“Something that irritates you and won’t let you go. That’s the anguish of it. Do this book, or die. You have to go through that. Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”—James Baldwin

Welcome to the endurance portion of your book.

Welcome to the part where this book will happen or else a part of you, something deep inside, will cease to exist.

You were put here, in this very moment, to Do This Book. 

Whether your goal is making major book club lists, most anticipated lists, so many lists; or self-publishing so the gift of your story reaches the hands who need it most, endurance is what gets you there.

Most of you know my story.

On my first coherent day in a hospital bed after a life-altering diagnosis, July 2017, I said to my husband, “I haven’t published my book yet.”

Two years later I self-published a book I’d been working on for twenty years. Six months later I started an MFA program to finish my second book, Blue Hour, which took me from signing with an agent to Obama’s summer reading list, to speaking at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (the largest in the US).

Endurance.

Because if I hadn’t kept going, none of that would have happened. The biggest goal of my life wouldn’t have happened.

If I hadn’t kept going, a piece of me would cease to exist.

Do This Book is your invitation to keep going with me to call on when you need accountability, brainstorming, advice, story development, comfort, confidence and a reminder of who you are so you can finish.