I Heart Malcolm Gladwell

I’m swooning. My #1 imaginary boyfriend, Malcolm Gladwell, is in town next week. He’s speaking about the flip side of Social Media at the F5 Expo.

This is timely.

He has neither tweeted, e-mailed me, nor called me to set up a coffee date. So clearly Social Media is dead or at the very least ineffective and someone (my beloved) needs to point that out.

If you were Malcolm Gladwell, what hotel would you stay at?

I mean, hypothetically speaking, of course. It’s not like I’m going to stand in the lobby and accost him. Wearing my new corset. That would never happen.

(Mostly because I don’t know where he’s staying.)

(Yet.)

Also excellent: my future ex-husband’s interview with George Stroumboulopoulos of The Hour, especially starting at 11:03.

March 31, 2010 | filed under: People

6 people have we need you too.

A Good Fable Never Fails to Terrorize

My child will soon be six years old.

Anyone who has – or has been – a five year old knows that turning six is a A Very Big Deal.

You leave five with fewer teeth than you started. You leave behind half-days of pretend-school (kindergarten: pffffft) and being mistaken for a pre-schooler when it ought to be clear to any one with half a wit that you are a school-kid.

Six: it’s significant.

We’re very excited about six.

Someone is so excited that she colours every waking moment – and more than a few sleeping ones, I’m sure – with vivid descriptions of the toys and dresses and yachts and mansions she desperately needs as gifts for her sixth birthday.

The constant stream of I want, I want, I want is sweet and unselfconscious and not rooted in evil, but I must confess it is starting to itch my skin raw. It makes me rethink the neighbourhood I live in and the school she goes to and pretty much every choice I have ever made to give her a life without want, which just makes her want more.

My own issues. I’ll own that.

Still, I thought it appropriate to gently tame the greed using a fable.

Last night, when we were cuddling-and-talking, I told her a story. While in our house we are bookies – bibliophiles rather than money-lenders – this child especially appreciates tales that are told off the top of my head. So I add-libbed The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

And then, at the end of the story, I might have mentioned that, like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, if she asks me continuously for every toy in the known world, I will have no way to know which toy is truly important to her – which means she will get a lot of random crap for her birthday.

(I didn’t say the last part out loud. Swear.)

She understood. She totally got it and burst into heart-wrenching, body-wracking sobs.

I am the worst mother, ever.

I cuddled her off the my-mother-shattered-me ledge and set to silently abusing myself for inadvertently abusing my baby with moral scare tactics fables. Effing wolf-calling boy.

In the morning, I had a whole set of fresh reasons for self-abuse.

“Morning” meaning today. Today Almost-Six had an appointment at the audiology clinic to have her hearing tested. Again.

She had her hearing tested at school and the hearing teacher was so alarmed that she referred her to the audiology clinic.

For The Child, this was a festive occasion: she got to stay home with me instead of going to class, and clearly a health appointment is an occasion for crinoline, taffeta, all of my jewelry (and hers) and my peacock-feather headband. I mean, obviously.

So off we set, blinging, to the audiology clinic.

I had avoided thinking in any great detail about what this appointment might mean until we were on our way to it.

When I had dedicated fleeting seconds to consider what this might mean, I thought:

this child has won the lottery in looks, intelligence and being loved. Whatever it is, we’ll take it in stride. It will be fine. Whatever it is, it will be worse for me than for her, because whatever it is, she’s been living with it for six years and she’s got it handled.

Yet driving to the clinic caused the film-strip in my mind to loop to every time I have ever snapped at her because I thought she wasn’t listening to me or was ignoring me or her sister.

And all the times I’ve silently and pridefully swelled at her ability to focus so intently on her art that she literally cannot hear anything outside of that task?

Oh my god, maybe it is because she literally cannot hear and in the six years of knowing her, I have failed to notice that simple fact.

I am the worst mother, ever.

Filling out the forms:

Have you ever noticed any hearing problems?

No.

When did you first notice that your child was having hearing problems?

I didn’t.

I have not noticed that my baby cannot hear.

I’m going to stop repeating “I am the worst mother, ever” because I think you get the point.

So. The test. She did it. She put the headphones and raised her hand and the audiology dude nodded to himself a lot and did not look visibly concerned.

He was not concerned, visibly or otherwise. He said everything was fine. She can hear just fine. No issues at all.

In the damp heat of relief (mine) – mostly that I’m not an inattentive mama, because, as I said, whatever we discovered wouldn’t have been The End of The World – we headed to the book store.

Because although the child likes ad-libbed stories, I trust that I’ve made it clear that I clearly can’t be trusted to tell them. A new bedtime book was in order.

In the car on the way to the book store, Sophie processed the experience.

Triumphant Sophie: You know, Mama, I did much better on this test than the one at school.

Abashed Mama: What do you mean, babe?

Triumphant, Disclosing Sophie: This time I raised my hand only when I heard the beeps. At school, I thought the test was kind of boring, so I made it fun by waving my hand a lot, whenever I wanted.

Shocked but connecting-the-dots Mama: You mean that during the school hearing test, you were raising your hand when there were no beeps?

Connecting-the-dots Sophie: Yes! Just like cry-wolf-boy!

(Which, at the bookstore, was the new book she welcomed into her world.)

March 30, 2010 | filed under: Family, Love

30 people have we need you too.

Talk is Not Intimacy. The Tyranny of Words.

I am not a morning person. To me, the wee hours are like The Bad Ex: unpleasant, defensive, and best avoided.

And yet by sheer force of will and habit and the tyranny of children wee’er than the hours, I rise early.

Like 5.30 am early. The ugly early.

And lo, he said, ‘let there be caffeine’.

So I’m always astonished when my sister or a friend says something like “but I’m not a morning person like you are…”

My head swivels around, exorcist-style, to locate this saintly ‘you’. When I realize I am that you, I inevitably have a whatchutalkingaboutWillis? moment.

(I had the same reaction when my sister told me “…but I don’t enjoy dating the way you do…“)

My point (and there is one):

I’m working against my body’s impetus.

My natural inclination is to stay up late(ish) and get up around 8ish. My most productive working hours are 9-11 in the morning and 9-11 at night.

BUT.

That’s not how my life works. My kids wake at inhumane hours and five days a week there are bells that ring and expectations of attendance accompany those sounds. The other two days there are expectations of waffles or pancakes.

So I just get up, drink lots of coffee, and try to make it all knit together while eagerly anticipating the future when my children become surly teenagers who resent the sound of my breath and my presence but sleep past 7am.

Or can pour milk in their cereal unassisted.

MIRACLES. HEAVEN. SLEEP.

I digress.

Now, just as I work against my body’s natural inclination with (lack of) sleep, I do this in The Interpersonal Thing, too.

