Three years later, it turns out I really miss human beings and the physical experience of going to a workspace (ideally designed like a Four Seasons hotel) where there’s a built-in community and professional networking abounds.

Not so with writers. You have to proactively find your peeps.

This month, I attended five literary events in the attempt to further build my writing community. This included Cristina Henriquez via an Illinois Library event; Yiyun Li via the University of Chicago; Jennifer Egan via the Newberry Library’s Writers on Writing series; and Louise Erdrich and Lauren Groff via Center for Fiction. All of these were virtual and the latter is the only one I paid to attend (the audio and video weren’t syncing for the first 15 minutes and it was nowhere near as enjoyable or audible as I imagine it would be to bathe in the actual presence of those two goddesses).

While I left each event having learned something, none of them solved the loneliness problem.

Then I discovered what does work: you have to actually leave the house!

Easier said than done for an anxious homebody, but last weekend, Life of Pi author Yann Martel and my #girlbossgoal Rebecca Makkai appeared at a Chicago Humanities Festival event in Bridgeport (a neighborhood on the south side of the city).

This one required a very different energy than a Zoom. . .and induced a panic attack, even though I was highly motivated to go!

First, Life of Pi had a formative effect on me as a young lawyer and reinforced my fervent desire to help animals, including years of pro bono work for animal protection organizations.

Second, I had the pleasure of taking classes with Yann Martel’s most lovely wife, at The Novelry and consider myself in a parasocial relationship with the couple. (Her Flow classes are amazing!)

Third, unlike most author events and book signings, this one was in the afternoon on a Saturday - the most perfect time in the world to attend an event with no impact on my nighttime routine (6 pm dinner and Netflix, 8 pm in-bed reading, lights out by 10 pm).

Finally, I had a fresh cut and highlights, along with new silver shoes, and I felt ready for the world!

But man, was it ROUGH getting there.

Not only was I super anxious about leaving my dog for hours (I am always anxious about leaving her), but I also received an email that the event preceding Yann’s talk was with the mayor of Chicago and therefore had increased security (no bags, no liquids, metal detectors, etc.). Naturally, this sparked my anxiety about protests, violence and terrorist attacks (some of this was induced by last season’s Slow Horses when Nathan Shelley from Ted Lasso is the mayor but also, I suppose, actual reality?)

Amped up on fear, I was cranky with my sister and super anxious with my mom. Two drag-racing BMWs almost nicked me when I merged onto the highway, and snarled traffic made the drive take 1 hour instead of 28 minutes. As I circled the south side looking for a spot, all I wanted to do was go home!

But I finally found a spot and made it just in time to see, in-person, two of my fave authors. Just sharing the same physical space and sensing their energy made everything fade away and the conversation was delightful (until the Q&A took a turn towards politics, but what can you do.)

Afterwards, as Yann signed my copy of his new novel, Son of Nobody, I told him I am a writer, I know and love his wife Alice, how his novel Beatrice and Virgil ripped my heart out, and how much I adored his writing. Only later did I realize it felt totally normal to tell this Booker Prize-Winner that I am a writer—because. . . I am! (This Substack, one completed manuscript and Draft 6.5 of a second novel are proof, baby!)

The other highlight was befriending a very nice woman named Zsuzsa in the signing line. When I recommended Rebecca’s Great Believers (about the AIDS epidemic in Chicago) and Yann’s Beatrice and Virgil (a book about a taxidermist, a writer and the Holocaust), she politely declined and said, at 78, she only wants to read happy things. Respect.

We got to chatting and this lovely stranger shared she found it really hard to leave the house that day. She too had been cranky with her loved ones and didn’t want to go alone, and the CTA buses and trains are so scary to take even with her Mace, but she made herself come and how wonderful Yann and Rebecca were, and how special it is to meet people like me.

I took Zsuzsa by the arms and cried: “SAME!”

Then—career highlight thus far—when I told her I was a writer, she asked me for my business card! This was the first time I handed it to someone outside of my family and, as you can see, I leaned into the opposite of my lawyer-business-card visual branding:

And I signed it as a keepsake for when I win the Pulitzer.

It was wonderful!!!

The thing I had been trying to solve with Zooms and online writing classes and YouTube livestreams had resolved itself in the most glorious way, a situation I almost avoided because of my anxiety and increasing fear of going out in the world, but pushing through my panic to see two of my favorite authors and meet a sparkly-eyed fellow book lover was 100% worth it.

I therefore resolved that while I don’t need to go to all the events in Chicago, and surely, my nervous system cannot handle such strain, I do need to leave my house more to build an in-person writing community.

Also, to help myself further help myself, day after the event I asked my doctor to prescribe stronger long-term anti-anxiety medication.

We’ll see if it works!

If you or a loved one suffers from low-grade agoraphobia and any grade of anxiety, lives in the western Chicago suburbs and is open to a daytime writing meet-up at a pet-friendly location, let me know! I am happy to organize. :)

First, the warmest welcome to new subscribers! I so appreciate all the folks who joined after my last essay re: how the last three years have looked post-BigLaw. It is lovely to reconnect with so many friends!

Writing

A quick update on writing things: first, my querying quest continues for my first novel. Have I even told you the name of it? When I started it in 2022, it was RICH GIRL ENERGY, which I still love but as it evolved, it has now become PORTRAIT OF A GIRLBOSS. (Yes, I am aware the term “girlboss” is culturally fraught but it’s still my favorite verb.)

The genesis was reading a nonfiction book about one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires (a tech female founder) and wondering how she kept up her personal relationships. Then I gave her a bohemian best friend and co-founder who does NOT want to build a huge company; she wants a life. Then I gave them a company I still want to create: luxury wellness jewelry (like blinged out Oura rings/tech bracelets). Finally, I gave them a glamorous billionaire investor, a Sheryl Sandberg-Amy Griffin type, in an attempt to defend Miranda Priestley (it would appear the filmmakers have beaten me to the punch with the forthcoming Devil Wears Prada sequel, but that’s okay!)

Anyway, waiting for query responses is excruciating. In the interim, I did ask my buddy Claude to make me an Excel spreadsheet with a formula-thingy to automatically count all my queries and other writing submissions (residencies, workshops, short stories, essay pitches) into a beautiful dashboard so when I hit 100 rejections total, I get to buy myself something fabulous. I need to be whinging more things out into the world, but I don’t love rejection. . . the writer’s dilemma, indeed!

Reading Updates

Last month, I read some great books, including one rare bird I read twice, back-to-back, which deserves its own deep dive per the below. My March novel intake was geographically quite diverse. I love that I can travel across the US, over to Beirut, down to the Antarctic and then over to the UK and pop into the Arctic all while lying on my Tempur-Pedic mattress here in the Chicago suburbs. Books are magic!

• In anticipation of an author event with Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney for her latest, Lake Effect, I read her first two books back-to-back, The Nest and Good Company. I enjoyed Good Company with its Hollywood/creative partnership vibes, though sadly did not make it to the event due to a hailstorm of biblical proportions (which has, however, resulted in me making at least 30 new spam roofing caller friends per day!)

• In light of what’s happening in Beirut right now, I couldn’t stop thinking about The True Story of Raja the Gullible so I tracked down An Unnecessary Woman by the same author, Rabih Alameddine. This one features a similarly snarky, awkward, brilliant, insecure Beirut narrator but as an older woman. It has so many literary references it inspired me to locate my 1999-era Proust and put it on my bedside to look at, and possibly, to re-read.

• Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, a Reese’s Book Club pick. A woman washes up on a subantartic remote island populated by a single human family and many seals, penguins and albatrosses. There are a lot of twists and secrets and reveals and dramatic sequences, all very filmic and quite. . . wild! I loved the themes of hope and forgiveness and grace, especially while facing the climate apocalypse.

The Ministry of Time Deep Dive

Heading to the opposite pole, this brings us to the book I read twice (back to back), The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley and had to deconstruct as part of my “Reading as a Writer” mission (more of these book reviews here and here!)

The Ministry of Time came out in 2024 and somehow didn’t land in my orbit until last month when I heard someone rave about it on a podcast — and I am so grateful. (As an aside, there are just so many ways books find you, and that serendipity continues to amaze me!) True to my usual practice, I went into book completely blind. No summary, no reviews, no idea who the protagonist or the author was, I just downloaded it to my Kindle and started reading.

The Premise

The Ministry of Time’s premise is rooted in a real historical figure — Graham Gore, a Victorian polar explorer lost in the Arctic — who comes through a time-travel door operated by the UK Ministry of Time into the 21st century. The Ministry pulls people through from various points in history as an experiment and then assigns each “expat” a bridge: a handler/spy charged with helping them navigate the transition, assimilate into the 21st century and monitor them 24/7.

The female unnamed narrator is Graham Gore’s bridge. She is Cambodian-British, fiercely ambitious and determined to prove herself within this bureaucratic institution (which I imagined to be very MI5 a la Slow Horses).

The plot itself is a masterclass. Twists I didn’t see coming, secrets and reveals that reframe everything you thought you understood and force you to go back and read it again. The whole novel was propulsive in the best sense. Every night, I kept telling myself one more chapter. . . and thusly, my Oura sleep scores were on the lower end of “Good” for a week but it was worth the sacrifice!

The Structure

The novel’s structure alternates between third-person Graham Gore chapters (numbered in roman numerals) and first-person the female bridge chapters (in Arabic numerals). I loved, as a reader, getting two full interiorities, two ways of experiencing the same collision of the characters. And as a writer, I took careful notes of how the author moved the story forward via the two POVs, and how the overall structure is quite circular, leading to the urge to read it again upon finishing.

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Genre Mash-Up and Tone

The genre is basically everything: it’s time travel and climate fiction and a spy thriller and a workplace comedy and a super sexy romance. It’s magical realism and sci-fi and futuristic and very-now. It is deeply, unexpectedly funny, and then in the very next breath, serious and profound, and it is weird AF. I loved it.

Time travel is simply treated as a fact with no technical justifications, which frees up the brain space for everything else: the workplace drama and the protagonist’s pure ambition to succeed in the (near-future) UK Ministry, the buddy comedy energy of the other time travelers from across history trying to acclimate to the present, and the adventure tale based on a real-life polar expedition.

The through-line that holds these disparate subplots together is the humor. The funniest scenes are when the expats get together and try to adapt to the near-future: one uses Tinder, Graham Gore is called a DILF, they listen to Spotify. The cutthroat workplace politics and the intense female supervisor-mommy-energy also made me laugh, and very much relate. Oh, and there is sex, romance, familial love and friendship.

Not only is it funny and sexy, but also, dark. The Victorian era white male polar explorer POV (including his interactions with indigenous people and his imperialist worldview) is in contrast to the narrator’s experience as a Cambodian-British woman. Her sections flash back to how her mother’s experience as a Cambodian refugee colored every facet of her childhood, and that history (colonialism, genocide, displacement, survival, grief) is woven through the entire novel, along with the narrator’s relationship with her own identity (there is a great list of the ridiculous superficial questions asked of her, including Do you know Angelina Jolie?)

The Themes

There are many to tease out but the three that resonated most deeply with me as a reader:

First, the ambition theme runs through everything: what we want, what we’re willing to do for it, who we become in the getting. This is, of course, one of my favorite things to think about and it is rare to find great female-work-ambition novels out there in the world (which is why I wrote one).

Next, the book’s examination of power, imperialism, and what governments owe the individuals across time and geography is relentless and more than a little tied to climate change. Because it’s obvious the author was having FUN writing this book, none of these darker themes comes across self-serious or didactic but digestible and resonant when coupled with DILF jokes and hot sex. To me, this is the best tone one could achieve when transmitting the most serious of topics.

Finally, there is the concept that has stayed with me longest: hereness and thereness. The author develops this as a framework for the time travelers as a way of describing the physiological, temporal and existential challenge of keeping your soul coherent across a rupture in time. But it applies just as cleanly to anyone who has ever been a refugee, or left a country behind, or lost a family, or simply had to start over and build a life in a place that doesn’t yet know who you are.

