I’ve Written Ten Bestselling Books and This Is What I’ve Learned
The first time I ghostwrote a book, I was neither paid nor given credit but then again, I wasn’t supposed to be writing it in the first place. It was the early 2000s and I was working for Simon & Schuster in New York. One of our big authors at the time was Chris Matthews and he had just delivered a manuscript that was a quasi-biography of LBJ that was neither a true bio nor a very good book. The publisher sent it back, demanding that Chris give us something closer to his first book, the bestseller and later eponymous show, “Hardball.”
The only problem was the book was scheduled to be published in six months which meant they needed the new draft by the following week.
I was an editorial assistant at the time, but after twenty years in book publishing, my boss was tired of editing books, which meant at the ripe age of 24, I became responsible for editing everyone from Dr. Phil to Stephen Covey to Chris Matthews himself. I called Chris’ assistant and explained the situation.
“That’s definitely not going to work,” she replied. “Chris is going to be on vacation in Ireland all next week.”
Our only hope was that Chris was flying out that night to Dublin and he could call me from the plane. At the time, airplane phones were singular devices, usually stationed near the bathrooms, like a pay phone. And they were a fortune. But by the time we hung up the phone, I turned the quasi-bio of LBJ into a new book, entitled Now Let Me Tell You What I Really Think.
What I learned from that first foray into ghostwriting was that it could never be about the credit, it had to be about the content.
Since then, I have written ten bestselling books, including my own memoir 51/50, which was published in 2010. And with each one, I discovered that the title of Chris Matthews’ book, Now Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, could be the subtitle for almost every other book on the planet.
Books are the forums in which we tell people what we really think — sometimes we do that through memoir, sometimes through self-help, sometimes through business or poetry or fiction.
They offer us the opportunity to express the truths we don’t feel we are hearing from other voices, or in ways they have yet to articulate.
Through my coaching, I developed a concept called Storyboxing, which helps people express those truths in order to fight the good fight. By recognizing that we have a right to grab the mike, by finding our hook, by determining our tactics, and by identifying our suitcase stories (more on that shortly), we are able to step into the ring.
We are able to offer those truths that we see in glimpses, pulling them out into the light, so others might feel that unique human connection that takes place when we pick up a book and say, “Yes! Exactly! This!”
Over the last ten years, I have been a writer, a co-author, an editor, a ghostwriter and a coach. I have helped people shape their stories, their programs, and their memories into books, sharing their biggest ideas, their quietest moments and even some of their deepest secrets with the world.
Which is exactly what I did with my own bestseller.
When I started writing my first book, I was a 30-year old single woman with one year sober who hadn’t been told “I love you” by a non-related male in over five years. I had watched as others got married, had children and even divorced.
And yet I somehow couldn’t make it past date #3. I knew something had to change.
So I decided to go on a date a week and write a book about it. I figured by the end of it, I would end up having a boyfriend or a book. I ended up with both. Spoiler alert: that boyfriend is now my husband and the father to our two kids and he was never one of my dates.
As my husband often says, my book was actually a memoir disguised as a dating book. Because 51/50 was a Trojan horse. On the outside, it was about being single in Silver Lake, looking for love amongst the good, the bad, and the boring of Los Angeles.
But on the inside, it was really an opportunity for me to tell the world what I really thought — about life, about romance, about family and God and trying to grow up when you’ve spent the whole of your twenties drinking and drugging and failing to own stamps.
And it was those truths that made the book float.
It was a first time memoir and yet I ended up on the “TODAY Show” with Kathie Lee (Kathie Lee!) and in USA Today and Marie Claire. Fun fact: it even almost became a TV show with Alison Brie attached to star.
But its biggest feat was offering me the opportunity to help others do the same.
To look at their story and figure out what their hook was — dating book! lots of men! — and then what their real stories were, what I call our suitcase stories.
Whenever I am coaching people, I explain to them the sad but true genesis of suitcase stories. When I was 3 years old, my father was arrested. He was a marijuana smuggler, whose primary territory was the great country of Jamaica. This was back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so you can imagine how much fun they had. Until Reagan became president, putting a quick end to what was known as the Yankee Smugglers (Narcos, I’m still waiting for the call!).
I don’t remember the details on the day of his arrest because I wasn’t there, and if that was the only part I was retelling, I could simply offer, they arrested him.
What I do remember was when federal agents came to inform my mother at the hotel where we were staying. They took our car and after dumping our belongings out onto the street, they threatened to take our suitcases. My mother was crying, our clothes were on the sidewalk and I began to run up onto a grassy knoll, when a police officer came after to me to bring me back to my mother. They left us with the suitcases because we were white and they had compassion. (I can promise you in a thousand other stories involving Black and Brown mothers, they don’t get to keep the suitcase).
But when I share what happened that day, that’s the story I tell: not simply, my dad got arrested, but the memory of our clothes on the ground, the suitcases making all the difference for a young mother who had never wanted this life to begin with and the little 3-year old girl who just wanted to get away.
Those are the stories that float. The ones that offer the searing metaphor, the sad but true moment, the heart of the Trojan horse.
Over the last few years, I have been simultaneously ghostwriting books as well as creating marketing and fundraising content for non-profits across the world, but I don’t see much difference between the two worlds. Because both are just trying to tell the truth, moving past the easy descriptions of our lives or our work, and into the soul-inspiring gospel of what we really think.
We all have our destinations. Writing is the way we get there.
And that’s what makes a bestseller…whether it is being written on a plane for Chris Matthews or written so that by the end of the book, there might be a chance for love.