I say: I’m a talker. Words are my foreplay. Talk to me, baby.

While this is true, it is not the whole story. Often, I’m silencing one of my languages at the expense of the other.

Body is quiet so words can speak.

I remember when I realized this: it was just after I realized I was In Love, probably for the first time. We were swimming in each other. Our physical boundaries were porous. While we had astonishing, wide-ranging conversations  and enjoyed a profound intellectual tension and communion, we were connected by touch and presence and being more than with words.

At the time, I had two room-mates. One day, I came skipping into the living room and landed on the sofa, right between them. They both shifted away from me so that our bubbles remained intact.

Another time, my bestest guy friend (my first boyfriend) from high school was visiting us. He was sitting on the sofa and I sat beside him, thigh-to-thigh and leaned into him. He stiffened.

Neither of these things were calculated. They were instinctual: I was so used to being right up close with someone – my new love – that I forgot in most relationships closeness is brokered with words rather than bodies.

I remember that stiffness, the moving away, the distance, and the chatter – and I treasure relationships where spaces contract and breach is welcome.

Like with my children, to whom intimacy is touch.

Which is not to say that we don’t talk. Of course we talk. We talk a lot. My eldest daughter, Sophie, is almost six, and she tells me that her favourite part of the day is our talking-time. We read stories together and I tuck the girls into their beds in their rooms. I sit with Lola, the little one (she’s three) and we talk while I rub her back and hold her close.

Then I get into bed with Sophie, wrap my arms around her and press her cheek to mine, and we talk while I stroke her hair. She tells me every detail of her life and all the things she’s thinking about and all the dramas in class and daycare and of course Hannah Montana, who has a talking horse.

And she always sighs and says, Mama, I love our talks.

I love our talks, too.

But more is being said than could ever be told with words alone.

I’m acutely conscious that right now, in this shimmering, evancescent, temporary moment, I have my children’s permission to touch them, kiss them, cuddle them, hold them, be with them, close to them.

And that is intensely precious to me on so many levels.

Our physical bond is the foil to my overwhelmingly word-centric world. Most of the time I privilege verbs over body – so much so that I’ll despair over a man who can’t seem to connect with me with words even if he’s telling me sweet things with his actions, his body, his daily presence and unremitting tenderness. I’ll assume he’s not verbally and emotionally fluent because I’ve unlearned his language.

My language.

And I know when I started locking down my physicality and unleashing my language.

The tween years.

The exact moment when I started becoming conscious that my body could – and was – sending messages was the moment I started restraining it.

Started fencing off space.

Started closing down emotional, physical signals.

Stopped being affectionate with adults and even same-age friends.

Stopped touching people.

Started talking on the phone. For HOURS.

This is no coincidence. I know this with my body and when I’m not careful, my tongue thinks for me:

I wish we could just fuck and get it over with so I wouldn’t be so tongue-tied and shy.

Now. I do understand that some tsk-tsk-ing might be in order. I’m not necessarily advocating sex as an ice-breaker (mostly. maybe).

But what this accidental truth tells me is that intimacy is not just words.

Words are sometimes a fence, fencing, sparring, defence.

Body is my first language. We have our physical selves, our hunger for touch, and our ability to effectively communicate needs, wants and desires long before we come into words. (Just ask an infant or her exhausted parent.)

All of this is to say that naturally I’m a late-riser and a body-talker. Yet I bow to the demands of my life and get my ass out of bed early so I can talk (and write) pretty all day.

So when I read this,  astonishment, horror, recognition:

Historically, women’s sexuality and intellect have never been integrated. Women’s bodies were controlled, and their sexuality was constrained, in order to avoid their corrupting impact on men’s virtue. Femininity, associated with purity, sacrifice and frailty, was a characteristic of the morally successful woman. Her evil twin, the succubus (whore, slut, concubine, witch) was the earthy sensual, and frankly lusty woman who had traded respectability for sexual exuberance. Vigorous sexuality was the exclusive domain of men. Women have continuously sought to disentangle themselves from the patriarchal split between virtue and lust, and are still fighting this injustice. When we privilege speech and underplay the body, we collude in keeping women confined. - Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity (emphasis mine)

And that is why I write about sex.

March 29, 2010 | filed under: Mama Monda, People, Sex

32 people have we need you too.

The Yin and Yang of Intimacy

Some of us enter intimate bonds with an acute awareness of our need to connect, to be close, not to be alone, not to be abandoned. Others approach relationships with a heightened need for personal space – our sense of self-preservation inspires vigilance against being devoured. Erotic, emotional connection generates closeness that can become overwhelming, evoking claustrophobia. It can feel instrusive. What was initially a secure enclosure becomes confining. While our need for closeness is almost as basic as our need for food, it carries with it anxieties and threats that can inhibit desire. We want closeness, but not so much that we feel trapped by it.

- Esther Perel. Mating in Captivity.

Imagine his surprise to discover that the happiest, most confident woman he’d ever met was actually – when you got her alone – a murky hole of bottomless grief. Once again, I could not stop crying. This is when he started to retreat, and that’s when I saw the other side of my passionate romantic hero – the David who was solitary as a castaway, cool to the touch, in need of more personal space than a herd of American bison.

David’s sudden emotional back-stepping probably would’ve been a catastrophe for me even under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet’s most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. I was despondent and dependent, needing more care than an armful of premature infant triplets. His withdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals, until soon he was retreating under fire of my weeping pleas of, “Where are you going? What happened to us?”

(Dating tip: Men LOVE this.)

- Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat Pray Love.

| filed under: Love, People

4 people have we need you too.

How To Get A Book Deal – The Accidentally Epic Series

Here’s a list of all the pieces in the accidentally epic how-to-get-a-book deal series based on advice from published authors to a wannabe (that’s me!):

The how-to-get-a-book-deal piece, in full:

How to Get a Book Deal. An Evolutionary, Biblical Approach. (This Is Why I am a Writer And Not a Scientist.)

The How To Get A Book Deal Interviews, with:

* I also did phone-interviews with Josh Hanagarne and Gretchen Rubin but get very, very sad when I think about doing more transcription

**My phone interview with Gretchen Rubin – in which she gave me some personal advice that really landed with me – inspired me to be a little nicer, online. Gretchen Rubin is my Jiminy Cricket.

Guest Posts at Write To Done (that triggered this whole series):

Guest Post at Write to Done: How to Get a Book Deal: Part 1 – Printasauraus Rex Vs. The Blog: Publishing 2.0

Get Thee A Blog, and A Big One: Guest Post At Write to Done

March 28, 2010 | filed under: How To Get a Book Deal, People, Work

no people have we need you too.