I’m still pondering this hereness and thereness, and how it applies to any rupture and reinvention. And relatedly: how time is circular and recurrent, polychronic though tending toward the historical inevitability of repetition, each soul on a non-linear and interconnected journey. This very much appeals to my little Buddhist heart.

Reading as a Writer: What I’m Taking Away

After I finished, I immediately went back to the beginning and started to re-read. I was struck by how smart the author assumes her readers are and her confidence in their ability to hold multiple disparate things together.

Then I read some reviews (something I rarely do, but I was a little confused on the ending so needed some crowdsourcing). One thing that stunned me: many people criticized the novel for its SAT vocabulary! I admit, I clicked my Kindle dictionary at least three times a chapter but I loved it. Others found the density of metaphors exhausting; I found it intoxicating.

All of this led to the great and persistent takeaway of my study of writing (and all art): everything is a matter of taste, and of timing, and of where you are in your life when a book (or other art) finds you. As a writer, you cannot engineer any of this in your readers. You just write the story you need to write and, like Bradley, hopefully have fun doing it!

This one found me at exactly the right moment and I enthusiastically give it five stars. If the time travel, vocabulary or the literary language sounds like friction to you, try it and see - you might love it! And if it sounds like a cornucopian feast of all the things that make reading so magical: pick this one up, please, and let me know what you think.

Have you ever read (or listened to or watched) something that felt like it arrived at the exact moment in time you needed it? Please tell me!

Was it the most lucrative professional decision? No. Was it the best decision I’ve ever made? Hell yes.

But even for someone who literally went back to school in her 30s to study psychology — specifically the research on identity, stress, and resilience — and has read every book ever written about career pivots and leaving the law, my “journey” from Law Firm Partner to Unknown Unpublished Novelist has been a trip.

The professional identity shift wasn’t seismic but gradual, circular and weird? Looking back on the past three years now, it happened in phases: the shedding of my lawyer identity, muddling through how to be a writer, and then re-integrating my lawyer and writer identities in year three.

Here is basically how it went:

Year One: The Shedding (March 2023–March 2024)

After twenty-one years of lawyering, what I most wanted when I resigned in March 2023 was to never see or think or read about anything law-related ever again and to give myself time to simply recover, both physically and mentally.

This entailed:

• Deleting all my law-related newsletters and news apps

• Hiding all my blazers and high heels and suitcases

• Sleeping like it was my job — mid-morning naps, mid-afternoon naps, 8 p.m. bedtimes, no alarm clocks

• Buying and wearing (daily) a series of Free People onesies jumpsuits that horrified my sister but gave me great pleasure, along with “cool” clear acrylic glasses and baseball caps.

• Doing approximately one million puzzles and listening to every podcast ever made, particularly about career changes and writing

• Taking a Harvard creative nonfiction class to maybe write a nonfiction book about everything I’d learned in my other Harvard psychology master’s classes

• Signing up for NaNoWriMo, writing a first draft of a novel about legal witches fighting climate change in one month, and LOVING IT (the writing; not the first draft—the first draft was certifiably shitty.)

• Adopting a second dog, Gracie, as a sister to my firstborn, Charlie

The hardest parts of Year One:

• Feeling utterly lost, with no idea where I was going at first, only that I was disinterested in being a lawyer

• Dealing with PTSD from my very worst workplace/travel experiences (holes in planes! getting stuck in trucker climate protests! toxic everything!), all of which exacerbated my strong hermit tendencies

• Buzzing with irritation at everyone and everything

• The low-key depression of not getting dressed up or even having a reason to leave the house

• Judging myself harshly for napping every day, for wearing the aforementioned jumpsuits, for not immediately diving into something new

• Losing all my “statuses” — including, most crucially, my United 1K — and missing them terribly

• Slowly learning that peace and contentment actually feel better than shopping sprees in Paris. But damn, I missed those shopping sprees in Paris.

By the end of Year One, I thought I maybe wanted to write novels as my career but I was grieving the loss of the identity attached to my external status markers. When my United 1K and other VIP things faded away, I had to find out what was actually left which was room to learn and be curious and again. The word “Lawyer” was verboten.

Year Two: The Muddling (March 2024-March 2025)

In 2024, I started treating writing like a job. I set a schedule. I started working on my first real novel about a female founder torn between her angel investor and best friend (the legal witches draft from NaNoWriMo 2023 went straight into the drawer).

I continued taking Harvard creative writing classes and was admitted to the creative writing master’s program (where I met so many lovely new writer friends!) before I realized: I didn’t need another degree. I have enough! Instead, I enrolled in The Novelry where I also made some lovely new writer friends. I learned a ton. Loved the community and the guest speakers and the entire experience, which helped me finish, revise and way-over-polish my female founder novel.

I relished the glory of the non-billable-hour writing life — until I started missing structure, and what do you know, I downloaded a free time tracker and started billing my hours again.

I still wore the Free People jumpsuits but dipped into some "artsy” Frank & Eileen tops and Vuori joggers.

I realized I wasn’t as angry/impatient/stressed/annoyed by everyone and everything as I used to be, but still, I would drop a class/Zoom/call in a hot second if I didn’t like the vibe.

By Q2 2024, I realized I identified, unambiguously, as a writer. And I wanted to tell people! That summer, I built a website! I started a newsletter! I started an Instagram!

I read all the books.

And in Fall 2024, I started going to author events — including Richard Powers, Rebecca Makkai, Fredrik Backman — with my sister as my date. I sat in those rooms and thought: this is the most magical, special career I could ever choose, and I need to give it my all so I can one day call these people colleagues!

And in November 2024, I wrote the first draft of my paper mill mill novel during NaNoWriMo (though it wasn’t exactly a paper mill dynasty but a Harry Winston-influenced jewelry dynasty with a high-powered NYC lady lawyer before I realized my female founder started a jewelry company and surely I cannot only write about jewelry and ambitious women. Or can I?)

The Hardest Parts of Year Two

• I grieved so much that year. Not only my lawyer identity (and salary), but my beloved firstborn dog, Charlie, moved to heaven in May 2024 after years of illness. I’m so grateful I was home with him every day in his last year of life; losing my dog-person after 15 years was horrible. The day after Charlie died, those mothereffing cicadas invaded the Midwest with their apocolyptic noise, then, Gemma the Kitty got really sick (from grief), requiring hospitalizations!

• Suffice it to say, my draft novel took a very dark turn the summer of 2024. It was not a good time, nor was it a helpful series of revisions so later that year, I scrapped everything I wrote that summer and started anew.

• I missed working with people!! Most especially mentoring young associates and being mentored by young associates. I felt so, so lonely even though I joined many a writing Zoom but I longed for the charge of walking into the United lounge, my “usual” hotel room at the Conrad DC, the Equinox in the San Francisco Four Seasons on Market Street. All of these places turned into novel settings, btw.

• I still napped most every day and felt ashamed about my lack of energy. And I judged my sub-part output in terms of billable hours - I repeatedly failed my self-imposed schedule and then would be irritated with myself.

By the end of Year Two, I was a Harvard drop-out in a wrist brace from overtyping. I had over-worked eight drafts of my female founder novel and a first draft of my paper mill novel. I was still a little scared, my body still a little burned out and I was 100% certain I wanted to be a writer!

Year Three: The Integration (March 2025-March 2026)

Shortly after my second anniversary of quitting the law firm, I realized — with some urgency — that I needed to actually sell a novel and make money to turn writing into an actual career and not a hobby.

So in 2025, I finally finished revising my female founder novel and started preparing to query agents to try to get a traditional publishing deal.

As I prepared to query my novel, I started hardcore revising the first draft of my paper mill novel and made it to Draft 4 by the end of Year 3. It is good! And I actually left my house for overnight trips, including my first research trip to go see paper mills in Appleton, Wisconsin, obviously.

Feeling very fancy with a finished novel, I treated myself to some new non-athleisurewear clothes. I bought A DRESS and real, non-sweatpant-pants. I got my hair done. I felt very me again.

I read all the books.

I found myself digging deep into various luxury paper manufacturers websites, downloading their sustainability reports and then reading them with a highlighter and realized: maybe I missed being a lawyer?

Cut to:

The hardest parts of Year Three:

• I did some legal consulting calls and at first, it felt incongruent with my new writer identity but kinda fun to get paid (again) for my expertise.

• Then I did a longer-term legal consulting project for a start-up that was insanely chaotic, and I went into a deep dark hole, wondering why I was doing it when I didn’t need the money and I had committed to become a WRITER. When my brother reminded me I wrote a whole novel about start-up culture, it helped me view the gig as “Research” but still, I was mad at myself for doing it and it drained a month’s worth of energy from me.

• Then I did another much-better-organized legal consulting project and it was fine. Working with a team and helping clients and getting positive feedback was refreshing after living in the querying dead zone. Deadlines were welcomed. Getting paid money for my effort was a joy.

Most importantly, I remembered how competent I feel as a lawyer! How much experience I amassed working all those hours and years. How proud of myself I am/was to master ridiculously niche areas of law (e.g., the Equator Principles, bald eagle permits, hard rock mine leases, offshore oil and gas in Africa, global sustainability guidelines, public company disclosure, etc.) and work on projects on six continents. How lucky I was to get paid to travel the world and meet so many interesting, lovely clients.

I realized I am still interested in sustainability/environmental law, and so grateful I got to do it for over two decades. I had spent nearly three years wanting to erase that lawyer identity, and then I found myself really proud of it—who knew??

By the end of Year Three, I remained firmly committed to becoming a full-time, professional novelist. And also realized I am, and will forever be, a lawyer, too. That is allowed and okay! I leveraged my lawyer butt-in-the-chair work ethic and scorched earth research and fast writing skills into a few novels in three years, and putting the same amount of effort into querying agents while learning how to self-publish. Maybe one day, I’ll do more sustainability/legal consulting on the side, in between novels. I can do this!

Looking Ahead Into Year Four

As a writer, I want to finish my second novel, make money from my first, try to get an essay published.

As a human, I am grateful for the total autonomy over my life and schedule. Feeling healthy, sleeping like a rock star (only crowns on my Oura, baby), no cortisol spikes except hearing cicadas and leafblowers, no stressful travel, being genuinely content while also aspiring to be a Booker Prize-nominated-bestselling-adapted-for-film-and-tv author with a PJ and a house in Malibu. . . this is the best life and one I can afford because of the sacrifices I made all those years of lawyering.

So I want to let myself ENJOY this year ahead instead of worrying I’m not working enough/posting enough/doing enough/getting published. If it’s meant to be, I’ll get a traditional publishing deal and if not, I’ll self-publish. Either way, I’ll put a book out into the world. How lucky to live in a time to have this choice!

The fashion identity crisis has been the most humbling ongoing subplot. In Year Four, I’d really like to explore the Frank & Eileen sweatshirt blazer life. I feel like that is just the right vibe for me.

What I Want You to Know:

To Anyone Still in the BigLaw or Other High- Adrenaline Life

I miss you. You are awesome, brilliant and you work incredibly hard and you do important, difficult, super smart specialized things while contributing greatly to our economy and culture and have unbelievable stamina Also: if you don’t like it, or if you don’t feel healthy, it is possible to want less and do what you want more. The wanting-less is the hardest part!!!

To Anyone Who Recently Switched Careers and Is Still Waiting to Feel Okay

The recalibration takes longer than anyone tells you! But the floundering is not failure. The naps are not weakness — Andrew Huberman naps; it is a total power move. And, specifically for lawyers turned creatives, if you are accustomed to measuring your life in 6 minute increments, you have to simply accept four hours of intense cognitive work is not laziness. It is science. You are not behind if you’re not working 12 hour days/7 days a week. (And you can bill or not bill time spent on your new career, it is up to you!)

To Anyone Who Has Made The Transition from BigLaw to Creative Work

Hit me up! Seriously. I know there are so many lawyer-writers, writer-lawyers, etc out there and I would love to organize a support group. :)

In Closing

On the other side of three years, I’m no longer negating the East Peoria-girl who worked for Latham in Washington DC and made partner at Kirkland. I’m super proud of her!

