When I wrote And the Good News Is…, I had an entire chapter about dogs—the ones I grew up with in Wyoming and Colorado, the one I had to give away at college, and the ones I’ve raised with my husband. I loved that chapter. I was proud of it, too. It had great detail, funny stories, and descriptions of the life lessons I’d learned from being around dogs (more, I think, than I’ve learned from humans). I thought it fit perfectly into my book that blended my memoir with my best career advice.
The problem was, my editor, Sean Desmond, needed me to cut about ten thousand words from the draft manuscript. I spent a weekend trying to trim off that length, but the text was pretty tight. I got frustrated. I couldn’t find a way to delete that much copy.
Finally, I stepped back and took a long look at the dog chapter. It was several thousand words long. I eyed it for the chopping block, but I couldn’t bring down the hatchet. I slept on it (the book, not the hatchet). The deadline loomed.
I used my foolproof method of decision-making, praying for a clear idea of how to solve my problem. When I woke up, I knew what I needed to do.
I printed the dog chapter and took it with me to Sean’s office near Grand Central Station in Manhattan.
“This may be the hardest thing I do, and it is breaking my heart,” I said. “But here you go. You can have the dog chapter. Without it, we can make the word count.”
I tossed the chapter onto his desk.
While Sean isn’t a dog person, he knew it was quite a sacrifice.
“I think this is the right decision,” he said. “And I promise you, one day there will be a dog book.”
And true to his word, here we are.
So let me tell you about Jasper—how my best friend became “America’s Dog.”