The book is cooking while you live your life

what's happening right now might be the key to your book

Around the time I felt sure that the proposal for my memoir Loving Large was ready, my father died. I wasn’t ready to hear from my coach that losing Dad, roiling in shock, or feeling the agony were things that might change what I wanted my book to be. In my pain, rage, and lighthouse-less journey I couldn’t see anything positive—yet. All I heard was, (and she never said even close to this, I’m certain), “you can’t send this out right now, there is still work to do.”

What my beloved coach, mentor and friend Betsy Rapoport meant…translated into my understanding now some 11 years later, is that what is happening to you right now needs your attention and could change your book, especially if you give it the time and space it needs.

Let me illustrate this from my desk, where I’m often the bearer of disquieting tidings like, “It’s not there yet”, “What you’re going through now is the ending of the book”, and “Wait until we see what this means for the writing”.

When L and I first met to talk about books, he had an awesome premise for one. He was an unlikely adventurer, more does-well-in-school and is-a-credit-to-his-parents than I’m-not-afraid-of-danger meets global traveller (57 countries, covering more than 1.9 million kms). In the years we’ve worked together I’ve witnessed his expansion in community with other writers, opening up while recovering from change, yearning to be away because he was grounded due to the pandemic restrictions, and grieving the end of his relationship. Each of these experiences have contributed to the stellar manuscript and book proposal he has readied for circulation. If he had pushed the early version, it would have been a very different book.

I have known S for almost 15 years. We met when she was enduring the grief of losing her father by busying herself to protect and polish his legacy. When she decided to end her relationship, move across country, and explore her penchant for living anywhere but where she was born, we knew the book would develop as her sense of self did. She paused. When she returned to the book, losing her Dad was a catalyst experience, and perhaps the most epic, but it was one of many. She can see this from a helicopter level and will tell an even more compelling tale now.

M and I started working together in a concentrated way last year when she joined The Story House mastermind. She was certain her book had the story of losing her teenage son at its heart, (after all he had wanted her to write it), and I didn’t disagree. Over our months of coaching M has come to see that her book will benefit from having even more of her reflections about herself and her own life in it—moments from her childhood, of being parented, and of her own family. Recently, urged on by inevitable frustration, she asked herself something like, “What is this supposed to be for me?” The answer, in my words? It’s supposed to be about her. Her sons’ death and everything else that is book-able needs to have her response, growth and transformation along with it. The reader will be so invested in M, and curious about how she made meaning of it all. M is her unifying theme and most compelling character/narrator. If M had completed the book she thought she was meant to write, it might have been too soon for her to see that the lesson of writing was to see that she has come home to safety within herself, with or without a partner in her life. If she didn’t take the time to develop herself by writing, editing, revising, and working with her Story Housemates, M and the book that wants to be birthed would both has been undernourished.

Each of the authors I mentioned above has crystallized a book while in The Story House Mastermind, my very exclusive masterclass and community that I run only once a year. If you want to find out more, go to Reach Out on my website or click right here and leave me your details. News comes to my mailing list besties first…April announcement is coming.

Meanwhile, you may want to face the uncomfortable truths about writing so that they are no longer uncomfortable and you can keep doing your thing.