In search of excellence

without any effort

Aug 18, 2024

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I have an editor!

I’ve been working on my first book for about 3 months now, and I’m proud to say I think I’ve just about dialed in the first 5 pages 😂

It’s not the book I thought I’d write as my first. For starters, the category: Self-Help. Cringe. I started writing this book because I felt a need to process some of my health challenges on paper, for myself. Not to share it with anyone else.

I’m 31 and always envisioned I’d be the picture of health by now. I was born with intense eczema and allergies and heard over and over again as a child how “most people grow out of this by adulthood.” I’ve been pretending I’ve not yet reached adulthood — in many ways, e.g. pouting when my parents kicked me off their phone plan at 29 — to shield myself from the harsh truth: adulthood is here, and so are my symptoms.

In fact, some have gotten worse.

I have seen every doctor, tried every medication, done all the deep breathing, and here we are. I tell myself I just need to breathe more deeply (my lungs may pop but my eczema may clear) or try one more diet. My cure is just around the corner.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.

Accepting the latter has allowed me to breathe freely again. I’m still doing what I can to be as healthy as I can, but I am also free to reorient my life with more energy and hope: I can still live a full life, even if I’m not “healthy.” (This can be a hard belief to hold when the argument “Without our health we have nothing” is pretty compelling and pervasive.)

It’s not that we have nothing, it’s that the texture of life shifts. There is always something.

And something is always worth showing up for.

After writing hundreds of pages to process all of this, I finally believe that.

I’ve also finally reached the point where I feel bold enough to believe that something in my writing might help someone else, too. So I muster up the courage to reach out to a local editor, asking if she’d grab a coffee with me to walk me through the basics of the publishing world (I know nothing).

Two weeks later, an hour flies by and she proposes an exchange: she’ll be my editor for the next six months, teaching me all she can about the industry and getting me to a book proposal I’m proud of, and I’ll be her business coach.

This editor’s books have won Pulitzers and sold millions of copies. She has worked with authors I have long respected and she tackles serious subjects: American History, Military History, Science, Art, Politics, Business.

I built a business over 5 years that we ended up shutting down.

I already feel insecure and embarrassed about our mismatch (a topic for another post), and then she hits me with Self-Help.

Too many authors write entire books without knowing where it would sit in a bookstore. That matters to publishers. So that’s number one. You are writing a Self-Help book. So go to Barnes & Noble, go to the Self-Help section, look at some of the other titles… and she goes on to walk me through some market research.

“H O W … N O T … TO C A R E: AN INSPIRING CHILDREN’S GUIDE TO LIFE”

I don’t know when this happened (probably sometime during my first job out of college), but I do love a good Self-Help book.

What I don’t love is being seen in the Self-Help book section. I find it deeply embarrassing. Maybe this is just me (is it?), but I am in Heaven browsing the Fiction stacks for hours and Hell searching for the Self-Help title I wanted to quickly pluck off the shelf and tuck under my arm.

Just last week, I was picking up two library books that I had on hold. The first —What We See When We Read — was waiting in the Holds section for me, as promised. The second — Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most — was not. But I had received the email saying it would be there.

I almost left the library with only my first book to avoid confrontation, but I really wanted the second one — What life is worth living?! I need to know today! — so I had to face the librarian.

I cannot tell you the relief I felt when she asked me which of the two books I did find, rather than which book I didn’t. (I had tensed up in anticipation of her posing the question on the silent library floor: ARE YOU LOOKING FOR LIFE WORTH LIVING?)

This fear of being seen “self-helping” myself feels like an expression of my American desire for excellence without effort.

When did this shift happen?

In high school, I loved to show off my effort: pages and pages of hand-written study guides and jam-packed index cards; meticulous, almost verbatim class notes; color-coded everything. There were always the kids who claimed not to have studied at all for this test, and then still — *miracle of all miracles* — scrape out an A-.

This dishonesty drove me crazy.

After that first meeting with my editor, I felt on top of the world, stunned at my luck to get mentorship like this for the next 6 months. But one of the first things I tell my husband? I don’t want anyone to know.

Why?

Because then everyone knows I’m trying. And if everyone knows I’m trying and nothing comes of it — that’s the ultimate humiliation. It’s being the person who gets a B after lots of effort, rather than the student who gets an A with none. It’s being a loser.

It’s even more humiliating than writing a successful Self-Help book! Not only am I trying to write a book about trying, but I failed at it! A double-fail! How deeply uninspiring, un-American.

So I dreamed instead of writing in the dark, working as hard as possible to get my book out into the world, and then wowing everyone (Who?? There’s always an imagined audience waiting with bated breath for what I’ll do next.) with my overnight success.

Wowed by my excellence without effort.