But I’m more proud of me for leaving law and trying a new career instead of staying stuck and chronically stressed/sick/periodically burned out/deeply unhappy at the end.

My sister said I became a happy human when I stopped being a lawyer. That tracks, but both of those professional identities are mine.

What’s left now is to tolerate the silence of querying agents and the cringe of social media and the terrifying lack of external feedback while writing something I hope my future readers will enjoy. I really want to produce something that matters again — not measured in billable hours or a salary, but in whether it makes someone feel entertained, a little less alone and a lot more hopeful.

If I can do that, it will have been worth all the uncertainty of switching careers. And if I can’t do that, then maybe I have a future as a fashion stylist for career-changing ex-lawyer ladies. As you can tell from my jumpsuit collection, I have quite an eye for this.

Things are weird. As I write this, it seems like we are definitely in WWIII and simultaneously, a civil war of sorts. My aforementioned obsession with the Epstein files and Kathy Ruemmler continues. And last month, Eric Dane, James Van Der Beek and Catherine O’Hara—all important cultural figures in my Gen X life—tragically passed away. Frankly, everything seems dark and pointless.

But life must persist. Joy must be sought. When I read a beautiful novel or see an adorable raccoon video on Instagram, I’m reminded of the critical need to counter my ingestion of war and death and murder and incompetent orange buffoons with art and love and animals and fashion. Additionally, I tell myself: I must especially keep working on Draft 4 of my second novel to prevent myself from endlessly refreshing gmail to see if an agent will ever, ever get back to me on my first.

And thus, in February, I indulged in many great books, watched some excellent TV and listened to A+ podcasts.

Here is my quick review:

Everything I Read in February

• Audition by Katie Kitamura: Criminally short (200 pages). I still don't "get" it and may never . . but I liked it! In two parts, it’s about an actress, her husband and a young man who works with her on a play and claims to be her son. Her writing style is very unique.

• Heart the Lover by Lily King: Slightly longer than Audition at 256 pages but still a good 100 pages short of my novel-length expectations. Very propulsive, and made me cry (which doesn’t happen often). I didn’t realize the characters were connected to those in Writers & Lovers so would like to re-read. Euphoria will always be my favorite, though.

• Playworld by Adam Ross: A nice thick juicy coming-of-age in NYC novel (500 pages +). Set in the late 1970s following a teenage child actor navigating home, school and work (and an illicit affair with a family friend his mother’s age), it was really troubling and beautifully written (though the ending seemed a little abrupt?)

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman: I am such a sucker for productivity books, especially those with Zen undertones. I heard him on a podcast years ago and picked up this book - it gave me a lot to think about (I also enjoy his Substack).

• The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand: I’ve listened to every excellent episode of her Books, Beach and Beyond podcast, and admire her uber-discipline and work ethic and boss vibes, but realized I haven’t read one of her books in years. I picked up this new one, written with her daughter Shelby - it’s juicy, fast, boarding school vibes, easy read, and taught me about Snapchat and GenZ behaviors like a pulpy sociology book. I will definitely read the sequel when it comes out this fall.

• A Separation by Katie Kitamura: I so rarely read two books by the same author in a month but because Audition was too short (see above) and I didn’t completely understand the point of it, I needed more of this author, so picked up this one about a woman looking for her husband in Greece and I am pleased to say I understood it. Yay!

Everything I Watched (Or Attempted To Watch) in February

• I so rarely watch movies and couldn’t summon the motivation to continue watching One Battle After Another or Sinners after the first 30 minutes of each. One Battle confused me (was Sean Penn’s character supposed to be funny??), and in Sinners, there is a gnarly snake scene and that is just something that will never, ever appeal to me. I almost stopped Yellowstone for this very reason. If you’ve finished them, please tell me if it’s worth the commitment and if there are any other snakes in Sinners!

  

• Instead, I rewatched Homeland and made it through Season 6 mid-way before it turned into reality with the Iran situation and I had to stop. I would really feel much better about the current war if I knew Carrie and Saul were in charge of everything.

• Famous Last Words: Eric Dane (on Netflix) made me bawl and bawl! I’ve been a fan since McSteamy, admired his work in Euphoria (which is coming back soon-yay!), and I am very sad about his passing, especially how it will impact his daughters. This show was as excellent as the Famous Last Words: Jane Goodall episode. God bless Brad Falchuk for doing these.

• To counter the terrorism of Homeland and the grief of watching people’s last words, I started my THIRD rewatch of Schitts Creek in honor of the magnificent Catherine O’Hara. Every single uniquely-inflected word she says as Moira still makes me laugh out loud. She was such a treasure. I still wish I had her and David’s wardrobe.

February’s Favorite Podcasts

• I’m sure you all already listen to Good Hang which is, in tenor, as sweet and funny at Schitts Creek. I have loved every single episode and consider Amy Poehler one of my closest (parasocial) friends.

  

• My go-to get-ready-in-the morning podcast is Aspire with Emma Grede. I feel like Emma and her guests would really “get” the novel I’m currently querying about a balls-out female founder who wants nothing more than to turn the wellness jewelry company she started with her best friend into a billion-dollar brand. I especially loved the Issa Rae episode and how Issa explained “I just want to create people’s favorite shit.” I now have a post-it reminding me of my same purpose.

• I also loved Margot Robbie on Smartless. Those boys rarely know how to interview a woman and I stopped my regular listening months ago because Jason and Will are too mean to Sean, but I had to push play on this one. She is so cool and talented. I will def watch Wuthering Heights when it is available to stream.

Thank you for reading!

What have you read, watched or listened to recently that you enjoyed and recommend? Please share!

Since leaving the law in 2023, I completely restricted my ingestion of the news. I do not seek it out or subscribe to any news-related newsletters, I don’t listen to news-related podcasts (other than Pivot, very occasionally), and I deleted all my news apps. Reading the news only makes me anxious about end times.

And then last week happened. I was already deep in research mode for my novel about two sisters battling over a paper mill fortune, one of whom is a New York City superlawyer. I had spent hours drafting scenes of the lawyer sister in courtrooms arguing an appellate case and later, the probate battle and I had interviewed one of my best friends, a real-life appellate powerhouse, about arguing in federal circuit court and the Supreme Court (I was so lucky she had an argument in the 7th Circuit in Chicago and then made time to play with me afterwards!)

I was immersed in thinking about lady lawyers’ ambition, power, and the emotional cost of both, crafting this fictional, complicated character who loves luxury goods (I promise, she is not autobiographical) and then my phone lit up with texts last Wednesday forwarding an article about Jeffrey Epstein buying an Hermes bag for Kathy Ruemmler (the General Counsel of Goldman Sachs and one of my former colleagues). I am obsessed with many things, but bad ass boss ladies and Hermes bags are in the top five (the novel I wrote about female founders features both!)

In case you haven’t followed this, Kathy Ruemmler is a superlawyer who served as Obama’s White House Counsel and co-chaired my former law firm’s white collar crime practice. We worked together in the Latham DC office before she went into the Obama administration and then crossed paths a few times when she returned to Latham afterwards. I didn’t know her well but she always wore amazing shoes. She was always nice to me.

I hadn’t followed the earlier Epstein file releases due to my news blackout and didn’t know she was front page news for her Epstein ties back in 2023 (this timeline helped bring me up to speed). And even though I’d sworn off the news long ago, still I opened the first article about Kathy and the Hermes bag with the naïve confidence of someone who thinks she can eat just one Thin Mint after depriving herself of chocolate.

Reader, I could not read just one article.

I clicked another. And another. And then I found myself pulling a hundred articles into OneNote and skimming what felt like a thousand emails from the latest tranche of released files, at first to search for “Hermes” and figure out what kind of bag (was it a Birkin? A Kelly? A special order?), all under the banner of “research” for my novel, but then I got sucked into the dark underbelly of it all.

Some of the emails brought me back to the BigLaw days of working with and for mostly men: the inappropriate emails referring to one’s anatomy; the boundary-pushing clients demanding meetings at their convenience; the complicated power dynamics of trying to stay professional when the client keeps pushing the line. In some of the messages, Kathy seems chummy; in others, she sets boundaries.

She has repeatedly said she regrets every knowing him and if she knew what he was up to, she would have never been associated with him. As a criminal defense attorney, she and every other criminal defense attorney are likely to associate with criminals.

But underneath it all, all I could think about were the many girls and young women who were victimized by a pedophilic sociopath and his circle of high-powered advisors, which sadly (shockingly?) included high-powered lady lawyers.

Around email number 847, and long after I had determined the specific make and model of the Hermes bag (a Jypsiere ordered from the Hermes website in 2016), I realized I wasn’t reading for novel research. I was obsessed and binging on a disturbing record of a name-dropping, sex-trafficking, pedophilic social climber who literally did not understand how to spell-check emails. I had clearly crossed the line from nourishment into compulsion.

All week, the group chats with my lawyer friends exploded. Not only about Kathy and the lavish gifts (note there aren’t specific ethics rules barring lawyers from accepting presents from clients and non-clients, and she has been clear he was a non-client), but also other BigLaw partners and politicians and executives who were resigning left and right. The emotional cocktail was… complicated. Shock, sadness, schadenfreude, compassion, disbelief, disgust.

Kathy’s resignation hit the news late Thursday night. I’m sure the fallout will continue. And I genuinely don’t know whether I’ll keep reading or cut myself off again. That’s the uncomfortable truth of any diet: the thing you swear off has a way of calling your name. . .but the only one who can take charge of how I nourish my brain is me.

I can delete all the news again.

Or maybe the point isn’t to eliminate information entirely? Maybe it’s to notice when I’ve stopped being informed and started being consumed, and going forward, to choose, extremely deliberately, what I let shape me.

And when I next conduct deep dive research for my novels, set a timer.

Do you have any tips on managing your own information diets (specifically re: the news)? How do you balance a need to know what’s going on in the world versus protecting your mental health? Please share!

First, some housekeeping:

As part of my continuing quest to try new technology, I will be now be sending out my monthly author newsletter from my “Biglaw to Books” Substack (for those who don’t know, Substack is a website and app for sharing long-form writing, kinda like a blog meets newsletter meets social media).

It doesn’t change anything for those of you who subscribed to my monthly newsletter over on my website — you’ll still receive my updates in your inbox exactly as before! I’m now also offering weekly-ish essays and book reviews here on Substack (formerly on my website), but these are completely optional. If you prefer to stick with just the monthly updates, you can easily choose that when you manage your subscription.

Anyway, I’m grateful you’re here!

Now, for my monthly writing updates, books I read last month, and three happy things.

Writing Updates

I am going to count setting up this Substack as my big writing win for this month!!

And I finished Draft 3 of my paper mill novel on January 31—yay! While working on Draft 3, I focused on the structure and making sure all the subplots went in the right direction. As always, when I’m typing, something or someone else takes over my fingers and my characters do crazy things I never predicted! Or new characters show up and insist on being part of the novel! Writing is so mystical. I just let the muse do what she wants in these earlier drafts.

But now I’m rolling right into Draft 4 to discipline all these new characters and subplots and make the story say what I want it to say. And finalize the structure—I’m writing alternating POVs from the two sisters battling over their paper mill inheritance, and I’m trying to design the book in an interesting way. We will see what happens this month!

Books I Read in January

I read eight novels in January. There were so many excellent books!

• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans - longlisted for the 2026 PEN/Hemingway Award, this was all over my social feed. I wasn’t sure about the epistolary format at first (as I tend not to connect with books made entirely of letters) but WOW. It features a cranky 70-something, complicated lady lawyer protagonist (lady lawyers are always my fave kind), multiple voices, uplit vibe, funny and sad and sweet, utterly absorbing. I’m not ashamed to say I cried. I see why it’s all the rage!

• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller - Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, this is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. That’s it. That’s the review. This is how literary fiction is done. Elegant. Interiority galore. The most perfect read for the coldest days of the year here in Chicago!

  

• The True Story of Raja the Gullible by Rabih Alameddine - Very much not cold and wintry, but hot like Lebanon! The 2025 National Book Award winner is a dark comedy. It’s funny, tender, aching, and crass, a love story between son and mother set against Beirut’s history. Even though I’ve visited Beirut before and thought I knew a bit about its history, this novel schooled me. For example, did you know the largest non-nuclear explosion in history happened there in 2020??

• The 2025 Booker Prize winner Flesh was... not for me though I can’t stop thinking about it. It follows the life of a Hungarian man and contains a lot of sex, trauma, and the sparsest dialogue in the history. If you haven’t read it and are curious, I bet the audiobook format would be the best bet.

• This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger was sweet and pace-y, a tale of Depression era kids on the run from the law after breaking out of a terrible boys’ home. It reminded me of The Lincoln Highway. Shout-out to my friend Jaime G. for the rec!

  

• The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits, another 2025 Booker Prize short-listed novel, follows a middle-aged guy spinning out when his daughter goes to college and he can finally decide whether to leave the wife who cheated on him while he takes a road trip across the country. If this doesn’t become a great movie or TV show, I will pay you $1.00.

• The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo - I re-read it for my work-in-progress, and wow are her sentences and dialogue the OPPOSITE of Flesh! They go and go and the Chicago-suburbs-based family saga is so deliciously long and juicy.

• Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe, also a read for my work-in-progress. It’s a multigenerational novel about a South Carolina OG girlboss matriarch who loves nature and has to battle her son to protect her legacy. It’s the first in a series so we have to wait at least a year to see how the story ends (I hate waiting!)

Three Happy Things

Despite the news and world being quite heavy and overwhelming lately, here are some of the things that brought me joy last month:

1. Perhaps too on-the-nose given current events, but I watched and loved the first two seasons of Tehran on Apple TV (the third season is out now but I’m waiting to binge when all episodes are available). Because I watched it while reading Raja the Gullible, I imagined Raja as Shaun Toub, the actor who plays Faraz Kamali, head of investigations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Then I started rewatching Homeland and what do you know: Mr. Toub is in Season 3 playing Majid Javadi! I’m a big fan of his.

2. EMKFit Workouts: I’ve been searching for a workout routine to integrate into my writing WFH life, as it’s shocking how out of shape I’ve become from just sitting and typing and reading all day. I signed up for a Haus of Phoenix with Kathryn Budig yoga pass and while the offerings were witchy and delightful and mostly featured dogs, anytime I put weight on my left wrist, it became angry and red.

   

   But thanks to (one of my most favorite writers-Substackers), I found EMKFit workouts and I LOVE them. They’re high-intensity but low-impact, no weight on the wrist and so much fun! I can do them in my dressing room when I need to move my body and then get right back to it. Highly recommend!

3. MyMind: I am constantly searching for the perfect way to organize all the things I want to read later, or read and want to save. Systems I have tried include, but are not limited to, Evernote, OneNote, Apple Notes, Notion, Instapaper, Feedly, Pinterest, a dedicated email folder, a three-ring-binder and probably several others I’ve repressed.

   Then I came across MyMind and felt like it might be the one? First, the branding is so on point (the colors are almost identical to my website!) and second, the app is so easy to use. I am using the free version (I’m sure the paid version has more features, etc.). It brings me great joy to see all the things I save in a visually pleasing way.

   

Thank you, as always, for reading! I’d love to hear what you read and what things brought you joy this month—and if you have any organization tips and tricks (especially for saving blog posts and magazine articles)!

xo,

Sara

As I flipped through in search of summer scenes, I remembered reading it the first time back in June 2022 and realized how large a role it played in inspiring my career change.

After re-reading as a writer, I wanted to share some thoughts on Henry’s craft, and reflect on how lucky I am to have found it exactly when I needed it.

The Premise

Though most folks would categorize it as a romance, to me, Beach Read is fundamentally about an ambitious woman and her work.

January Andrews is a romance writer with writer’s block. She’s broke, grieving the death of her father and under deadline for her next novel. She goes to a Michigan cottage left to her by her father and discovers the next door neighbor is her sexy literary fiction author nemesis! They make a bet to switch genres and both are driven to make their deadlines, to prove they can write, and also, get it on.

I skipped the sex scenes as I didn’t really care if they’d get together; I was reading to see if January would make her deadline and win the bet!

Reading As A Writer

When I first read it as a lawyer, I knew there was something special about the novel (besides it being a mega-bestseller). And now, with three years of writing classes under my belt (and three of my own manuscripts), I have so much appreciation for Henry’s skill as a writer.

Here are a few craft points I admire:

Masterful Subplots

I am currently in the process of revising one of my draft novels with a specific focus on the subplots. Do I have too many? Not enough? Not quite sure. What I do know is weaving together disparate subplots requires much mastery.

Henry sets up several subplots from the jump and the suspense, momentum, and pacing are brilliantly done:

• The unopened letter from her dead father—what does it say??

• The looming deadline for her new book (the ticking clock)—will she make it??

• The competition between Gus and January to switch genres, with their field trips organizing the narrative—who will win their bet?

• WTF is going on with the cult Gus is researching??

• Note: I obviously assumed the two main characters would get together so I really wasn’t reading to see what happened romantically but could still appreciate how Henry used that trope as the master plot which allowed her to tie in all sorts of funky tangents like cults.

There are several more subplots throughout the novel, and together, they create an amazing texture to the novel. I remain in awe of Henry’s ability to weave together so many threads; it taught me how important it is to make a reader want to keep turning the page.

“I’ve never met someone who is so perfectly my favorite person.” - Beach Read

Humor and Voice

A writer’s “voice” is an ineffable quality but I think it is mostly their vibe. Their energy. What they bring to the page as a human being making up these words and sentences and paragraphs, etc.

Henry’s voice is amongst my favorites. She’s just cool. And funny. And in real life, she adores her dog which makes me love her even more.

Not only is she funny and cool, but there’s a reason she’s sold billions of copies—she combines humor with deep topics (grief, loss) and lightness (the romance) and writes in a way that assumes her readers are smart and can handle multiple subplots in their heads. She’s truly a tonic for these terrible end times.

Character Arcs That Feel Earned

I’ve learned a lot about how to set up character arcs and ensure the protagonist changes over the course of the book (we humans yearn to see others change to believe in our own capabilities to do so).

Here, January moves from depressed to hopeful. Gus moves from hot and gruff to hot and vulnerable. But because of the interwoven subplots, these aren’t only trope-y character arcs designed solely to make the couple work romantically, but the arcs of people learning to work through grief, to work through creative blocks, to work toward something meaningful.

How It Changed My Life

I first picked up Beach Read in the summer of 2022. Burned out by two decades in BigLaw and dealing with some health issues that neither WebMD nor actual doctors could figure out, all I longed to do was retire and move to a beach!

I finished it on work trip to NYC, and by the time the plane started its descent, I was already imagining myself as an author: writing novels by a body of water, living a life of peaceful reflection and creativity, of solitude and zero Zoom meetings at 6 a.m. with people sniping at each other.

How appealing it sounded compared to my day job!

The book gave me hope, in other words. Hope that I could maybe, one day, go on sabbatical and write a book while sitting on a veranda overlooking Lake Michigan. According to Beach Read, I needed only crank out a mere 1000 words a day then visit bookshops and go on research trips with a hot but surly guy with a heart of gold, and all of it still counted as “work.” Easy!

However, at the time, I feared this career switch would negatively impact my primary hobby of shopping for luxury purses so I did hold out for another year before retiring. Bergdorf Goodman, I miss you so!!!

Beach Read sparked my yearning to write novels and step away from BigLaw stress. And now I’m querying my first novel and working on my second and third, and I am so happy to say I have written on many verandas, often overlooking various lakes! And when it’s too cold, I write while watching webcams of Cape Town sunsets (my happiest place).

I have to say, writing books is a million times less stressful than being a partner. And this weekend, with the wind chill at -30 degrees, I found warmth exactly where I needed it—back in the pages of the book that changed everything!

To think a friend’s recommendation would result in a career sea change, but that’s what books do, of course.

Books are magic.

For that, my ability to go cold turkey on Bergdorf Goodman purse shopping, and Emily Henry’s work, I’m grateful.

At first, I thought a life of writing would be easy breezy. Sleep in. Drink lots of tea. Follow the muse. Each morning, I haphazardly wrote for an hour then didn’t know what to do. The muse had already departed!

Once I figured out so much of writing is not actual writing (it is mostly thinking, brainstorming, researching, reading, learning, etc.), I felt more productive in my overall workday but still lost motivation after lunch. Instead I puzzled. I napped. I lounged. (I needed this as part of my burnout recovery, and feel so lucky I was able to completely rest and restore during this time).

Then I heard the very prolific author Margaret Atwood say (on a podcast) she wrote every day from 10-4 no matter what. She doesn’t wait for the muse or create elaborate rituals. She just sits down and writes. Hallelujah, my brain said! Let’s do this!

Both the sitting part and the staying part were hard for me at first, so I started researching and experimenting with how to optimize for productivity. Over the last two years, I have tried so many things and wanted to share some of my favorite tools for igniting my motivation to write/work.

1. Digital Task Organizers and Paper Agendas: The Triple Dopamine System

I organize all my writing ideas, goals, and tasks in Todoist and block time on my Google Calendar for novel work, nonfiction work and “CEO” time - i.e., emails, responding to comments, social media, etc. I have ToDoIst on my phone and my computers, so it’s very easy to see everything in one place. It also emails me reminders which I love because it is impossible for me to ignore an email, but very possible for me to ignore an app.

I also write down my daily tasks by priority in my paper agenda. One might suggest a more streamlined approach, but I need both paper and digital. This system not only allows me to justify my stationery hoarding, but also gives me a triple dopamine hit when I click the little circle in the Todoist app, delete it from Gmail, THEN cross it off my paper list. Boom!

2. Pomodoro Timers: The Countdown Effect

Give me a deadline, a countdown, a ticking clock telling me I’m running out of time! Luckily, Pomodoro timers exist for this very reason.

The Pomodoro technique uses a countdown timer (traditionally 25 minutes) for focused work followed by 5 minutes of rest (you can adjust these periods - I like 45 minutes on, 15 minute breaks).

There are countless free Pomodoro timer apps and websites. I currently love Flocus with its beautiful design. There are several backgrounds and lots of ways to customize. I use the free version but am toying with the idea of the paid because you can connect 5 spotify playlists to it. The only thing I cannot figure out is how to keep it floating on my desktop, which would be ideal.

3. Toggl Track: The Lawyer in Me

As a former lawyer, billing my time is embedded in my DNA. It took me a long time to understand what my “minimum” billable hour requirement should be as a writer; I was wired to believe anything less than a 10-12 hour day 7 days/week = laziness.

Then I learned most humans can only sustain about 4 hours of truly deep, focused creative work per day. I know this to be true. My brain melts after four hours of focused writing, sometimes only two, and whatever I write after the melting-point is usually garbage.

So I try to hit 4 hours of deep focus every writing day and do 1-2 hours of research, reading, platform-building, creative cross-training after my brain melts. I also “bill” my exercise, life tasks (like groceries) and my new hobby of playing the piano. And I measure it all with Toggl Track as I’ve written about before.

4. Music for Focus, Inspo and Blocking Out Leaf Blowers

When I’m drafting, I need silence. However, my HOA absolutely loves to hire tree trimmers and leaf blowers year-round, so I’ve become quite reliant on sound machines and soothing piano music for focus.

When I’m not in deep concentration mode, I listen to Spotify playlists I’ve made for each of my novels. In case you are ever in need of 2015-2020 ambition/motivation/feminism/female friendship hits (and a little Biggie and Bieber, for good measure), here is the playlist I made for my female founder novel. Warning: Explicit language abounds.