How To Get A Book Deal: 13 Questions with Zen Habit’s Leo Babauta

1. Are you a bookie?

(as in: “lover of books”, not trading in questionable money “loaning” practices. I’m not implying anything.)

Leo Babauta: Unquestionably. I’ve been in love with books for three times as long as I’ve been in love with my wife, and nearly as intensely. A good book isn’t just reading a story, it’s a relationship between you and the author, between you and the characters, between you and the physical pages of the book.

I count reading a good book up there with sex, running, good conversation, and spending time with my family as among the absolute best pleasures in life (not in that order).

2. Was writing a book a long-held, secret fantasy of yours?

Leo Babauta: Of course. It’s the secret fantasy of anyone who writes. That it became realized is flabbergasting.

3. Danielle LaPorte said in a firestarter that her smokin’ hot blog is about finding her people, creating a community, and she hopes that when the time comes, her book will be a best-seller.

Tim Feriss, I’m pretty sure, articulated (and did!) the same thing only with a less poetry and fewer dreadlocks and holy hassenfeffer* has that worked out something fierce for him.

Penelope Trunk, on the other hand, loves her blog because it gets her free fancy laptop bags and certain naughty acts but thinks that writing a book is a time-sink.

Which brings me to my questions:

Which came first, the idea for your blog or your book?

How did your blog help you get the book deal?

Which is your favourite child?

Leo Babauta: The blog is my baby, and will always hold a special place deep within my heart, untouched by the outside world. The book is a fantasy come true, but the blog is where I pour out my soul, where I connect with people in an ethereal but very meaningful way.

There’s nothing like blogging. You have a thought, you type it up and press “publish” and it’s out there in the world, to be used and cherished and spit upon and talked about by thousands of people, instantly. This is unparalleled in the history of writing.

4. Did you approach an agent or a publisher with a book idea or did someone approach you?

Leo Babauta: As my blog took off, publishers and agents approached me. My blog had 26,000 subscribers within the first year, so it was obvious my writing was connecting with a lot of people — people who responded enthusiastically. Small publishers and several agents approached me, and while I was excited about the idea of publishing a book, it was also a terrifying prospect.

5. Who’s your agent? Are you still on speaking terms? If I call him/her, will she confirm that?

Leo Babauta: My agent is Holly Root of the Waxman Literary Agency in New York, and she’s been wonderful. Pretty much everything you’d want in an agent: a pro, a hand-holder for a newbie like me, a therapist when my fears would surface, a dispenser of large checks.

She still talks to me, which only proves she’s an angel.

6. Did I tell you why I’m writing this piece? I want to write a book AND get it published AND I know nothing about how to do this.  Hence: How To Get a Book Deal. Anyhoo, here’s the q:

Josh Hanagarne told me that you don’t actually sell a non-fiction manuscript, you sell a proposal to write a manuscript.  Is he lying?

(He’s been known to lie for entertainment purposes so I’m fact-checking.)

Leo Babauta: It’s true. I hadn’t written a word of the book when I sold it to a publisher (Hyperion). I wrote up a proposal, and my agent shopped it around, and I signed a deal with the publisher that offered me the fattest check for a few pages of B.S.

7. What kind of research – resources read, people talked to –  did you do to prepare to write your book proposal?

Leo Babauta: I just found a few examples of proposals on the web and picked out the parts I liked best, merging them into one kick-ass document. My agent gave me some feedback on it before shopping it around, which helped.

In the end, all you really need to communicate is a) a great idea for a book and b) proof that it’ll sell (and that you can help sell it with awesome marketing). My blog was already evidence enough of both those things, so the proposal just needed to highlight that.

8. Did you consider hiring a proposal coach?

I didn’t know they existed. If they do, they are probably scammers. The info you need to write a proposal is available free online. A proposal coach would make money on the insecurities of writers, which are notoriously large and numerous.

9. So. You wrote a book proposal. Now what?

(By this I mean: did your agent shop it around? Did it go to auction? Did you go to New York and schmooze?  Tell us a pretty story. Don’t worry, I’m a lazy fact-checker.  See, for example, #6.)

Leo Babauta: The biggest change that happened to the proposal before my agent shopped it around was that she asked me to change the title. It was originally “Haiku Productivity” which was supposed to focus on setting limitations to be more effective, but the consensus in her office was that it sounded too Eastern and would be confusing to publishers. So I was disappointed because I thought Haiku Productivity was a rockin’ name, but looking back I think it was probably a smart move.

She shopped it around and immediately we had a few publishers interested. Hyperion’s editing and marketing folks wanted a phone call with me, so we set that up and they seemed to like me. They put in a bid and it was the highest, so I went with them.

10. Is Erin Brockovich your hero? That’s not really the question.  That is called foreshadowing. Let’s go EB for a minute and talk numbers:

“How ’bout this for a number? Six. That’s how old my other daughter is, eight is the age of my son, two is how many times I’ve been married – and divorced; sixteen is the number of dollars I have in my bank account. 850-3943. That’s my phone number, and with all the numbers I gave you, I’m guessing zero is the number of times you’re gonna call it.”

Still with me? Your book deal is signed.  Visions of spectacular, over-sized but truly, madly, deeply deserved cheques are dancing in your head…

What figure is on that cheque?

Leo Babauta: Honestly, I would have taken the deal for M&Ms (peanut), because all I really wanted was to get published. The blog was already paying the bills. But the amount on the check was $80K. Well, not actually — I got half upon signing the contract and another half upon submitting the manuscript, and my agent took 15% of each check.

11. HOLY HESSENFEFFER*! You got THAT much?! Clearly, it was time for the happy dance…which brings us to the MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION:

What were your dance moves?

Leo Babauta: I’m big on booty moves.

12. Is there video of this alleged dance and, if so, is anyone currently blackmailing you with the footage?

Leo Babauta: The danger of mobile devices with cameras, and YouTube, is that these days anyone can take and upload video without your knowing. But such video has not surfaced, and thank sweet Jebus for that, because it would either become the next Rick-rolled video, or no one would care, and the latter would be worse.

13. What is your book called, when did it come out, and how can we get it?

Leo Babauta: The book is “The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential in Business and in Life”, and it came out on Dec. 30, 2008 and immediately hit the Amazon best-seller list. You can get it on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Borders.com, or from fine independent booksellers everywhere.

Bonus Question:

After your book deal was signed and during the book-writing process, did your editor ever force you to sleep in her office for weeks just to get a semi-coherent draft out of you?

(It happened to Elizabeth Wurtzel, or perhaps more accurately, to her editor.  There may have been illegal substances involved.  You don’t have to answer this but please do.)

