williams, and me. Paramount Studios sent a limo, and Jesse; Tosh; Carol; and her husband, Bill; and I got all dressed up and piled in. I felt adored onstage as Paul held my hand and he and Catherine and I laughed about old times. The night before, I’d had a dream of a one-liner I “should” say onstage. With relief, I’d remembered it during the taping. When the perfect moment presented itself, I let ’er rip:

“Can you believe it, Leeza? I lived with them. I worked in their homes. And they still like me!” Cath, Paul, and the audience laughed. Then Paul said, “No. We love you.”

Chris Chandler, who I’d included in the book, was patched in over satellite. Leeza raved about my book and me, and Paul closed out the show singing “The Rainbow Connection.”

Someday we’ll find it. The rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

I would never, ever regret being a dreamer. Sure, my path had been hard, but whose wasn’t?

Tom Bergeron

I was thinking about the nature of what we each do. For me, I love live television. I love that instant reaction. If something occurs to me in the moment on the dancing show or wherever, and you have seven hundred people burst into laughter because something just occurred to me and I said it, that’s a bit of a rush. It really is. I think the split personality part for me is that I never watch what I do. For all the years that Dancing with the Stars has been on, I’ve only seen one episode. I like the moment of doing it, and then I am often surprised when people recognize me because I have to remind myself, Oh, that’s right! I did it on television.

Aditi Khorana

I had basically tied my fate to the first manuscript, and I received requests for the full document from almost every agent I sent it out to. But one by one, the rejections came in, and each one felt like a blow to my psyche. Rejection is such a primal sort of pain.

In the end, I racked up something like sixty rejections. What made it all the more terrifying was that I had quit my job to write and within a short time period after quitting that job, my relationship of nearly a year ended, and I had moved out of my home. Nobody told me that this is sometimes what it looks like. You take a risk, and what you see as failure is actually your whole life coming undone to make way for a new one.

After a period of mourning, I wrote another book, what would become my debut novel [Mirror in the Sky], in just three months and sold it for a significant deal. But before I could write that book, I had to be stripped of so much of the conditioning I had grown up with that I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t talented enough. I didn’t have the work ethic. I didn’t have the drive. I was sensitive. How would I live through failure and rejection? I was invisible; how would anyone see me? Immigrant people of color like me don’t get those kinds of opportunities. People like me don’t get big book deals. Who the hell am I to think I can have this? People like me don’t make a life writing books. I was wrong. I did it. And I continue to do it every day.

My books deal with the issues I’ve always grappled with: being an immigrant, being the child of immigrants, being the grandchild of refugees, and a global citizen of a colonial legacy, being a woman, a feminist, a person of color. I also write about how narratives shape our collective notions of ourselves and our society and how these very narratives can be changed for a new global order. As such, in this world, there are still difficult days. There is still failure and doubt. But what’s changed is me. My writing, the work I did on myself. All that failure stripped away anything that’s false.

In its place came quiet confidence in my skills and talents. In my persistence and drive. In my ability to subvert any idea that wasn’t working for me. I have never loved any job more than this one. It’s not a job. It’s a devotion, the thing I am most dedicated to, the thing I would do anything for. And I couldn’t have learned that if the path had been swift.

Elie Wiesel said that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both. I’ll never understand how the bits of a book’s destiny organize themselves for maximum impact.

For example, one of my mother’s best friends, Kay, stood in for Mom by throwing me a book party at her high-rise condo overlooking the water in San Francisco following my Barnes & Noble signing at Fisherman’s Wharf. Was it my book’s destiny that someone happened to plan a massive fireworks display off the bow of a freighter in the October night directly outside Kay’s floor-to-ceiling windows just as I walked through her door to cheers? Was it my mother, coincidence, or destiny that timed such a bigger-than-life event, as if putting exclamation points on my special celebration?

How about being invited to be a speaker at Page Turners, at Stanford University, the book club my mother co-founded? Sitting in a cozy living room in Palo Alto, in a home full of women who’d spent a night a month for thirty years with my mother, I read from my book. As they voiced their enthusiasm and we shared stories of Mom, we all cried together. How did this happen?

Then, standing at the podium at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore for my LA book party, I looked out over a packed house. (Hint: Order food and drinks for launches in LA. All those hungry out-of-work actors, dancers, and even media folks, show up for a free meal.) Someone raised their hand and asked, “What drove you to interview these out-of-the-box thinkers?”