5. Internet Blocking: For When Willpower Fails

I don’t use this often because I’m in revision phase right now and need to do spot research constantly, but when my brain is particularly distracted and I find myself checking email or Vogue.com instead of writing, I need a heavy hitter like the Freedom app.

This app blocks off your access to the internet for a set period of time. It also includes a countdown timer and music options (lo-fi, etc.) and you can set-it up to still enable access to certain sites.

6. All the Soda: The Mini-Fridge Solution

Installing a mini-fridge in my upstairs home office, fully stocked with Zero Sugar options, changed my WFH lawyer life: in between interminable zooms, I rarely had time to go downstairs to the kitchen to grab a beverage. Turns out, it’s great for writing, too!

I like to rotate my sodas throughout the day, saving the coveted Shirley Temple 7Up Zero Sugar for a fancy moment. (Note: The A&W Ice Cream Sundae looked so promising but alas, I did not love it.)

7. The Star Reward System

When I’m drafting, I count my daily word count and give myself stars for each day I hit 1,000 words. In revision mode, it’s about time spent—I aim for three hours every day, and I get a star. For social media, I get a happy face every time I post on Instagram and Facebook (I still have so much resistance to social media—it’s so cringey!—but I want to connect with family, friends, readers and other writers so it is what it is).

I’ve tried many different rewards systems to help me hit my stars and smiley faces. Sometimes it is a lunch date or a massage. Sometimes it is a 12-pack of soda (see #6). Sometimes, to counteract all the soda, it is a super sparkly Stanley so I can drink ice water in style.

8. Writing Zooms: Virtual Coworking

I went through a huge phase of joining writing Zooms to “work” alongside other writers and this really helped me keep my butt in the chair.

London Writers Salon offers free one-hour writing sessions per day that anyone can join once you sign up with the group. The format is simple: most people keep their cameras on, you write down in the Zoom chat your goals, hear an inspirational quote read by the host, mute yourself and write for 45 minutes, then optionally share what you accomplished at the end via chat.

It’s a wonderful tool when I feel lonely and need to see other human beings who also want to see other human beings. The mirroring of others writing really works. It also motivates me to put on real clothes and makeup.

What I’m Still Looking For: A Boss!

Until I get an agent and a publisher (God willing), I crave external accountability. Someone to report to. Someone to give me deadlines like my clients or deal team leads at my firms used to do.

I’ve tried tech solutions for this need, including hiring a boss through Boss as a Service (which I heard about on a writers podcast). It’s a brilliant idea and exactly what I need (you send them your to-dos, send proof of completion and if you don’t hit the task, they gently nag you via email until you get it done.)

Due to the time zone mismatch (they’re based in India), their middle-of-the-night emails didn’t really light my fire. Ideally, I’d find someone to boss me around during the US workday. . .but it is such a clever idea for someone like me who longs to people-please and would never, ever miss a deadline if it lets someone else down. I might renew!

What systems or structures do you use to improve your productivity? Let me know in the comments—I’m always looking for new experiments to try!

I hope everyone had pleasant holidays! I spent the week of Christmas/New Year’s watching several documentaries and stand-up specials. It was glorious and I learned a lot about the craft of stand-up, something I’d never really focused on until I realized (like any other art form), I could apply what I learn to my novels. My biggest takeaway is some people are simply GOATs and you can feel it as you’re watching it. I even re-watched a couple of them to take notes specifically on how this set-up led to this punch line and the call-back in the closer, etc. Studying other art forms (especially design elements) will only make my work more interesting and thus, watching Netflix is now counted as “billable time” for my writing career.

Writing News!

In December, I reflected on the top 10 things I learned in my second-year as a writer. I learned a LOT as you can read ​here​!

I also finished Draft 2 of my paper mill family saga, took a week off over the holidays to give the draft some time to marinate and now I’m back at it to start Draft 3. Draft 2 was pretty much a total rewrite of Draft 1 to make it contemporary and I wrote a whole new character’s POV which made me realize she is actually the protagonist, and one of the other POVs is a totally different book. And thus I now have two works-in-progress: my paper mill novel and my musician novel!

To celebrate starting Draft 3, I printed out Draft 2, put it in a sparkly binder and as I read through, I used these cute kitty post-its. If you love Japanese stationery, ​Paper & Pencil​ in Andersonville/Chicago is heaven (they are in-person shopping only, fyi). My draft 2 paper version is covered in cats and also rainbow post-it notes to highlight all my major revisions. . . of which there are hundreds. I’ll definitely need more stationery!

Books!

In December, I read and enjoyed these four novels:

My favorite was The Secret History. I now understand why it has a cult following: very dark academia, literary, and propulsive with a very specific atmosphere. Highly recommend.

I also loved and can’t stop thinking about Flashlight. The structure alone is awe-inspiring and the story is extremely haunting. Excellent novel.

Here is my ​best books of the year list​, in case you missed it!

Three Happy Things

In addition to my comedic Netflixing and reading, here are some of my happy things from December:

1. Silicon Valley (on HBO Max): I didn’t watch this show when it came out, but after writing a whole novel about two female founders who build a unicorn company, I’d say my novel is like Silicon Valley but with tons more women and lots of Birkins. :) But even if I hadn’t just written a whole novel about building companies, I would have enjoyed this series very much: it’s really funny. Shout-out to my little brother for this recommendation.

   

1. Ouai St. Barts: Shout-out to my niece Lindsey with whom I watched the first couple episodes of the Taylor Swift doc on Disney. In the scene where she is pouring a bath, we zoomed in on her bath products and I was immediately influenced to purchase this body wash, despite not self-identifying as a Swiftie. Ouai St Barts bath wash is very tropical but not terribly strong (I am allergic to everything and have no reaction to this one!). Also, the iridescent packaging is on point.

1. Learning Piano! I wanted to challenge myself to re-learn how to play the piano in lieu of reading or writing more words (there are so. many. words.) The app ​Simply Piano ​makes learning incredibly fun and everything is coming back to me despite not having played piano for over thirty years. Shout-out to my mom for buying me a subscription to the app as a Christmas present!

Please tell me the things you enjoyed this month! Especially in need of TV recommendations.

Not so in the writing industry! ANYONE can write! Or learn about writing! Or practice writing! Or get published (self- or traditionally)! You can write whenever you want! About whatever you want! If no one will publish your book or essay or story, you can throw it up on the internets or Substack! (There are SO. MANY. WORDS. on this platform.)

And thus, it’s taken me two years to kinda figure out the situation. Here are the 10 biggest lessons learned from my second year in the writing trenches:

10. There Are Infinite Ways to Spend Money as an Unpublished Writer!

There are a million writing classes, services, retreats, webinars, Substacks and programs out there in addition to the gold standard writing credential, an MFA. I’ve dabbled in everything over the past two years - an online creative writing master’s program (dropped out after one too many irritating classes and the startling realization I don’t need to pay for another degree to write a novel; I could just. . . write a novel.) I enrolled in The Novelry. Several StoryStudio Chicago classes. Conferences online and in person. Every webinar on author websites and platforms and how to start a newsletter (shout-out to Jane Friedman). Agents and writers’ podcasts and (paid) newsletters and manic social media. I subscribed to all the writing Substacks. I made a giant list of the hundreds of residencies, conferences, and workshops I’d heard were prestigious.

I loved everything! I love learning. But somewhere along the way, I realized: there is an entire industry out there consisting of content creators targeting the unpublished (someone said this on a podcast once in the snarkiest voice imaginable and I honestly love it). A lot of pay-to-play programs that promise agents or shortcuts to publication. Agents who charge for query letters or sell, on their personal websites, multiple courses, books and webinars on how to get an agent. While many are helpful and offer wise advice, others capitalize on the very human insecurity and fear of failure that comes with putting your words (and heart and soul) out into the world through an opaque industry that is, based on most accounts, dying.

The BigLaw lesson: It’s all very different from law! If a rando decides one day to proclaim “I’m a lawyer” and then starts a website/online courses/Substack/retreats for people who want to be lawyers, that is a legitimate crime. Yet there is no “unauthorized practice of writing” felony or misdemeanor. Thusly, I have developed some discernment this year. (And also, I started feeling very nostalgic for law!)

Next year’s plan: Learning about my craft and the business of writing is more like continuing legal education—while I could happily take nothing but classes, it’s not my full-time job. My full-time job is writing a novel people will buy.

9. I Finally Understood When I Was “Finished” with My Novel!

My novel is about a female founder torn between her bohemian best friend and their billionaire angel investor as they race to take their jewelry company public (dun-dun-DUNNNN!)

After two years of working on this manuscript (and a year of thinking about it before that)—having rewritten the story several times over, then countless structural, developmental, character, dialogue, line editing, and copy editing drafts—I woke up one day knowing I was done. Like I had well-cooked this baby and it was time to give birth by sharing it with potential agents.

Letting go felt like artistic maturity. Or maybe just dead-ass exhaustion? Either way, I did it! I was scared I’d hoard the book forever and never, ever finish it because it is so hard to revise (and revise, and revise) but ever since I decided to query agents, I haven’t opened that manuscript again.

The BigLaw lesson: In law, there’s always a clear deadline—the deal signing, the bank drawdown, the court date, the board meeting, the IPO. It’s never just la-la-la, let me rework this contract a thousand times until all the SYMBOLISM is perfect! No. You just get things done by the time they need to be done.

Next year’s plan: I’ll take more of my BigLaw “get it done” mindset and know when to send out my next manuscript to beta readers (targeting March 1, baby) and also, I hope and pray I one day get a book deal so I have more deadlines! I love deadlines!

8. I Pitched My First Agents!

In August, I attended an online conference and signed up to pitch two agents over Zoom. It felt so official! I was SO nervous until a former colleague reminded me that I’ve pitched a gazillion times as a lawyer. Once I remembered I’m basically just trying to sell myself and my work product, I felt better (though of course, pitching my story-baby is more vulnerable than pitching my environmental law expertise to a sweet little energy company). Also, I got my hair done and bought new clothes. The whole experience made me feel very official!

Hair by Matt Ryan; Top by Frame; Jewelry by Hermes and Cartier; Dog by Tiny N Tall Rescue

7. I Started Querying!

In September 2025, I clicked send on my first written queries. (Queries are short letters sent to literary agents explaining the book premise, comparable recent novels, why you wrote the book, a short bio and that’s about it. You only need an agent if you want to publish your book with a “traditional” publisher (like Penguin Random House). If agents are intrigued, they ask to see pages of your manuscript. If they make an offer of representation, and you accept, they then try to sell your manuscript to publishers and negotiate the terms of the deal. Agents earn 15% of the book/film deal.

I followed the guidance to send very small batches of queries then await feedback to analyze the data and tweak as necessary. It takes 8-12 weeks for agents to respond, if at all. Although I’ve yet to hear from some agents (ghosting is a whole thing!) and I’ve only otherwise received form rejections, the moment I sent those queries, something shifted. I wasn’t just “working on a novel” anymore. I was a writer attempting to enter the marketplace with a finished product.

Next Year’s plan: Keep going with my queries until I meet “my” agent or, failing to connect with my top choices, try to publish my female founder novel with independent presses. Get ‘er done.

6. Rejections! So Many Rejections!

Another lesson learned this year, and one that makes you understand why #1 exists: to write is to be rejected and/or criticized. And it’s not just query rejections per the above. But rejections from application-based writing workshops and programs. Literary magazines that didn’t want my (admittedly amateur and very first) short story. Writing contests (that charge $$ to enter! See #1 above). My favorite: a rejection from Amazon Affiliates program (I hadn’t met the three sales threshold in three months on this blog, lol)!

Every rejection stings and every rejection means I am trying. I’m learning to metabolize it with bubble baths.

Next Year’s Goal: I want to get published, baby! So I’m obviously going to keep sending things out until I get a yes, but more judiciously. I shan’t waste a rejection-bubble bath on Amazon, for example. I want to apply to two different writing residences and submit at least 4 short stories to literary magazines, and pitch an essay or two about law and writing.

