were still going away. Things did not feel secure.
Betting on myself meant taking my fate into my own hands. Jump, and all the stuff on my new and improved vision board would form.
Would it, though?
Writing other people’s books had potential, but it was uncertain. But my job was, too. Somewhere in my logic, I considered that, if a single woman with only one mouth to feed couldn’t do it, who could? Strangely, at a time when my confidence tank was depleted and fueling me with only fumes, I had the conviction buried somewhere inside to quit and start my own business.
Sitting by and letting someone else drive was, apparently, not my thing. Reflecting on the machine inside me that turned on when I needed to find a job, I realized that I was a survivor. I was never going down with the ship. If I had learned one thing about myself, that was it.
When I was deep in it, sadly, my job loss seemed like a weakness, and my inability to find a job an indication of my shortcomings. It was only later that I realized all of that was just what was inside my head. Certainly, those thoughts wouldn’t have crossed my mind when witnessing anybody else struggling to find a job.
But, hey, not many of us offer ourselves the same level of dignity and respect we give to others. (I later read that in a self-help book.)
Friends later commented on how impressed they were that I’d tackled that job search like I had, and in a way that they said they would never have been able to. Thinking about those comments, in that moment—both the insanity of it all and the motivation—I decided that I had the strength to cut my losses, and my 401k (gulp), and jump ship to go it alone.
Maybe ego was involved to a certain degree. Maybe I wanted to leave on my own terms. Maybe I could not face being shown the door. Choice is, after all, choice. Maybe being laid off a second time, which was entirely possible, was not how I wanted my story to go. So I rewrote it.
There I was, just two years after a herculean effort to find a job, and I was quitting one. Bold move? Yes. Brave or stupid? Hard to say. Probably both. But once the decision was made, and my parents hesitantly got on board (at least they said they were, but only after telling me that Uncle Burt said it was nearly impossible to make a living as a writer), I did it. Considering the agony of the previous two years and the number of people I knew who had lost work and never quite landed it again, it was a perplexing and audacious move, and I’m sure, to many who had watched me buckle under the pressure of the job search, completely idiotic. But it suddenly felt right—like, the rightest thing. I felt oddly calm in a way I had not previously.
At the very least, I would be in charge of my destiny. No boss or corporation would be the decider in my career. Stephanie, Inc. would call the shots and, as such, I felt confident I would survive. I had learned that much. I was taking my professional destiny into my own hands. As crazy as it was, I knew in my gut it was the right move.
Plus, I had that million-dollar check pinned to my wall, so I was probably going to be good.
Self-Help: Occupational Hazard or Personality Disorder?
Jumping off a cliff and starting my own business writing self-help books for well-known experts meant that it wasn’t just the vision board that got me hooked on finding the fix to all the holes that surely must have existed in my mind, body, and soul. Being obsessed with personal growth and self-help, in fairness, suddenly became my full-time job.
Writing a book for someone is actually writing a book with them. Twenty or more hours of their time is required just to get started—mostly with interviews and talking through their life or their life’s work. It’s intimate in a sense, because they have to open up and trust me with their life story or body of work, their insecurities, and the stories they aren’t certain they want to share.
It gets personal.
An interviewer by trade, I love asking questions. I pride myself on pulling stuff out of them that maybe they didn’t think was important. I often try to make idle chit-chat about seemingly unimportant things, or talk a bit about myself, to spark a conversation unrelated to the specifics of their book. That’s when I can hear how a person talks, their voice, and usually learn more about them than I do when they focus on the topic at hand. In those instances, sometimes, the best stuff comes out—the stuff they wouldn’t have thought important. Sometimes it’s challenging to figure out how to best demonstrate a protocol they may advise in their book, to get it on the page in a way that the masses may best understand. Talking things through helps.
Generally, whenever someone meets with me to write a book, they will tell me the concept of their book in relation to a previous bestseller. The Marie Kondo of love or the Suze Orman of career coaches; the #GirlBoss of whatever or the Phil Knight of blah-blah. In fairness, there is something to be said for banking on previous winners; we see it in movies all the time.
For me, that means a lot of reading and research before I embark on someone’s diet book or career book. If an expert I’m working with offered up a diet plan, I’d do it, measuring food, eating at certain times, and analyzing how I felt along the way. I try to understand how it made me feel, whether something was confusing or simple, so I could best explain it to the reader.
One book I worked on asked the reader to make some consumption adjustments, but also to do some tests, including sending in a hair sample to check for heavy metal toxicity in their body. I figured I would try it to really get to the heart of the book and figure out what the author was trying to accomplish. I clipped a small chunk of hair and sent it to California. A note came back saying I hadn’t cut the hair properly, hadn’t supplied enough; I had done it wrong. So, I cut another larger chunk from the back of my head and sent that in. The results came back, and some numbers were high according to the chart and some were low, but honestly, I didn’t have a clue what they meant or how to interpret them, so I did nothing.
Later, while I was having my hair blown out, the stylist put the hair dryer down, got serious, and said, “You don’t have to tell me, but I want to let you know you’re in a safe space if you choose to. You have a very large chunk of hair cut from the back of your head. Is your partner abusing you? Cutting your hair to demonstrate his power?”
I thanked her for her concern and explained it was a self-inflicted hack job, executed all in a day’s work.
Writing books is enlightening, and I’m always learning something new. Twenty or more books into this second career, after discussing sex tapes and drug sprees (my clients’, not my own), I had to write something for a scientist who studies sex as medicine. The first time I met with her at her corporate-looking office, I was clearing some space for my computer and moving a few things around on a desk, including some gadgets with wires coming out of them and clips attached. I mindlessly shuffled stuff around and then I froze.
“Um, what are those things I just moved?” I asked.
“Anal and vaginal probes,” she said casually.
“Clean, I hope?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.
“Sterilized.”
I’d never worked with a matter-of-fact scientist before. It was already shaping up to be one of my stranger, though more fascinating, book experiences.
As we worked that day, we spent a lot of time going back and forth on how to practically apply some of her notions. It was challenging. Most protocols, for lack of a better explanation, could be handled on one’s own, shall we say. But there was one specific concept that required genital stroking by a partner in order to work properly.
Having