“I had an amazing teacher at USC,” I said. “I still haven’t graduated, but my Community Psychology professor changed my life by teaching me to look at society holistically. To think about what it takes to build a better world. This book is my attempt to build that better world through extraordinary conversations.”

“I’m here!” I heard a man yell from the back of the crowded room. “I’m here!” I looked over the sea of heads, and there he was, Milton Wolpin, my beloved USC professor whom I hadn’t seen or heard from in over twelve years, waving both his arms in the air above his head.

“Whaaaat?” I yelled and ran across the room straight for him. We bear-hugged, and the room erupted into cheers. I was laughing and crying with such joy that I wasn’t remotely worried about my melting makeup. What kind of magic could orchestrate such a celebratory, full-circle moment?

“Did you know I’d be here?” I asked him.

“I saw the advertisement for your signing and had to come,” he said.

Destiny. Do books have a destiny?

Call me a believer.

Dani Shapiro

When Devotion came out, a lot of good things happened. But Oprah didn’t call. I never actually walked around thinking, Oprah’s going to call me, but had I figured it, this would’ve been the time. I did a lot of traveling and speaking for the book in different places—from churches to yoga studios, to temples, bookstores, and people’s backyards. Then I wrote Still Writing, which was about to come out. One day I was in New York, and I was going to be teaching that night, and my phone rang. I saw that it was my agent calling, but I was in such a bad mood that I thought, Ugh. I’m sure this is going to be bad news, so I’m not even going to answer it.

She called a couple of times, and I was like, “I just don’t want to deal with whatever this bad thing is.” Then, right when I was about to go in and teach at a place called The Center for Fiction in Manhattan, I thought, Let me just get this over with.

She said, “Where have you been?”

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Well, I have some good news, actually. I heard from the people at Oprah today, and they’re very interested in having you as a guest for Super Soul Sunday.” And that’s how that began. Three years after Devotion had come out. And it was completely not connected to my new publication of Still Writing. I don’t even think they knew I had a new book coming out.

When I finally spoke to the wonderful producer, the first thing she said to me was, “You’ve been on our radar for a while.” Which I think is an excellent lesson because we don’t know those things. I think all we can do in life, in general, is keep our heads down and put one foot in front of the other and follow our instincts and our sense of what’s right and what’s next and allow whatever happens to happen in its own time.

And, you never know who will read your work!

“I loved your charmed book,” Carrie-Anne Moss would say to me at a get-together at Guru Singh’s home. I couldn’t believe my ears. I loved The Matrix. Of course, I’d seen it—everyone had. It never once occurred to me that Carrie-Anne would be interested in my art or read my work. Wow, it was so good to see her again! She was as centered and spiritual as I’d remembered, and I had a sense as I watched her speaking later with Guru that she, too, would be some kind of teacher beyond the big screen.*

Carrie-Anne thoughtfully shared several of the ways in which my life had had a positive impact on hers, and I was struck by how easy it is to deny our own value, and how once again, Guru and the spaces he created were a source of profound healing.

Jillian Lauren

My favorite thing about releasing a book is the life it takes on of its own. In allowing your work out into the world and really giving your work to the world, you’ve given it, it’s gone. It’s not yours anymore. I love when my work starts to breathe, and people talk about it and tell me things about my book that I didn’t see. That is my favorite part; that the story transforms when it goes out. It’s also the hard part because I don’t have control over it anymore. But it is really freeing and often very beautiful and very rewarding.

Another Guru Singh gift! This one through the death of his beloved mama, Tidi, whom everyone adored. When I arrived at her Celebration of Life service and sat down, Meredith and Janet were sitting just to my left. Through hushed conversation, we fell into an immediate heart space, as if we were back in Mer’s dining room sharing the details of our lives—the most important of which was that Meredith had recently had a baby boy! And I was invited to the baby shower at—of all places—Dr. Phil’s estate.*

On the way to the shower, I stopped at Pottery Barn and bought a lovely box of wooden alphabet blocks. Unlike the $250 pink faux fur rocking horse I’d lugged into a past Beverly Hills shower, I paid $28 for the blocks. Meredith had never been snobby about labels or price tags, and I doubted that had changed. Besides, I was in no financial position to try and impress anyone, so my simple offering would have to be good enough.

What’s my intention for the party? I asked myself.