Leo Babauta: No, but I’m surprised they didn’t send an elite strike team to Guam to kidnap me back to New York (or kill me). Writers are notorious for missing deadlines but I think they’d hoped, as a productivity guru, I’d be different. That thought still makes me snort with laughter.

Bonus Bonus Question:

Anything I’ve missed that you think is important?

Leo Babauta: It was essential that I built up my audience with my blog before I tried to sell the book. Publishers get a million requests per second (about the same as the number of Google searches done per second), and you need to stand out. If you have a successful blog that has shown your potential as a writer and marketer, you have a good shot at least. If you don’t, you’d better have an AMAZING proposal.

*gratuitous Laverne and Shirley theme song reference. You know you’ve made it when you can casually work a Laverne and Shirley lyric into your writing.  Book deal, schmook deal.

____________________

This most excellent interview with Leo Babauta – I’m delighted to know he’s bootylicious – is part of an accidentally epic series on How To Get a Book Deal.

Leo was my first interview, ever, and he gave me the sweetest feedback. So please go buy his book.

——————–

The accidentally epic how to get a book deal series:

The how-to-get-a-book-deal piece, in full:

How to Get a Book Deal. An Evolutionary, Biblical Approach. (This Is Why I am a Writer And Not a Scientist.)

The How To Get A Book Deal Interviews, with:

* I also did phone-interviews with Josh Hanagarne and Gretchen Rubin but get very, very sad when I think about doing more transcription

**My phone interview with Gretchen Rubin – in which she gave me some personal advice that really landed with me – inspired me to be a little nicer, online. Gretchen Rubin is my Jiminy Cricket.

Guest Posts at Write To Done (that triggered this whole series):

Guest Post at Write to Done: How to Get a Book Deal: Part 1 – Printasauraus Rex Vs. The Blog: Publishing 2.0

Get Thee A Blog, and A Big One: Guest Post At Write to Done

| filed under: How To Get a Book Deal, Meaning, People

7 people have we need you too.

How to Get a Book Deal. An Evolutionary, Biblical Approach. (This Is Why I am a Writer And Not a Scientist.)

You know the old saw, “if you want to learn something, teach it”?

I’ve got deep, dark nefarious plans to write a book.

But I don’t know a thing about the publishing industry. Agents, proposals, negotiating, and advances are a sexy mystery to me.

So I asked around. I asked

Gretchen Rubin – The Happiness Project, Power Money Fame Sex, Forty Ways to Look At Winston Churchill, Forty Ways to Look at JFK, Profane Waste (with Dana Hoey)

Leo Babauta – The Power of Less

Danielle LaPorte – Style Statement

Erin Doland – Unclutter Your Life in One Week

Josh Hanagarne - I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you…but watch him. A book is coming…ok I can’t keep a secret. Read the piece.

Chris Guillebeau – The Art of Non-Conformity (in stores Fall 2010)

I asked them: how’d you get a book deal, baby? (With variations on that theme.)

And they told me. And it was goooooood.

(You can read my interviews with Erin Doland and Chris Guillebeau, here. I’ll run the interview with Leo Babauta, tomorrow.)

The first two (of four) parts of this mammoth essay (3500+ words!) appeared at Write To Done, as

Here’s the piece, in its entirety.

____________________

How to Get a Book Deal. An Evolutionary, Biblical Approach. (This Is Why I am a Writer And Not a Scientist.)

Want a book deal? Think your magnetic, compelling, ninja talent for the written word is all it takes?

Think again.

Now, says author/blogger/truth-telling goddess Danielle LaPorte, “two-thirds of a publisher’s decision is based on your platform”.

In other words, your blog. How famous are you? How big does your audience and ‘platform’ need to be?

“Pretty fucking huge, apparently…” continues LaPorte, who was in New York last September pimping her latest book proposal to agents and publishers, “because I just got told I’m not famous enough.”

Publishing. It is Ancient History so Study the Scrolls.

Danielle LaPorte knows a lil’ something about the publishing racket.

In a former life, LaPorte was freelance book publicist for publishing houses like Simon and Schuster and Harper Collins. Now she has a juju personal development site called White Hot Truth, a rockin’ inspirational speaking career, and a new TV gig.  And that’s not all: four years ago, she and a co-author wrote Style Statement and sold it to the prestigious Little Brown and Company for a $150,000 advance.

Back then, she didn’t even have a blog.  True story.

Bestselling author Gretchen Rubin didn’t have a blog, either, when she pitched her Happiness Project book proposal to publishers. An established, best-selling author of four books, her read on the blog/book deal relationship is a little less go-blog-go.

In publishing circles, says Rubin, “there is some skepticism about bloggers. Books and blogs are very different mediums. Can a blogger write a book that hangs together as a narrative?”

Still, Rubin’s agent encouraged her to start a blog.

“She planted seeds,” says Rubin, “and I was resistant…” Eventually, though, she started her blog, The Happiness Project, to test her thesis that novelty (new medium, the blog) and consistency (maintaining the blog and writing new content daily) are essential components of happiness.

Now, Rubin has been told that “your blog is more important than your book. Never forget that.”

Those stories – legends of non-fiction book deals signed only three to four years ago and captured without carefully cultivated venus-blog-traps – might be ancient history.

Printasauras Rex? Meet Twitter. It Will Eat You Alive. Play Nice.

It was about a two-and-a-half year process from securing an agent to it [the book] coming off the presses. Painfully long. It is totally jurassic. The publishing industry is antiquated.

Publishers have not seen the future. There are a few who are admitting that things have to change and that they are Jurassic and that the future is social media. The future is multimedia expressions of all forms of literature. – Danielle LaPorte

The publishing industry might be prehistoric, Jurassic and slow-moving, but it will follow the scent of food. Or cash.

You’ve got a blog and an email list and an RSS feed of devoted readers to whom you can announce – and pre-sell – your book? Yes, please.

Gary Vaynerchuk knows this. He also knows his worth. Vaynerchuk worked 5 days a week for seventeen months to create his cult/platform and estimates the audience for Wine Library TV at 90,000 people per episode. He has 850,480 followers on Twitter. When he mentions a wine, it sells.

Craig Haseroty, the owner Sojourn Cellars, a small winery in California, told the New York Times that “nothing has put more people on our database and sold more wine than Wine Library TV.” Vaynerchuk mentioned their wine and their switchboard lit up. In 24 hours, Sojourn Cellars answered 500 phone calls and e-mails. They sold a lot of wine.

That’s the power of suggestion. Vaynerchuk’s followers are vayniacs.

Somewhere out there, Seth Godin and Chris Brogan are smiling, knowingly.

With this kind of clout, the wine-spitting social media maestro Vaynerchuk was not likely to say “book deal? Really, ME? Really REALLY? Oh THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.”