5. I Met My Hero Authors at Events—And One Day, They Might Be My Peers?!

In 2025, I attended some wonderful readings, panels, book launches, book festivals (mostly with my little sister and sometimes alone) and I met some of my favorite authors ever! Just hearing them talk about their work and their process and feeling their overall vibe IRL — it was so inspirational. And later, when I was practically in tears having talked to David Wroblewski about his novels, my sister called him my “peer.” I snorted. But then I realized: maybe one day my books will reside down the shelf from his and that would be AMAZING.

The possibility—however distant—keeps me going. To keep the inspo alive, I made a Canva collage of me and my sister with all the authors we met this year including Pulitzer Prize nominees, Oprah’s Book Club winners, and New York Times number one bestsellers. In at least one case (Shelby Van Pelt), I petted the author’s hair. Assuming she did not later seek a restraining order against me, perhaps one day I will meet her again at a book reading for my own work!

My writing homies: (clockwise from the top) Melissa Luebbe (My Sister!), Shelby Van Pelt, Rebecca Makkai, Fredrik Backman, and David Wroblewski

4. I (Almost) Got Scammed!

This year, I received an email from Danielle Steel telling me how much she enjoys my books and wants to know more about my writing journey! For a full day, I thought: Wow. This is really it. All my efforts at building my platform like that one agent told me I had to do have really paid off.

I started to respond, my email bursting with enthusiasm until I realized: I have published exactly zero books. I have 110 Instagram followers. Danielle Steel ain’t emailing me about nothing.

A quick Google search confirmed this is a scam by enterprising con artists (possibly based in Nigeria) using AI! They seek to get desperate writers (see #1 above!) to pay for their help finding an agent or publicity. The Authors Guild now maintains an entire page of publishing scam alerts, many AI-powered. Personally, if I were a scammer, I’d do something easier than researching author websites, saying I like their work, talking to them about writing, then playing a long game to get them to pay me. It all seems too convoluted and effortful. But here we are!

Next year’s takeaway: Use an AI-checker (like GPTZero) on every random email before wasting my time replying. But keep a file of these because they do make me feel rather official!!

3. Two Writer Friends Got Agents!

I met two friends in two different writing classes who got agents this year! I felt genuinely THRILLED for them. Also super jealous. Also hopeful! Perhaps I will make it through the slush pile one day and break through. Glossy-haired and lovely Shelby Van Pelt reportedly sent Remarkably Bright Creatures to the slush pile of her agent and went on to become a mega-mega bestseller. (Her lovely agent has, in fact, already rejected me, in case you were curious).

These friends are uber-talented, hard-working and gifted writers. I am so lucky to know them. And they inspire me: if they can do it, maybe I can too!

2. I Realized What “Balanced” Might Actually Mean

After years of all-or-nothing working (thank you BigLaw), I’m slowly learning that writing doesn’t need to be this way. I don’t need to take every class or no classes. I don’t need to query 100 agents in one week or give up entirely. I don’t need to write 3,000 words every day or delete my manuscript. I don’t need to manically plan posts for social media then delete the apps after I look at analytics and realize it’s screaming into the void.

I can just... show up every day. Do the work. Learn what I need to learn. Be patient with the process. Realize I can only do 3-4 hours of super focused writing per day. Period.

This is MUCH harder than it sounds for a recovering Type A lawyer. But I do need to temper my all-in, balls to the wall desires by realizing literally no one is paying me to write (right now), so I mustn’t burn out yet! (It was rather easy to justify periods of burn-out on my BigLaw partner’s salary, lol).

Next year’s plan: Put my biglaw butt-in-the-chair every day but only for 6 or so hours and only 5 days a week so I have ample time to refill my creative well and live in the world so I can get more story ideas. Also I need to schedule in time for yoga and other creative cross-training which will make me a healthier and happier human which is kinda the whole point of me retiring from my partnership in the first place.

1. Even With All the Rejection and Solitude and Scams and AI Threats and a Dying Industry... There’s Nothing Else I’d Rather Do!

After two years of doing this every day, treating it like a profession while still feeling a spiritual calling, losing myself in flow state time and time again—even with everything working against this choice (i.e., publishing layoffs, reading declines, oversaturated marketplaces, all the rejections)—there is nothing else on earth I’d rather do right now but write novels.

I am so glad I can!

Twenty-one years of BigLaw taught me how to be an expert, and I was well-compensated for working my booty off to the point of complete and utter burn-out. Two years of writing have taught me what it feels like to be fully alive in my work, and I have strong desire to manage this new career like a marathon versus a sprint. If I want to publish a book every year or so (I do!) then I need to intentionally focus on balance. I need to make myself take a full day off. Maybe even (gasp) a vacation?

To date, this has all been voluntary, unpaid and without any guarantee of commercial success. And I feel like I’m doing what I was always meant to do.

That’s the only lesson that really matters.

Here’s to year three. Let’s see what happens! Thank you for reading!!

Reflecting on what made me pick up a book, at the beginning of the year, I set a goal to read as many Oprah and Jenna book club picks along with Booker Prize-nominated novels. The main goal was to try to input as much beautiful writing as possible so it could seep into my subconscious and come out in my own work (hopefully!) I finished quite a few and these comprise most of my favorites. In addition to following book club and prizes, I read several for research or after hearing an author on a podcast or an in-person event, or after my sister recommended it to me. Book recommendations by others with a shared sense of taste are so wonderful. If you enjoy literary fiction/upmarket-book-club novels and are looking for recs, hopefully you will enjoy some of these (and check out my Books page on my blog with more of my all-time faves!)

1. FAMILIARIS by David Wroblewski

I read this book three times this year! Over 1,000 pages of stunning dog-centered storytelling set in rural Wisconsin. This prequel to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle follows John and Mary Sawtelle in 1919 as they embark on an adventure and buy a farm where they ultimately breed their uber-special Sawtelle dogs. This book is an ode to the profound, wordless language between humans and dogs and is a masterpiece, mixing magical realism with epic midwestern firestorms and WWII training programs and a love story and an examination of excellence in one’s work. Devastating and beautiful and magical and tragic and all the things - one of my fave books of all time. Read my full review here.

2. THE LONELINESS OF SONIA & SUNNY by Kiran Desai

This nearly 700-page family saga kept me company for a long time and I can’t stop thinking about it. An on-again, off-again romance between the title characters, immigrants from India caught between familial obligation and self-expression, is the throughline. Flitting between nations and generations from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Desai brews a cauldron of magical amulets, ghost hounds, unrequited loves and writerly solitude. Read my full review here.

3. DREAM STATE by Eric Puchner

This one has stayed with me, too: a multigenerational saga spanning 50 years and revolving around a Montana lake house. When doctor Charlie sends his college best friend Garrett to check on his bride-to-be Cece during wedding preparations, it sets off decades of consequences for all three friends. The novel’s masterful temporal shifts and circular narrative created a deeply satisfying reading experience and I found it funny and sweet despite the climate anxiety that loomed over this love letter to the American West. Read my full review here.

4. HEARTWOOD by Amity Gaige

When an experienced hiker named Valerie goes missing on the Appalachian Trail, two other women — a veteran game warden and a lonely but lively former scientist stuck in a retirement community — must crack the case. I loved the multi-POV and structure of this novel, and the story was so absorbing even though I (a) do not, and will not, hike and (b) don’t usually read mystery-thrillers. The writing was gorgeous and I loved its exploration of mothers and daughters. Read my full review here.

5. THE COIN by Yasmin Zaher

This book is bonkers in the very best way. A wealthy Palestinian woman teaching at an all-boys school in New York becomes obsessed with cleanliness and purity while grappling with inherited trauma—AND gets caught up in a Birkin bag reselling scheme! It’s about the dirtiness of New York, materialism, identity, mental health and the impossibility of getting clean. Lots of excellent and specific fashion details mixed with bizarre behavior. It reminded me of All Fours with an unhinged, bold, unapologetic narrator and like All Fours, I re-read it as soon as I finished. My only criticism is it’s too short!

6. THE WEDDING PEOPLE by Alison Espach

The story starts dark: Phoebe checks into a grand Newport hotel planning to end her life after divorce, infertility, and her cat’s death. Instead, she’s mistaken for a wedding guest and recruited as maid of honor by bride(zilla) Lila. Over one chaotic wedding week, the novel explores the winding paths we take and the chance encounters that reroute us. If I had known the premise before reading, I probably wouldn’t have picked this up but this book was sweet and funny and sad and tender. And it made me want to go stay at a charming hotel by the sea, minus the suicide planning and such.

7. THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD by Claire Lombardo

My friend Andrea recommended this and I loved it so much. Set in a Chicago suburb (yay!), it’s a sweeping multigenerational family saga following the parents Marilyn and David, whose epic love story began in 1970s Iowa, and their four radically different daughters navigating sisterhood, secrets, and adulthood. When the oldest (and enjoyably naughty!) daughter unlatches a closed adoption, family secrets unravel. Nearly 600 pages of gorgeous, intimate character work that captures the funny, tender mystery of family and what it is to be a human being. I love this author so much.

8. BROKEN COUNTRY by Clare Leslie Hall

This author reportedly took the same writing class I did at The Novelry (a London-based online writing program) so I picked up her book and, whoa! It’s so propulsive! A devastating love triangle set in the rural English countryside between a farmer’s wife and her first love, a rich and famous bestselling author. The book opens with a farmer’s death and a trial, unspooling backwards to reveal how forbidden passion and impossible choices led to. . .murder! It was aching and suspenseful and made me want to move to English countryside minus the murder and such.

9. THE THREE LIVES OF CATE KAY by Kate Fagan

Another recommendation from my friend Andrea! I loved this one so much. It’s about a reclusive bestselling author behind a blockbuster dystopian trilogy who finally reveals her true identity in this novel-as-memoir. Told through multiple perspectives including her literary agent, an actress, and the friend she left behind, this propulsive story explores ambition, identity, and the cost of reinvention. AND, I learned after reading: the author is married to my most favorite yoga teacher of all time, Kathryn Budig!

10. NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason

This one was very trippy. When I first saw it at my local indie bookstore, I assumed it was about a cougar but it’s really about a yellow house in the Massachusetts woods and its succession of human, animal and ghostly inhabitants across four centuries and how nature and humans are interconnected. Starting with young Puritan lovers fleeing their colony, the house witnesses an English soldier obsessed with apples, spinster twins navigating desire and famine, a stalking catamount, a psychic, mothers and sons, even lustful bark beetles. Mason tells each story through different forms — letters, journal entries, case notes — with songs interspersed. The polyphonic voices and writing styles are amazing and inventive and often darkly funny.

That’s my wrap-up! Again, it was extremely hard to pick ten — there are so many other books I enjoyed! Making this list also made me realize there are definitely themes that draw me in (nature, animals, mothers and daughters) and forms (I LOVE a long long saga!)

What books did you read and love in 2025? Tell me your favorites in the comments!

* In case you’re curious, I started but did not finish about 14 novels. I used to compel myself to finish every book I started but now, I quickly move on when I’m not in the right mood. There are so many books in the sea!

Doesn’t that sound like heaven???

After I finished the book and the review, I came across the most lovely Ann Patchett and Kiran Desai event (audio on YouTube below). It deepened my reflections on what is loneliness as a writer (something I think about constantly) and made me wonder, is the ideal “writer lifestyle” one of solitude? Spoiler: Ann Patchett and Kiran Desai say yes! This intrigues me.

As a BigLaw partner, I interacted with people 24/7: clients, colleagues, associates, travel people (shout-out to my favorite flight attendants on the ORD to IAH leg!), friends and family. Never did I have a day without talking to someone else about something work-related. As an extroverted-introvert, I needed quiet time, especially after big client meetings, trips and events, but I always felt connected to other humans.

After I resigned from the firm, I bathed in the glory of solitude, deep focus and the ability to stay in one place (sorry United airlines!) but now, after two years of full-time writing, I’m lonely. I miss co-workers! I miss feeling like I’m part of a crew. I really hope I meet my forever-agent and editor next year, find future colleagues and business partners and continue building my community of other writer and reader friends.