For the first time in years, I didn’t have an agenda heading into a VIP event. I decided that my sole reason for showing up was to support Meredith at this treasured time. To be of service. Love was my only scheme.

Jenny Lawson

So often, I will feel like, “Well, I pretty much just wasted the last five years of my life. I’ve read some books and I’ve binge-watched a lot of TV, and what else has happened?” But being able to write it down in a book and have these chapters, I’m able to say, “Oh, actually. I did accomplish life!” Sometimes that accomplishment is just surviving and just getting by. Sometimes that can be such a celebration. A lot of times, when I start to feel like a failure or a loser, I will go back, and I will reread my books. Even though they’re ridiculous, about getting a bag of dicks at the post office, or these mortifying, ridiculous, dumb stories, they’re all entertaining and I can laugh when I look back at them.

When I first started writing about mental illness, I was very afraid of how people would respond. I worried that they would run away. Instead, what they said was, “Me too. I thought I was the only one who felt like this.”

I started getting letters from people who said that they were actively in the process of planning their suicide and decided instead to get help. Not because of what I wrote, but because they saw thousands of people in the comments section of my blog saying, “Me too; I’m worthless too.” They thought, Well, that can’t possibly be right. And if it’s not right for them, maybe it’s also not right for me.

When I read those letters, I think, Maybe my words do make a difference. Then I share more, and then other people share because of that.

“You’re going to Dr. Phil’s house?” my friend Susan said on my way over. She’d been trying to get PR for her book for a year and was dying to ride shotgun. “Oh my God! You’ve got to get on his show. You’ll sell a ton of books!”

You’d think I’d readily agree, what with all the shenanigans I’d pulled thus far.

“I don’t believe so,” I said, pulling onto Beverly Drive and scanning side streets for the entrance to the talk show host’s famed driveway. “Doesn’t feel right. Today needs to be all about Mama and Baby.”

“Really?” she said. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally lost your nerve!”

“Maybe so,” I answered before closing my BlackBerry and catching a reflection of my smile in my side mirror.

Joy Harjo

I think every poet is a kind of ambassador for poetry. I had a new book coming out, An American Sunrise, and I got an email from a man I’d known a long time who runs the national book festival. He also runs the Poetry and Literature Centre and oversees the Poet Laureateship, but it’s appointed by the Head of the Library of Congress.

He said, “Are you available for a call?” Then he wrote back a PS: “It’s just a quick question.”

I was not prepared at all; I had no idea. On the call, I heard him say, “Wait a minute, we’re on speakerphone, and here’s Dr. Carla Hayden.” Then they said: “We want you for the twenty-third US poet laureate.” It was like lightning, so much energy moving through.

It was a celebration, but it was also a big responsibility. What was especially exciting for me was that it was the first time a Native person had been in this position. It has done so much for Native people. There was a study recently done by a group called IllumiNative, who’s been gathering data on images of Natives in the public, and in one of their studies, they found that a large part of the population of the US think we’re dead—that after the cavalry left, we disappeared. Our culture has disappeared, and we’re no longer Native. Little do they know, we’re over five hundred tribal nations. We have different languages and cultures—we’re extremely different from each other.

What’s cool about this position is seeing Native poets all over this country. I just got the galley of our anthology of Native poets, a new book called When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. So, it’s changed my life in ways that become clearer every day.

Dr. Phil’s estate was a five-minute walk from Kirk Douglas’s, a route I’d traveled a thousand times with Kirk’s dog and mine. Just as ultra-luxurious as I’d expected, photographers—paparazzi? I wasn’t sure—were in tents, set not so conspicuously around the perimeter of the yard to capture, I supposed, images of the most popular amongst us. I gave my keys to the valet and entered.

Guests were falling all over themselves to schmooze with the good doctor—talking loudly. Laughing with that added kick. Angling to be in the shot. I understood why. I’d lived for years thinking my entire life was dependent upon access and participation of the famous and fabulous like him. And that without that, I’d never have the success or influence I hoped for. Ten minutes with Dr. Phil could get your book written up in People and in the “Hot Deals” section of Publishers Weekly or in Vanity Fair’s “Hot Type.” But with the six-foot-three life strategist two feet away, even I was amazed that I didn’t feel the need to introduce myself. On the contrary, after a quick kiss to Meredith, I turned and walked to the far side of the yard and sat down at the “after-thought” table with the normal-looking, non-glitzy folks: Meredith’s neighbors, a makeup artist, and two lesbian childhood friends of Mer’s who were entertaining as hell, doing a comedy act for our table about their vibrating super-sized Harley-Davidson “sex toy.”