Legend has it that Harper Studio is publishing 2.0. They’ve heard of this little thing the kids call a ‘platform’ and are willing to share the profits – and also the pain and price of promotion – with authors.

And President Bob Miller apparently doesn’t pay a penny over $100K for an advance.

What is a Vaynerchuk with a legion of devoted, possibly tipsy vayniacs to do with a price ceiling?

Blow it up.

Vaynerchuk set up shop in the Harper office.  Tweeted about The 26th Story, the Harper Studio blog. Watched, in real time, as that blog suddenly drowned in traffic.

His point: my people like me. They like my suggestions. They WILL buy my book and make all of us rich and pfooey! I throw down my handkerchief in a faux snit and laugh at your measly $100K!

(This is not a direct quote.)

The result? Gary Vaynerchuk – who casually admits that he doesn’t read books – signed a seven figure (translation for the math challenged: at least a million dollars), ten book deal with Harper Studio. His first book, Crush It, debuted in September 2009, and yeah, it did make the New York Times’ bestseller list.

And he’s not even a writer.

I know. I just died a little, inside, too.

The moral of the story? (And, I argue, the moral is not just a story because it is based on a very comprehensive, validated sample of at least three published authors, which makes it a scientific fact.)

Get a blog, rock it out, and then go get yourself a book deal.

Need a Book Deal? Get Thee A Blog, and a Big One

Newbie authors and big deal bloggers Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta and Erin Doland accidentally and accidentally-on-purpose hacked their way through the publishing jungle with their brain children/addictions – Art of Non-Conformity, Zen Habits and The Unclutterer – firmly in tow.

If Chris Guillebeau was forced to identify his favourite child, he’d waffle: ”I really love them both.”

But I’m going to kill them both if you don’t choose.

“I guess if I had to choose, I’d choose the blog since it allows me to reach more people…”.

Even so, Guillebeau started his blog with a book deal in mind. “It was one of the primary goals of starting my blog,” he says, “I felt like I had a message to share and wanted to write a book.” He knew that it would be “hard to break into the publishing world without a strong online presence” and so along came ”the blog and everything else I did online for nearly a full year prior to getting the book deal.”

Guillebeau has now signed a deal worth more than a handful of m&ms but less than $100K, and “in terms of the time commitment, probably reflective of minimum wage.” What the hell, Chris? “That’s OK with me, though – I feel very grateful that I can do what I love to do”. Well, okay then. You’ve got a book deal and we don’t. Thanks for rubbing it in.

Guillebeau is probably writing that book right now – likely while sitting in a plane or an airport terminal, poor baby – and expects his book The Art of Non-Conformity to be in stores September 2010.

Like Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta also loves his first-born best. His blog “is my baby, and will always hold a special place deep within my heart” but publishing a book was “a fantasy come true,” thanks to his blog:

As my blog took off, publishers and agents approached me. My blog had 26,000 subscribers within the first year, so it was obvious my writing was connecting with a lot of people — people who responded enthusiastically…

It was essential that I built up my audience with my blog before I tried to sell the book. Publishers get a million requests per second (about the same as the number of Google searches done per second), and you need to stand out. If you have a successful blog that has shown your potential as a writer and marketer, you have a good shot at least. If you don’t, you’d better have an AMAZING proposal.

Leo Babauta knows what he’s talking about. He has to. He has six kids to feed which is why I’m so glad his publisher advanced him $80,000 for his 2008 book, The Power of Less.

I digress.

Unlike Guillebeau and Babauta, Erin Doland doesn’t talk about her blog and her book in parental terms, but that is because she has a problem. She is “obsessed with reading and writing books the way druggies pursue their next high.”

In fact, before Doland signed her book deal, she would lie in bed at night and “stare at the ceiling and feel like I had failed to achieve one of my purposes in life.” And then, during the day, she’d bitch about it. “I wasn’t quiet about this failure…Everyone I know was well aware of my feelings of inadequacy over not yet having written a book.”

Thank goodness for her wildly popular blog, The Unclutterer, because “if it weren’t for my posts on Unclutterer.com there wouldn’t be Unclutter Your Life in One Week. My agent and editor both were fans of my writing on the website, and they wouldn’t have had a clue whom I was if it weren’t for the site.”

But they did and they do and Unclutter Your Life in One Week came out November 3, 2009.  Bulging garages and strung-out attics everywhere are detoxing as we speak.

Get Thee an Agent

Josh Hanagarne has some serious blog juju.

World’s Strongest Librarian is less than a year old, but traffic doubles each month; writing furiously helps Hanagarne muscle through Tourette’s Syndrome; ‘his people’ are icky-sticky passionate; and oh yes Seth Godin e-mailed him to say thanks but no thanks to Hanagarne’s offer to guest post.

Why was Godin’s rejection magic?

Because in Godin’s humble, genius-marketing opinion, Hanagarne’s story should be a book, not a guest post, and so he should talk to Godin’s literary agent RIGHT NOW. Seth Godin hooked Josh Hanagarne up.

This is a blogger’s wet field-of-dream. If you write it (blog it!), they will come.

The magical baseball/blogging/cornfield of publishing dreams worked for Leo Babauta, Erin Doland and Josh Hanagarne. But what if your imaginary agent doesn’t hear your frantic law-of-attraction affirmations “I will get an agent and a book deal and a sick, sick advance, I will get an agent and a book deal and a sick, sick advance” and magically appear?

Simple: Go get yourself an agent.

“This is the hardest part”, says Gretchen Rubin, who kicked it old school and knocked on doors.

So did Chris Guillebeau. Yes, even social media savvy and internet famous Chris Guillebeau had to get out there and actively seek representation.

Before his blog waged war on Alexa, Guillebeau “approached everyone I could think of and more. I knocked on doors, posted on my blog that I was looking for an agent, and asked a couple of hundred people for referrals. Some people wrote back, some didn’t, but that’s just how it works.”

Now that Guillebeau’s campaign for world domination is firmly underway, “the tables have turned and I get approached all the time. I’ve been fortunate to receive a lot of good media coverage – New York Times, CNN, Business Week, etc. – and out of that experience, a number of other people have made contact to pitch me on things.”

Recruiting representation worked for Rubin, who oozes kind words about her agent, and it worked for Chris Guillebeau. Guillebeau is utterly, completely, passionately sold on his agent, David Fugate with LaunchBooks. “He’s fantastic,” says Guillebeau, “and the book would not have sold so quickly without his great work. He also spent a great deal of time refining the proposal to make it both more marketable (which I expected) and also much better in terms of content (which I didn’t expect but greatly appreciated)”.