But in the meantime, Desai’s novel and this lovely conversation made me realize what a gift this solitude is and how it is actually essential to my new profession. Patchett and Desai referenced a Faulkner quote I loved:

“Writing is a solitary job... but there’s nothing lonely about it.”

I like that reframe.

And I love knowing when solitude is transformed into art, it becomes the opposite of lonely. It becomes connection. Spending so many hours with a beautiful book like Loneliness helped me feel less lonely and makes me aspire to that same profound, productive solitude. Thank you, Kiran Desai!

What about you? If you could design the most perfect writer life, what would it look like? If you work from home and live alone, what tips and tricks do you have for mitigating loneliness?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and is ready for the holidays! In lieu of an official holiday card, please enjoy this photo which perfectly sums up the joy of being an Aunt! I can’t believe it’s been exactly ten years since I moved from DC to Chicago to be closer to my family. Best decision I ever made.

Writing News

I had fun in November working on the second draft of my next novel! I am pleased to share I finished the ProWriting Aid Novel November challenge by adding 68,138 words to my draft. My Scrivener document is a beast but I made significant progress on two of the POV characters and thoroughly enjoyed logging my daily word count to earn a fun little badge.

This was a fantastic distraction from checking my email obsessively to see if any agents responded to my query letters for my girlboss book.

I did receive my first official rejection last month! It was very exciting and made me feel like a real writer!

Then the excitement faded away and I felt sad, so I took a bubble bath and went right back to my manuscript. I expect I will be taking a LOT of baths the next few months!

Three Happy Things

1. Fairy Lights!

It is hard to be a human in the northern hemisphere right now when darkness falls WAY too early. I have been going to bed at 7:30 to read until nine, then lights out (a delightful routine and about three hours earlier than my lawyer bedtime).

Anyway, to counteract the daytime gloom, last year I redid one of my home offices with iridescent curtains, sunset decals, prisms and an Alexa-operated, Tik Tok-inspired fairy lights set-up. It is making me very happy. I wrote a blog post about it in case you’re curious.

2. Books, Books, Books!

I read a ton of great books this month! Highlights: Booker-Prize shortlisted The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny kept me company for a long time (I love big books!); North Woods, which was a fantastic trip; and the highly entertaining audiobooks of Reese Witherspoon’s book and Daisy Jones and the Six. I also read Bridge of Sighs (review here), Lucky, Banyan Moon and The Husband’s Secret for inspiration on my manuscript.

3. Loot (Season 3)

I continued to enjoy this wonderful Maya Randolph show on Apple TV which feeds many of my obsessions: female billionaires (my debut novel features one!), amazing caftans, and 90s hip hop. I only want to watch comedies right now given the state of the world. God bless Maya Randolph for making such a fabulous one!

Recommendations Corner

Thank you to all who replied to prior newsletters with recommendations for joyful things! I love hearing what makes you happy.

In the spirit of holiday gift guides, here are three recommended products from our reader community guaranteed to spark joy:

• This 1000-piece Great American Novels puzzle is terrific for book lovers. Also recommended to gift a corresponding audiobook for double the pleasure. (PSA: did you know Spotify has audiobooks free with subscription? I just discovered this when searching for the Daisy Jones audiobook!)

• This over-the-shoulder reading light for gloomy winter days or middle-of-the-night reading.

• For a hands-free reading experience, the Book Seat. (I ordered it and can attest to its utility! I use it for hardcovers, paperbacks and my iPad and it counteracts my neck pain).

Please comment below to tell me the things you enjoyed this month!

That’s all from me! I hope you have very happy holidays!

xo,

Sara

When I resigned from my BigLaw partnership in 2023 and decided to focus on writing full-time, I knew my lawyer home office had to go.

The Problem: A Room Full of Stressful Memories

The problem wasn’t that it was bland; I could never live or work in a bland space. When I first moved in, I invested in some chic Room & Board furniture, painted one wall hot pink and framed my law and masters degree diplomas with pink glitter matting. One of the best compliments I ever received as a lawyer was: “Your Zoom background looks like Architectural Digest Barbie.”

However, the room held memories of stressful deals, tense negotiations, endless COVID Zooms and 90-hour work weeks. Too many binders full of precedent and timesheets stacked to the ceiling.

To become a novelist, I needed a completely different physical space. But I didn’t know exactly what. An antique wooden secretary desk? Dark oak paneling? I wanted to use what I already owned but make it more. . . writerly.

The Inspiration: A Magical Writing Exercise

Design inspiration occurred during a workshop with The Novelry (one of the many writing programs I’ve done over the past 2.5 years; I love learning!)

In it, we were instructed to close our eyes and imagine the most magical, happy place we’d ever been. The one place our memories return to, the place in which we’d want to stay forever. The image that sprang to my mind was a chic Positano hotel room with expansive windows overlooking a fuchsia sunset, the balcony strung with twinkling fairy lights.

The instructor then suggested we find a way of replicating the vibe of our magical place in our very own workspace. I immediately ordered a bunch of plastic lemon trees, but it didn’t quite do the trick.

Shortly after this Novelry workshop, I enrolled in Ingrid Fetell Joy’s “Design a Home You Love“ course to help kickstart some other home design projects I’d been postponing while working as a lawyer. During one of her visualization exercises, that same magical room appeared again! This time, she inspired me to just TRY recreating it because we must take action toward making our environments match the energy we need, and I needed magical vibes. My lawyer office wasn’t suddenly going to redecorate itself.

My Office Transformation Guide

Here’s exactly how I turned my office into a magical writing sanctuary. There are still some things I dream of adding, and I am comforted knowing as my career transformation from BigLaw Partner to Writer has been incremental, so too is my re-design. I’ve linked all my favorite supplies below.

1. Paint Everything Super White

Since buying this house in 2020, I’ve changed the colors in this room from Benjamin Moore Dove Gray to an aggressive hot pink to a periwinkle back to gray. The room faces south so it gets lots of sun in the winter (for a few hours) and a little sun in the summer (for a few hours). Thus the gray felt too dark most of the year.

For my writer sanctuary, I knew I wanted really high-energy vibes in the office to help me feel motivated, and since the window is southern-facing and doesn’t get a ton of light in the summer, I wanted to offset the shadows.

Introducing Benjamin Moore Super White. The name isn’t just marketing - these walls literally glow! (Note: the uber-bright white made my existing white trim look yellowish, but I’m not up to repainting the trim right now. One day!)

2. Install Ceiling Fairy Lights

This TikTok tutorial was a game-changer for stringing fairy lights around the ceiling using 3M strips. My mom and I installed these little 3M hooks around the perimeter and connected everything to an Alexa smart plug for easy voice control.

3. Create a Sunset View with Window Decals

I found these incredible sunset window decals on Etsy that transformed my depressing suburban view of my neighbor’s roof into a Mediterranean paradise. FYI, the seller was fantastic - when the first order’s dimensions were wrong, he quickly sent a perfect replacement at no charge and super fast.

4. Add Sparkle with Sequined Curtains

These iridescent curtains catch the light beautifully and add that magical shimmer I was craving! I love them so much.

5. Install a Disco Ball Light Diffuser

This disco ball diffuser is so fun! It rotates and has color-changing LEDs when in use as a diffuser (I love mixing these peppermint, eucalyptus and tea tree essential oils in the winter time). When not in use, it throws sparkles across the walls when sunlight hits it, adding an extra layer of magic to the space.

6. Create Natural Rainbows

I hung a crystal prism (purchased at Miraval a thousand years ago but this is similar) with a suction cup hook and added a crystal sun catcher sticker from Etsy to the window. Nothing beats rainbow light dancing across your workspace!

7. Meet Ziggy: My Lighting Assistant

I only use my Amazon Echo Pop (named Ziggy) to turn on and off the lights, which definitely does not help it reach its full capabilities but I forget to do anything else with it. I love how easy it is to just say “Turn on the office lights.” And to hide the tech of it all, I found this gorgeous goddess statue that doubles as an Echo stand and I painted it!

8. Create a Writers’ Command Center

A large whiteboard and bulletin board hang opposite my desk, often covered in rainbow-coded index cards for scene planning and project brainstorming. The color-coordinated push pin magnets make organization both functional and beautiful.

The Result: Pure Magic

Now when I walk into my office and say “Ziggy, turn on my office lights,” I’m transported as close to that Positano sparkly-lights rainbow sunset as I can get here in the western suburbs of Chicago. This room has become one of my absolute favorites in the house, and I genuinely love spending time here.

Whether you’re transitioning careers like me or just need a creative refresh, never underestimate the power of a little magic in your daily environment.

What’s Next?

This is just the beginning! If ever I get the courage, I want to paint my ceiling a dark cobalt blue and and change out the ceiling fan. I’d also love to paint the window trim and the closet doors something funky, maybe my beloved hot pink.

And I still need to show you my puzzle and stationary closet, bookshelves, mini-fridge setup, and school supply stations scattered throughout the room. Stay tuned for more Home Office tours!

What design tips or hacks have you tried to make your workspace more pleasing? Let me know in the comments!

I am fired up and have wrist-ice on tap because National Novel Writing Month is here!!

In November, anyone can take part in an annual writing challenge to write a 50,000-word novel between November 1 and November 30. NaNoWriMo was the OG organization until it closed up shop last year, so this year I signed up for ProWritingAid’s ​Novel November​ (it’s totally free, btw).

You “win” by completing 50,000 words (self-reported), and the “prize” is: you wrote a novel!

This is my third year participating. The first year, I “won” by writing a terrifically horrible novel about legal witches that will likely never see the light of day. The second year, I “lost” but outlined most of my next novel. This year, I really want to work on Draft 2 of my next novel but be smarter about my wrist pain so if I hit 50K, awesome. If not, awesome.

If you have already signed up or want to join ProWritingAid’s ​Novel November​, please respond to this message and let me know - we can follow each other’s word counts and cheer for each other. :)

In Other Writing News

I met my hero last month! As you may know, David Wroblewski’s book (and Oprah pick) The Story of Edgar Sawtelle ​changed my life​. This book—a tearjerker if I ever read one—led me to adopt my first dog, Charlie, and stayed in my heart and mind for years.

His second book, Familiaris, came out last summer and once again, Queen Oprah picked it. I had the privilege of reading it after ingesting tons of writing classes and ​WOW.​ Now that I better understand his craft choices, I am even more in awe of him as a writer! I’ve read both books about three times at this point. The books make my heart sing and cry and love simultaneously. They make me feel smarter and like I’m a better human being for reading.

Thanks to the Wisconsin Book Festival, I got to meet my hero at his author event on October 24th.* He was as wonderful as I had hoped! Yes, I cried a little when I told him about Charlie the Dog and how much his work meant to me. He was incredibly patient as I asked him for a selfie followed by a million questions about the novels and whether he is writing a third (he could not say). As you can see here, he has that Oprah Book Club Pick-sparkle in his eyes.

Meeting him really made me re-commit to writing as my second career and inspired me to write a BEAUTIFUL book some day. If even one future reader told me one of my novels changed their life, this gamble of leaving BigLaw for books will be 100,000,000% worth it.

*My sister made this trip possible by assuaging my travel anxiety with her presence. She had a photographic slumber party with Miss Gracie at a Madison hotel while I was at the event. Thank you, little sister!

Happy Things

I watched, read, and listened to so many great things last month, it was quite difficult to only pick three and not sure the first one is entirely “happy” but I enjoyed it!

Books, Books, Books: I read a ton of great books this month! I re-read my David Wroblewski books (of course), then re-read/studied Fellowship Point and A Thousand Acres to help me outline my next novel. New-ish books were Buckeye, The Lincoln Highway, Katabasis and So Far Gone by Jess Walter.