“We’re honest to goodness dykes on bikes!” they joked.

I loved them. I loved this day. How glorious not to have a care in the world a million miles away from the celebrity table.

Laura Munson

I remember when I finally got my big dream—my first book deal, with fourteen unpublished novels in my drawer—and I was going to my first reading. It was on the upper east side of Manhattan. I was in a limo, with all these publishing-world demigods, and I looked out the window, and I thought, Gertrude Stein is right: “There’s no there . . . there.”

For so many years, I had told myself the story that my self-worth was completely contingent on being published to wide acclaim. All of those essays and short stories sent to The New Yorker, all of those books sent to agents and publishers. All of those rejections...all taken so personally. What an exhausting way to live your life! So I turned to the head of marketing and publicity for Penguin Random House and said, “As much as I am grateful for all that you are doing for this book and its message—and I will be a tireless messenger—I just realized that this whole success thing that has driven my life is a myth. And that means that if success is a myth, then failure is too.” I felt this levity. My shoulders dropped five inches. I said, “So, that means the only thing we can control is doing the work. And that’s good news.”

That’s a nugget for every writer. If you’re a writer, it’s about doing the work and creating a writing practice that works for you based on who you are, nobody else. We have to have butterflies in our stomach for this thing; there has to be a payoff, or we’re not going to do it.

Rhonda Britten

Don’t go begging for a deal. You heard me. Do. Not. Beg. You, beautiful writer, are the prize. Your book is filled with heartbreak, tears, and triumphs. Don’t give it away so easily.

You’re the one who spent long lonely nights praying over the keyboard with no food in sight. Exhausted. Exhilarated. Frustrated. You’re the one who spent years accumulating the wisdom that you’ll be stuffing into every page, worried you’re not giving enough because you want to give it all. You’re the one who had the courage to hear that still, small nudge whispering “write this” and followed it with no guarantees.

That effort. That commitment. That confidence. That’s attractive. And that book you put your heart and soul into deserves to be partnered with a publisher who gets it. Who loves it. Who is willing to bid for it. And gets you! That’s why when it was time to send my proposal out to publishers, I knew I would either find a publisher who understood my message or do the “unthinkable” and self-publish.

Out of the thirteen publishers my agent sent my proposal to, we had twelve meetings. (Nine would go on to bid on my book, Fearless Living, during a four-day auction.) In the end, three publishers were left standing, all offering $200,000 for a first-time author, an unknown in California.

Here’s how it happened: As we sat down to meet the Simon & Schuster team, one of the executives broke up the chitchat to let us know he’d be leaving early. I nodded in understanding and thanked him for letting us know. Then, I took out the ten questions I asked every publisher in every meeting. They went like this . . .

1.What was your favorite part of my book?

2.What was it about my book/proposal that made you decide to schedule a meeting?

3.How does my book relate to what matters to you?

4.Share one of the successes you’ve had with a book in my genre.

Right about here, I noticed the executive who said he’d be leaving early wasn’t going anywhere. I motioned to him and said, “I thought you had to leave?”

His reply? “I’ve never been in a meeting with an author like you before. I can’t leave.”

5.I’m looking for a home for my books. Not a printer. How do you see my book fitting into the long-term strategy you have for your imprint?

6.How would my book, Fearless Living, support you in your life?

And on I went. I didn’t ask for their approval. I wasn’t looking for them to gush all over me (though it’s nice when they do!). I was looking for a publisher who understood my mission, wanted to join me in transforming fear, and was willing to roll up their sleeves. Too many authors had told me of their disappointment. Most had handed over their books, praying their editor (and sales team) were miracle-workers. They’re not. Your editor is probably worried about their career and could use all the help you can give them to get your book in the hands of the most people.

Here’s a tidbit I didn’t know. The sales team only cares about your book based on the pitch your editor gives them. If your editor can’t inspire and doesn’t really understand your book, the sales team will put your book on the back burner. That’s just a fact. So, my motto was: I’m here to help you help me. That’s what I told every publisher.

My promise was that I would continue to speak day in and day out. I would sell books at every stop. I would blog and post and do all I could do to get my book out there. I have an email list this big and email frequently. “Now,” I said, “what will you do to add to my already extensive operation?”