Danielle LaPorte would approve. When choosing an agent, she advises writers to “hold out for the love,” because, after all, “it is a potentially life-changing relationship. Your agent will be your greatest advocate. They will want to get you the most money, because, you know, they’re getting 10-15% of it, so they will want to get you the exposure.”  Not only that, but “the right agent will actually work with you to craft that book. They could be hugely influential in the finished product. They will go to the mat to you in the end on everything from price point to pub date to cover design. It is really important.”

And the writer/agent chemistry doesn’t have to be interpersonal-clicky-butterflies love.

“It may sound contradictory,” admits LaPorte, “but you and your agent don’t need to see eye to eye on the material. You need to have free reign with your voice. An agent can be philosophical opposition and still go get you a good deal and help bolster your career.”

How did she find her agent for Style Statement?

The answer makes for a great story. Malcolm Gladwell (yes! Malcolm Gladwell! Poet-wooing, point-tipping, intellectual whodunit-spinning, best-selling, Malcolm Gladwell!) makes an appearance.

Like doorknockers Chris Guillebeau and Gretchen Rubin, Danielle LaPorte found an agent it an old-fashioned way. She read books.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell “profusely, adoringly thanked his agent” whom, he argued, should be the “next president of the United States or at the very least the CEO of Microsoft.” LaPorte thought, “she’ll do” and e-mailed Malcolm Gladwell.

(Duh! Who wouldn’t?)

LaPorte put on her charming pants and danced. She wrote, “I’m Canadian. You’re Canadian. You’re from Etobicoke. I know how to pronounce Eh-toe-bih-ko. You’re half-black. I have dreadlocks. Here’s my concept. Help me get to your agent.”

He replied within two days, writing, “You’re so charming. How could I refuse?”

To recap: kissing best-selling Godin/Gladwell ass can land you an agent. If that fails, your blog is your baseball/cornfield and if you build it they will come. If that fails, try calling around, knocking on doors, writing letters (and maybe even reading books!) and asking for one directly.

But by all means, by whatever means necessary, get an agent, and a good one, and one you like (even love), because a good agent will help you write and sell a great proposal.

And that’s what you sell, when you hawk a non-fiction book: a proposal. So the agent/author/proposal triangle is important.  Get all the angles right.

Write a Divine Book Proposal

Ah yes, the book proposal. If you’re writing non-fiction, you sell a proposal, not a finished manuscript.

What is a book proposal? It is a hook, a map of the book (the table of contents), your bio, market research (ie where does this fit? Who will read it?), marketing (how will you and the publisher sell the pants off it?) and oh yes, some sample chapters to show that you really can write more than a proposal.

And now, apparently, a book proposal needs to include the weight of your platform. Who are you? How big are you? Who is talking about you? How do you talk back? How much does Alexa and Google love you?

Need help licking the proposal beast? It is easily available online and in the bookstores. Leo Babauta “found a few examples of proposals on the web and picked out the parts I liked best, merging them into one kick-ass document.” Danielle LaPorte used a template created by Linda Severson and then “when it felt right to go out of the box, I did. I am not Times New Roman. I am not double-spaced”.

Even with all the resources easily available, every single author I spoke to (LaPorte, Rubin, Babauta, Doland, Guillebeau) said that when it came time to cook up a proposal, their agent was in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, apron strings tied, stirring the pot.  Agents are helpful critters. That’s why you should get a good one.

Josh Hanagarne found oodles of helpful proposal writing books. He would read how-to-write-a-proposal book, revise his proposal, read another book, revise the proposal, and did that, several times, until his agent said “I want you to stop reading those books.”

So, if you’re stuck, what about a proposal coach?

I put the question to our intrepid authors.

Q. Proposal Coach. Did you use or consider using one?

The answers could be characterized as follows:

A1. What is this mythical creature of which you speak?

Erin Doland: No. I didn’t even know there were such things as proposal coaches.

A2. That sounds like a scam.

Leo Babauta: I didn’t know they existed. If they do, they are probably scammers. The info you need to write a proposal is available free online. A proposal coach would make money on the insecurities of writers, which are notoriously large and numerous.

A3. Your agent is your proposal coach.

Chris Guillebeau: I thought that was the role of a good agent. The problem I see with a proposal coach is that they aren’t the ones who will pitch your project to publishers. I suppose if you’re having a hard time getting a concept together, then such a person could help, but realize that you’d likely end up doing it all over again with a good agent.

A4. Might not be a bad idea.

Gretchen Rubin: That might not be a bad idea.

So there you have it. It might not be a bad idea to get a proposal coach, if that’s your thing, but it is probably a better idea to just get a great agent who will help you write a killer proposal.

The Deal. Negotiating. You Need a Meat-Eater for This.

Back in the day, Oprah had a shark of an agent. Sort of. He’s actually an entertainment lawyer, has been called “the little-known power behind the media queen’s throne”, and Oprah herself says he’s “a piranha.”

Oprah’s piranha/entertainment lawyer is Jeff Jacobs and they met when she was looking for contract advice in 1984. Jacobs advised her to build a brand and create an empire rather selling herself as talent-for-hire. Then he helped her create Harpo.

That worked out fairly well for her.

If Oprah has a piranha, you need a shark. We’re talking about media now, not publishing, but the lesson holds.

The lesson is this: get the right agent. Then, when you’re approaching publishers, “Don’t go with your begging bowl”, cautions Danielle LaPorte, because “for an author, a book is a huge upfront investment”. (Penelope Trunk blogs that writing a book is a ‘time sink’.)

In other words: don’t be afraid to walk away.

And don’t lose sight of your art. That’s why you have an agent. Your job is the content. Do you want to write a book, or any book, or do you want to write your book?

Josh Hanagarne, for example, doesn’t want to write about Tourette’s. He wants to write a memoir of his abusive, dysfunctional relationship with Tourette’s. He wants to “write on a nerve”.

Danielle LaPorte wants to “go back hold my baby a little while longer”, and while she does that, she wonders, “if there were no agents, no publishers,” (heresy! blasphemer!) ”no twitter followers, is this the book you would want to write?”

Are Angels Singing and Monks Chanting? A little?

Is this the book you want to write? Is your agent the shiz? Did you rock out the proposal? Did the proposal-writing process make your manuscript into the book you didn’t even know you could write?  Did your publisher present your agent – who is of course the shiz and a negotiating shark (or piranha) of paleolithic proportions and origins – with a huge oversized cheque with your name written all over it? Or just an adequate cheque?  Adequate is fine. Cash may be king but books are divine.

The writers in this story may be online gurus and entrepreneurs and daily micro-publishers (what is a blog, after all?), but at heart they are bookies. As in book-lovers, not loan sharks.