Your publisher can be just a big ole printer, or they can be a partner.* In truth, you’ll be the one deciding what they are based on how you see them and treat them. Always remember that the publishers you meet need you. They’re desperately looking for the next bestseller or that unique voice. And, my dear beautiful writer, you’re it. Act like it.

When it came time for Meredith to open her presents, I moseyed up to the crowd around her on the patio. She glanced at a few of the bigger, obviously expensive gifts and, eyes shining, landed on mine. Mer took the “U” block from the twenty-six letters and started singing a magical unicorn song she sang to her baby every night—a four-minute lullaby about how he was brought to their waiting arms by virtue of a celestial unicorn. Meredith began to cry, as did I. In fact, I’m not sure there was a dry eye in the yard.

Meredith looked at me, whispered, “Thank you,” and put her hands to her heart. Later, as I was leaving, she said she could feel my heart and would love to hang out. We talked for hours on the phone and had lunch the following week at her new house, where we discussed possible books to collaborate on. (That’s where I was given the gift of seeing the past five years through her eyes—traveling through up to three countries in one day, having friends feel slighted because calls home from Japan or Europe cost $300 and were reserved for her mother, and having no idea I’d never felt anything but a member of her treasured circle. Jesus.)

“And, Linda?” Meredith said.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for being so chill and peaceful at my shower. Your presence was so calming.”

I laughed out loud. Calming? I could get used to the sound of that.

Without strategy, not trying to control the universe had become my new goal. I’d begun this journey because writing was my favorite activity. There was a simplicity, a purity in my belief in the words, in my mission. All things were possible when I showed up to the page. Now, years later, many of the large and small dreams I’d pined for were coming true. But Thomas’s wisdom was proving prophetic yet again. What was making me happiest was becoming the person I wanted to be.

Joel Stein

Nothing has been as good as when I first got paid to write. That was the best moment. I didn’t have enough confidence to do freelance gigs that I probably could have gotten because people said that I could write things and I didn’t have the confidence, so I never got it done. But my first paid writing gig was a job with health insurance and a desk and all the adult stuff I needed to survive.

I’d gotten paid on other things, but something felt different about this being like a job. Whereas this wasn’t a side gig. This was me actually maybe being able to survive from writing. That felt amazing. Nothing’s ever felt that good.

Rosie Walsh

It was a dark January evening in the UK in the middle of winter. I was heavily pregnant and took a walk, ending up at a convenience store to get some water. I’d been thinking earlier that day that I had sent my manuscript to Allison, my US agent, weeks before after making all the changes that she’d suggested, but I hadn’t heard anything. I thought, Oh well. I guess nobody wanted to buy the book.

At the counter, I checked my phone. Allison had sent me an email entitled, “Oh My God.” It said: “I sent your book out last night because we’re having a snow day in New York today. I told editors that if they were going to be at home all day tomorrow, they needed to read this book because it’s going to be massive.” I was stunned. The email continued: “I’ve had editors emailing me since 2:00 AM. They all want to talk to you. They’re super excited. When can you get on the phone?”

I had just enough change to pay for my water and read it again, realizing it was REAL. I started typing back to say, “Now! Now! Tell them to call me back now!” And, of course, at that moment, my phone ran out of battery.

It took me forty minutes to shuffle home. When I finally plugged in my phone, I already had three or four more emails saying, “Oh my God. So-and-so at so-and-so publishing house wants to talk to you. We’re going to have to set up a schedule.” I spoke to three editors that night, one a legendary editor; I couldn’t believe I was on the phone with her. Allison and I were FaceTiming constantly since our phone deals wouldn’t let us connect internationally, screaming at each other in between calls.

We had four more phone chats to go that evening when she FaceTimed and said, “I’ve canceled those because we have received a preemptive offer that we just can’t possibly ignore. This is the stuff of dreams. You need to sit down.” She told me the number and I didn’t talk for ages. I was like, “Yeah, but what do you mean?” She kept repeating the amount of money, and I was like, “Yeah, but what do you mean?” I could not take it in. It was so completely preposterous that this would happen to me, this chubby, pregnant woman shuffling around Bristol without her wallet.

Meg Wolitzer

There’s a little bit of the Snoopy dance when I finish a book. A sense of real pleasure and excitement that I actually finished this thing. Sometimes when you see the end in sight, you speed up and run toward it. The runs are often shorter than you thought they’d be. The minute you turn the corner, it’s like when you see the destination you’ve been driving toward and race toward it. I definitely get excited: speed up, finish the book, and order Chinese takeout. I always think I’m not going to look at the book then. I’m going to give myself a break. But the minute we shut off the light for bed, I’ll lift the lid of my computer, just to look at those pages again. It’s like you can’t let go.

Then, it’s a long process of not letting go when it goes to copy editing. You’re still making changes, but it feels really, really good. I sometimes say to my editor, “I can’t even believe I wrote that whole thing.” It’s like, I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!

I can’t believe I wrote the whole thing!

Years later, while I was working on this book, the women of my support group and I reminisced about the past and our individual journeys.

“Seriously? Had I known that publishers wanted you to have bigger names for your book,” Meredith Brooks said, dumbfounded, “I would have helped!” And when I told her how I felt left out of the fun during filming of her “Bitch” music video, she said, “God, Linda! You and Tosh with your bouncy happy energy would have been the perfect ‘Bitch’ random dancers!”

Guys! Love bugs! My dear, beautiful readers! Promise Mama Linda that you won’t put unnecessary roadblocks in your path to creative freedom. For heaven’s sake, reach out to your friends and contacts at some point during your writing journey. I can’t promise your vulnerability will pay off. But I can say with experience that the support you think won’t be there may, in fact, be waiting for you to join the party.

My dear friend and mentor of many years, Betsy Rapoport, a former executive editor at Random House, always asks her writing workshop participants, “How many lives would your book have to change for you to feel all your effort was worthwhile?” She says people typically hem and haw, then finally admit, “I’d be happy if it changed one life.”

“Great,” she tells them. “What if that life was yours?”

We both believe that the point of writing isn’t to hit bestseller lists; it’s finding your voice and embodying it fully. When you can do that, what part of your life won’t get better?

Even if it looks foreign at first, it’s a magnificent thing to hold your printed book in your hands or see it on bookstore shelves or glowing in full color on screen. It changes you; it heals pieces you didn’t even know still needed healing. It may be a quiet feeling, but one still worthy of celebration.

The smoothness of the cover, the page numbers, the accent font, your name. On. The. Front. It’s enchanting, mesmerizing, like any newborn. And then it seeps in. This is your work. Your life’s work. Your big idea. Maybe even your bread ’n butter. Many thousands of words coherently strung together to influence somehow, someway, someone, somewhere. You did it! Pop the champagne. Or the carrot juice (in a champagne glass, my pick). Take a deep breath. Enjoy the ride.

When that moment comes true for you, or even if it already has, consider taking a picture or a video of yourself with your book in your hands and tagging me when posting. Use the hashtag #BeautifulWritersBook or #ImaBeautifulWriter and I’ll celebrate with you and maybe share it! To keep yourself and others motivated during the journey, you can also post yourself in-process, doing the work. Again, tag me and use the hashtag #BeautifulWritersatWork. You never know which fellow world-changing word wranglers you’ll connect with and inspire. (That reminds me of another motto I live by: #FriendsDontLetFriendsWriteAlone.)

Lives will change. Even if there’s no big money, or the publisher doesn’t wine and dine you or come with a publicist, or you self-publish. The fireworks may all be internal, but no less valid. Yes, you, Beautiful Writer, are the prize.

__________________

*Your own timeline could be long or short. I’ve had clients who’ve had an idea for a book, written a quick proposal, signed with an agent, and sold their manuscript in less than a year (while I was still on chapter 2—ha). It’s not done until it’s done, but do yourself and your book a favor and keep it on your calendar and atop your to-do lists.

*Fun fact: Carrie-Anne Moss is the founder of AnnaPurnaLiving.com, a robust community that guides women to their wisdom by giving them tools to empower and transform their lives. Articles, free tools, and stunning online courses build community for support, create conversations to empower, and give women strategies to turn the simple into the majestic. High vibrations, all the way.

*Fun fact: Meredith had recently written “SHINE,” a new theme song for Dr. Phil’s talk show.

*Brian Tart, the Editor in Chief of Dutton, would win the bid for the proposal Rhonda and I crafted together over a year. He made Rhonda’s choice easy by basically writing her a love letter about her book. Rhonda went on to publish three other books with Brian.

21

Divine Timing and Dreams Realized

Now All Those Delays Make Sense!