Chris Guillebeau – straight up – admits that his goal, from the drop, was a book deal. Erin Doland suspects that her “friends are happier than I am now that I have a book under my belt simply because they no longer have to listen to me talk about it”.  Gretchen Rubin was already a best-selling author when she reluctantly started a blog that happily took over the world. Leo Babatua was so happy to get a book deal that he stopped and dropped it like it was hot. “I’m big on booty moves”, says the Zen Habits, simple-living guru, simply.

So there you have it. Want a book deal? Get a blog. A big one. And rock it out.

I know. The (snobbish, print-loving) writer in me just died a little, too. Again.

———-

Here’s a list of all the pieces in the accidentally epic how-to-get-a-book deal series (with from advice from published authors to a wannabe (that’s me):

The How To Get A Book Deal Interviews, with:

* I also did phone-interviews with Josh Hanagarne and Gretchen Rubin but get very, very sad when I think about doing more transcription

**My phone interview with Gretchen Rubin – in which she gave me some personal advice that really landed with me – inspired me to be a little nicer, online. Gretchen Rubin is my Jiminy Cricket.

Guest Posts at Write To Done (that triggered this whole series):

Guest Post at Write to Done: How to Get a Book Deal: Part 1 – Printasauraus Rex Vs. The Blog: Publishing 2.0

Get Thee A Blog, and A Big One: Guest Post At Write to Done

March 27, 2010 | filed under: How To Get a Book Deal, Money, People, Work

16 people have we need you too.

Criticism: It Doesn’t Have To Be a Little Shop of Horrors

Is it true?

I’m both a brazen, noisy man-eater and a fragile flower. Sometimes.

If I ask for feedback, advice or criticism, I want no bullshit straight-shooting from a fierce and tender heart. (At this, Lianne Raymond doth rocketh.)

Or, if a friend – drawing from a wellspring of established good feeling – is sidling up to an Issue, I square my shoulders and embrace it, rough edges and all.

Surprise criticism from strangers?

Levels me.

The first time it happened, online, it was Allyn Hane. He mocked my very first piece at ProBlogger (and my second guest post, ever) but when I checked out what he had to say*, I wasn’t that upset. His rant was more about a schism in a field than it was about me. (And he said I was a great writer, so, you know,free pass.)  I joined in the comments and had a little fun with him by e-mail.

From that rather inauspicious start, Allyn and I connected. He’s actually very sweet (don’t tell anyone – it will destroy his bad boy cred) and we’re cool now**.

That was a great lesson. It provoked me to get real with myself.

Here’s my reality: I have a blog because I eat attention – good, bad, lukewarm, just right, just plain ugly – for breakfast.

And blogs are conversation, right? Not all conversations will fly on the whispering wings of butterflies and hummingbirds.  Sometimes it won’t be pretty.

Not only that, but I live, breathe and write social commentary. Public critique is a boomerang: if I’m going to throw it, it will come back to me.

I realized I’ve got to be prepared for the slings and arrows of outrageous (lack of) manners. The need to move from rice-paper-thin skin to at least a manila-thick epidermis is urgent. (Having a cardboard – or kevlar – hide would be even better.)

And from that crouching realization sprang a guest post I wrote about criticism for Josh Hanagarne’s World’s Strongest Librarian.

(The writer’s mantra: it is all material.)

And from that jump crashed this question:

Is it true?

Unexpected criticism unmoors me and the way I find shore is by asking myself: is it true?

Or: what part of this is true?

Or: if I scrape back the offense, is there anything I can take from this that will make me better?

Or: what part of this is not true?

It is really simple, but it helps a lot.

  • It helps me just discard the stuff that is meant to hurt – and, surprisingly, that kind of stuff is rare.
  • It helps me check my own ego which is sometimes a growling tiger eager to eat you up.
  • It confirms hunches.
  • It dispels illusions.

And sometimes – like surgery – unexpected criticism makes me better.

(Still, no one I know eagerly anticipates the scalpel.)

And when I remember to ask myself “Is this true?” then I also remember something Josh Hanagarne has told me at least twice:

“You’re not a fragile flower. You’re a Venus Fly Trap.”

Feed me.

__________________

*fortunately for both of us the sound for the video wasn’t working

** I can’t link to the piece in which he teased me because earlier this year Allyn Hane did something pretty brave on Blogger Illustrated: publicly admitted he had been “hostile,”  ”full of hate and bitterness” and a “Gordon Ramsay wannabe” and altered his course to be “a good dude” making quality stuff again. He went through his archives and deleted all the nastiness. Wowza.

March 26, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, People

26 people have we need you too.

On Will Power, a Jaunt Through My Archive (I have an archive!), And Cringe-Inducing Just-Starting-Out Posts

I’ve been blogging for almost a year and the following piece was my second post.

It was one of those pieces where you write about the thing you’re trying to figure out. I was trying to figure out will power. I was sure I lacked it.

This piece – did I mention it was only my second post?! -turned into a three part “series”, and it really did help me get a handle on will power.

And that, in turn, helped me build a blog that turned into a living in ten months.

Still, I cringe a little when I read it. The use of the word “frenemy”. The mother joke (who was I???). The weight loss stuff (how tedious). The attempt to be…who? Maybe a blithe and cute girl version of Steve Pavlina?

And just look at the title. Can you believe it????

Since I wrote about weight yesterday on ProBlogger – after all, since I’ve got an Issue to work out, and I’m really vulnerable and fragile-flowerish about it, why not announce it on the biggest site I can find? – I thought it was kind of appropriate to run this piece – complete with tedious weight loss references – again.

And, to be totally honest, I’m exhausted and a bit broken tonight. The words have gone to sleep and they’re urging me to follow. Hence the time-travel through my archives…

How amazing is it that I have an archive, now?

How amazing is it that I get paid to write, now?

How amazing is it that so many of you are here and commenting and have my back?

It truly amazes me. Thank you so much.

_________________

How To Make Will Power Last

Who knows how to make love stay
Help before it gets away
That’s the question of the day
Who knows how to make love stay…

- Doug and the Slugs, “Who Knows How to Make Love Stay” from Music for the Hard of Hearing, 1983

In 1983, a dignified gentleman by the name of Doug, who consorted with slugs, lyrically pondered one of life’s grand questions: how do we make love stay?

I think the answer to this question parallels the answer to my big question of the day/week/month/lifetime: how do we make will power last?

Ah will power, my frenemy.  You get me all excited and hopped up on plans and potential and then desert me me when I am faced with dessert.

The way we think about will power sets us up for failure.  We wonder how to make will power last because we think that will power will help us achieve our goals.  Will power is not an end, but a means to an end.

We think that the answer to a problem that requires personal discipline to solve (weight loss, smoking, overspending) is to simply muster up our will power and muscle through it.  Then, when our weak, underdeveloped will power muscle fails to lift the elephant in the room, or wanders off into the bushes to pee long before the race is over, we feel like failures.  We blame ourselves.  We blame will power.  We blame our mothers.  And none of those things are at fault (well, except maybe your mother.  I’m so sorry).

Yet will power is compelling.  We’ve all had those moments when we are absolutely lit from within, on fire for a project, passion, or cause.  There is magic and force in that moment when desire, motivation and action collide.

Will power is a lightning flash.  It is fleeting.  Temporary.  Evanescent.  Damn it.

Now, cursing aside, let’s not bemoan the fleeting nature of will power, but simply accept it and embrace it.  If humans can turn rushing water into electricity, you and I can transform the momentary thunder and clash of will power into a sustainable source of productive action.

Embrace the energy of will power and launch yourself into a flurry of action.

Make your action plan, make a list of all the resources and tools you need to execute the plan, and gather each and every one of them.  Now.  While you’re still motivated.

Make a list of the risks to your plan and figure out how to contain each and every one of them.

Failure-proof your environment.  If you want to write a novel but TV owns your ass, haul it out to the curb.  Call the cable company, wait your requisite fourteen minutes on hold, and cancel all the channels you like.  When you’re in the grip of will power, it does not hurt as much (kind of like sex and pain, but that’s another post) and by the time you will power wanes, your TV will be bathing your neighbour’s basement in blue light.  (Do not stand outside the window and weep.  That is just bad form.)

On the upside, you won’t whine about your lack of will power anymore.  If anything, you’ll be kvetching that you have too much will power and that it makes you take radical, transformative action.  Crap.

In essence, use will power as the inspiration to build a little lifestyle machine that will keep functioning long after will power has gone for a nap.  Be mercenary.  Use will power when it presents itself but do not depend on it to fuel your success.  You don’t need will power.  You just need a boring system that works whether you are inspired to tend it or not.

So, back to Doug and his 1983 question, “who knows how to make love stay”?

We all do.

If we want something in our lives, we create the environmental conditions necessary to sustain it.  Sunflowers need sun.  Children need love.  Weight loss needs a padlocked fridge, a food diary, a publicly embarassing blog and a passle of distractions.  Success does not require will power, it needs boring systems of small habits performed every day.  Love needs happy people.

And dear reader, if all of that fails, novelist Tom Robbins knows how to make love stay:

Tell love you are going to the Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half.  It will stay.

It might work for will power too.  And if you have cheesecake, do not call me.  We all know I don’t have the will power to say no.

March 24, 2010 | filed under: Uncategorized

12 people have we need you too.

my sexy friend made me celibate. sort of.

The Latin Quarter. Friday night. My friend Joanie is holding court. She knows people. She’s having an mmm-hmmm hot conversation with the guy behind the bar. He looks like a kid but I’m pretty sure he owns the joint. She’s in her fifties and he’s fascinated.

I’m fascinated. She can salsa. She can hold a man’s gaze and say something utterly innocuous and make it sizzle. She’s sultry.

The woman can flirt. If I wrote down the things she says, you’d say what? There’s nothing innately smoky in that sentence.

It’s not what she says. It is how she says it. She says it hot.

So whenever we get together, we speak a mutual language: men.

We like ‘em.

LOTS.

She discovered Plenty of Fish. She announced that she was holding auditions for the role of “boyfriend”. There was a flurry of dating. Lots of dating.

If I’d had a blog then…oh the stories we’d tell.

So when she told me she’d decided to be celibate, I was incredulous. I had to get her to define the term because I was sure we were using it differently.

When you say you’re celibate, what does that mean?

She explained.

Yeah, it pretty much means “not having sex.”

Stunned. STUNNED, I tell you.

I’m not sure I’ve ever known anyone who was celibate.

I’ve known people who weren’t getting laid, but that was never by choice. I have had many conversations about sex, but until then, I’d never had one with a sexy adult who said they’d decided not to have sex.

So…why? What’s that all about? What’s that like? And why, again?

She was exhausted and disappointed with the dating scene. All this energy, activity, heat-seeking action, and very little connection. Holding space for a partner. Yearning, scanning, searching, mingling, chirping, chattering.

She said it was bit hamster-on-a-wheel: a lot of activity, with very little traction or direction.

So she thought she’d opt out. For a bit. Until she got her bearings.

Or until someone inspired her to change her mind.

I’ll admit it: I was not sold.

I was, however, curious.

Joanie is juicy. What was it like for this delicious creature, built for lovin’, to be solo and sexless?

Joanie said that she found it quieted the noise in her head – the noise that she was so accustomed to hearing that she didn’t even hear it, any more.

Until it was quiet. And then it was really quiet.

When she took sex – and not just sex, but Looking For Love – off the table, she started noticing and connecting with the people around her. In the moment. Just to connect. Not to angle, anticipate, interpret, discern, or decode.

She said that when she was ‘in the market’, she’d go to a party and scan the room, trying to figure out who was with whom, who was looking, who was looking at her. And that informed who she talked to and how she talked to them.

It was all agenda. It was all seeking. It was more noise than signal.

And when she decided ‘no more sex for you!’ (to herself), the noise…subsided.

Now, when she went to a party, she was at the party, not in her head. She was with you, not wondering about your orientation or availability.

She just enjoyed herself, in the moment, instead of engineering future imaginary moments.

That blew my mind. Turn down the volume? Be here, now?

Wow.

But I wasn’t giving up sex or maybe A Great Big Love for inner peace.

Screw inner peace.

(I feel very peaceful after sex, for example.)

Right now, I’m digging me some inner peace.

I don’t know if I’m going to claim the word ‘celibate’ because it seems so dried out and well, unsexy, to me – and I doubt I have much of a commitment to the word or the course of action.

I’m not abstaining from fucking so much as avoiding fuckwittery (mine, mostly). I’ve decided I’m not allowed to be in a Grown-Up Relationship until I’m ready to grow up.

So something’s shifted in me in the last three months. I’m not having sex. I’m not collecting men.  But I am pretty damn happy.

And it’s not just me who noticed. At our recent sex toy party (strangely good timing, don’t you think?), my friend’s husband told his wife that I looked “really happy.” My daughter’s daycare leader wondered if I have “a really good man in your life, because you look so…happy.” My sister told me that she’s noticed that I seem really relaxed and…wait for it…happy.

And my friend Joanie was right: the noise was overwhelming but I was so used to it that I couldn’t hear it.

Now, suddenly, I hear all kinds of things that I ignored, before.

Like what the men – and women and children – in my life are really saying to me. And what they mean to me.

And trust me, it’s juicy.

March 23, 2010 | filed under: Love, Meaning, Sex

34 people have we need you too.

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