The last one feels very now: the book begins in 2023 and it’s about a progressive environmental journalist who flees to the woods to leave the world behind after punching his conspiracy-loving son-in-law. Also, it’s about a right-wing sect, a father-daughter relationship, and the choices we make to engage or disengage when the world is on fire. And it’s funny! I realized I so rarely read books set NOW and I enjoy them and appreciate how difficult it is for authors to predict future relevancy since most traditionally published books take one to two years from acquisition to publication. Luckily for Jess Walter, the world is still a dumpster fire and the book resonates. :)

Nobody Wants This (Season 2): I’m not a rom-com kind of gal but I did foster a deep crush on Adam Brody for weeks after watching the first season. This season, it’s more about the sister relationship (in my humble opinion) and I very much enjoyed it. Also, loved the soundtrack, lots of bangers.

Victoria Beckham Documentary: I was so excited to watch this after devouring the David Beckham documentary (also on Netflix). This one is a portrait of a super ambitious woman and also an infomercial for her fashion and beauty brand, which worked beautifully on me as I ordered her lip pencil, eyeliner and lipstick. Also, she’s funny!

Please comment below and tell me things you enjoyed this month! Special thanks to those who responded with great recs last month - I will add a round-up to the next newsletter!

That’s all from me! I hope you all have a great month and Happy (Early) Thanksgiving!

Now, after two years of writing full-time and two years of billable time data, I wanted to share how I spent my time and my experience with pure time affluence compared to my BigLaw time-poor lifestyle.

CAVEAT: BILLING WRITING TIME IS TRICKY

Before I share my annual timesheets, here is the most important caveat:

This is only Butt in Chair Hands on Keyboard (i.e., BICHOK) time! If I tracked every time I thought about my novel while walking my dog or dreamed of a new plot point and woke up to scribble notes or listened to literally every single writing podcast ever made or analyzed every facet of craft when reading for fun at night or listened to an audiobook while cleaning, this number would be BANANAS.

The workaholic inside me LOVES this idea: writing is a fully immersive lifestyle, impossible to separate from normal consciousness (or subconsciousness). And I realize this is how I used to feel about law—full immersion—but in the opposite way. Thinking about beautiful sentences is, like, one million times better than trading snarky aggressive emails with opposing counsel.

My Timesheets

I wrote the first draft of my current novel (working title: Rich Girl Energy) in August - November 2023 before I started tracking my time. I also took a 60-day break from billing my time as an experiment to see how it feels (it felt horrible and I realized I need the dopamine hit of a daily score, just like my Oura ring but for my intellectual effort!)

In 2024, I billed about 885 hours (BICHOK) to this novel project. (I also took classes and worked on my second novel when my developmental editor read my book, etc.)

In 2025, I spent about 1020 hours on multiple drafts, inputting editorial feedback, learning to query and polishing the manuscript to 99% perfection (in terms of copyediting).

So about 1900 hours total on this project across two years, equivalent to one year of minimum client billable hours at a law firm.

Is that “normal”? No clue! It’s just how long it took me to feel like I knew enough about the subject matter (female founders, billionaires, startup life, venture capital financing and IPOs) to create a (hopefully) realistic plot and dynamic characters.

These hours also represent me finding my process, which will help my next novel be more efficient (I hope). I tried every writing software (Scrivener, Dabble, Google Docs, Plottr), lost drafts, saved 500 drafts, edited on computer, by hand, and in Kindle, read the manuscript aloud four times, created thousands of tables and spreadsheets, filled five binders with articles and research, had multiple beta readers and developmental readers and put all their notes and feedback in color-coded tables, and created a OneNote with thousands of webpages and articles.

What Is It Worth?

To understand what those 1900 hours mean, I have to talk about what I left behind.

First, and most obvi: money, honey. Those 1900 hours would have generated substantial billable revenue at my former BigLaw partner rate (I can’t even type the number but my hourly rate was four-figures so...).

Instead, they’ve generated one unpublished manuscript and zero income (so far). That is really scary!

However, I had the pleasure of spending as much time as I wanted on this novel which was a real blessing. Feeling chronically “time-poor” is certainly not a lawyer-specific issue, but the pressure of 24/7 client availability plus minimum billable hours created a constant state of awareness of the external demands on my time.

There were also limits on how much time I could spend on a task without invoking client ire at my bills. This saddened me, especially when building a whole new field of law (we used to call it “ESG,” back in the day). I wanted to do the complicated research myself, every time but alas, I had to leverage associates and then review their work.

As a writer, I can work as many hours on any task I please. For example, I can spend 15 hours researching the specific type of French crystalware a European billionaire might have in one of her many homes to enhance a pivotal scene that I probably already deleted from the current draft of the manuscript.

Takeaways

I spent 1900 hours+ on a draft manuscript for which traditional publication is absolutely not guaranteed, and I rather doubt I’ll make back the income I walked away from (or at least not until Oprah, Reese and Jenna become my besties.) I still crave deadlines and hard, immersive work and some sense of external pressure (can I just say how heavenly it will be to get a publishing contract with a boss-editor and actual deadlines??)

But I do know, for the first time in my professional life, I’m measuring success by how I feel—which is really effing great given my autonomy and time affluence—not by how much I bill. Writing full-time demands my energy and creativity, which are completely different resources that demand to be renewed through rest and relaxation, not nonstop hustle.

I don’t need to BICHOK 9 hours a day. Only if I want to.

So, was it worth 1900 hours writing a novel instead of my BigLaw job? Ask me in six to nine months when we see if this book sells!

But also, ask me right now. Because the answer is absolutely yes.

The Premise

I’m not typically drawn to mystery/crime/missing-person thrillers—the genre just doesn’t call to me the way book club/literary fiction does—but in my quest to read through the complete Read with Jenna catalogue, I picked up Heartwood by Amity Gaige (buy here) discovered something surprising: I actually love these books! Of course, like most of the world, I was completely absorbed by The God of the Woods by Liz Moore and found Heartwood very similar.

The Premise: When a 42-year-old nurse named Valerie vanishes from the Appalachian Trail—only 200 miles from completing her thru-hike—it’s up to other women to crack the case.

Genre: Literary Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

Picked By: Read With Jenna April 2025

Craft Spotlight: What Writers Can Learn

Multiple POVs Create Momentum and Depth

Gaige employs three primary points of view, each belonging to strong, 40+ women whose lives become intertwined through Valerie’s disappearance.

• Beverly (told in first person, present-tense), the tough-as-nails State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie. Her sections crackle with authority and frustration as she navigates bureaucracy, inter-agency politics, and the ticking clock of a search-and-rescue operation. She’s no-nonsense—a woman who’s learned to survive in a male-dominated field by being better and tougher than everyone else. But Gaige also reveals the cracks in her armor, particularly as she grapples with her mother’s declining health.

• Valerie (told in first person, present-tense), the missing hiker who must survive in the wilderness. Her sections are the most lyrical and introspective, full of the kind of nature writing that made me feel like I was there in the forest with her. We see her struggle not just against the elements but against her own mind and body.

• Lena (told in third-person, present-tense), a 76-year-old woman living in a senior community who has struck up an online friendship with a forager who goes by the username TerribleSilence. When his messages turn increasingly paranoid and disturbing, she becomes convinced something terrible has happened. Lena’s sections explore loneliness, aging, and the surprising ways people connect in the digital age.

There’s also Reuben, Valerie’s African-American male hiker friend, whose first-person testimony is delivered entirely in transcript form—interview excerpts from the investigation. We’re reading his account through the filter of official questioning, and we have to decide for ourselves what’s true, what’s omitted, and what might be self-serving.

What struck me most as a writer is how Gaige uses these multiple perspectives not just to build suspense (though they absolutely do that), but to examine the same events and themes from radically different angles. Each woman is searching for something—Valerie for survival and self-knowledge, Beverly for answers and competence, Lena for connection and purpose.

Structure: Mixed Media as Narrative Strategy

Gaige varies the form of storytelling throughout. Between the anchors of Beverly and Lena’s point-of-view chapters, she inserts transcripts of interviews and tip lines, police bulletins, and letters. Valerie’s sections are written as letters to her mother, and Lena’s sections have transcripts of messages between her and her online friend.

This mixed-media approach kept me constantly engaged and reminded me how structure itself can be a storytelling tool. It allows the author to control information flow carefully—we only know what each character chooses to reveal, and as a reader trying to solve the mystery, the interstitials help us read between the lines. It also creates texture and rhythm in a novel.

Strong Sense of Setting: Nature Writing That Actually Works

While I’ve “hiked” the Appalachian Trail—and by that I mean I walked maybe two miles through the Shenandoahs with my dog when I lived in DC—I have no clue what actual trail culture is like or what it takes to complete a thru-hike. Reading Gaige’s descriptions of the physical and mental toll—the blisters, the hunger, the bone-deep exhaustion, the strange intimacy of trail life—made me deeply grateful I never felt inclined to be that kind of adventurous.

The trail is where people go to test themselves, to escape, to find something they’ve lost. The friendships forged in that crucible feel earned and real. The man-versus-nature struggle is rendered without romanticism—it’s hard, it’s dangerous, and it can kill you. Yet there’s something undeniably inspirational about watching Valerie push forward, about seeing her resourcefulness and determination, even as everything falls apart.

As a writer, I’m studying how Gaige balances technical accuracy (she clearly did her research on thru-hiking, wilderness survival, and search-and-rescue operations) with emotional truth. The details matter, but they never overwhelm the story. The landscape is a character, but it never overshadows the humans struggling within it.

Themes: What This Book Is Really About

The mother-daughter relationship runs through every storyline. Mothers are compared to heartwood, and there is much in the novel about mothers being hard on themselves, and about children being disappointed with their mothers.

For example, Valerie writes letters to her mother throughout her hike, trying to explain why she left, what she’s searching for, whether they can ever understand each other. When Valerie goes missing, her mother joins the field search, which creates a heartbreaking parallel.

Meanwhile, Lena is estranged from her own daughter, and that absence haunts her sections. Her online friendship with TerribleSilence becomes a kind of surrogate relationship, which makes his growing paranoia all the more alarming to her.

Beverly’s mother is dying, and she’s navigating the impossible balance of leading a search operation while watching the oft-disappointing woman who raised her slip away. The role reversal—the daughter now caring for the mother—adds another dimension to the novel’s exploration of these bonds.

Even Reuben’s story touches on parent-child relationships. His father died of COVID, and that loss shaped his decision to hike the trail.

Final Thoughts

Heartwood surprised me in the best way. It’s a thriller that delivers on suspense and mystery, but it’s also a deeply literary exploration of women’s lives, choices, and relationships. If you’re looking for a book that will keep you turning pages while also making you think about the big questions—about motherhood, identity, survival, and what we’re all searching for—pick this one up.

What Book Club-picks have you recently read and enjoyed? Please share in the comments!

While I love snazzy books about bright lights and the big city (the novel I’m currently querying is very much this), my current work-in-progress is about a paper mill dynasty in Wisconsin and follows two characters who leave, and one who stays. Accordingly, I’ve been studying books that explore place, legacy, and the choice of staying versus leaving.

This past month, I dove into three celebrity book club picks that function as masterclasses in these exact themes: Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs (Oprah August 2025 pick; published by Knopf), Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye (Read with Jenna September 2025 pick; published by Random House), and Bruce Holsinger’s Culpability (Oprah July 2025 pick; published by Spiegel & Grau). All three deploy innovative structure and multi-points-of-view to transform place into character. A perfect craft study for my work-in-progress.

Coincidentally—after studying so many upmarket books by women about women—this was my first time in a long time reading three male authors in succession! I enjoyed it!

Here’s what I learned reading as a writer:

How Multi-POV Builds a World

Nearly every book club pick I’ve studied over the past year employs multiple point-of-view narrators, and these three are no exception. Not only is it fun for a reader, but it’s a technical way to show different angles of the same characters or place to create a multi-faceted view.

In Buckeye, we encounter a multi-generational chorus across 464 pages. The novel spans from WWII to the late twentieth century in small town Bonhomie, Ohio, following two families bound by a secret. By shifting POVs between characters like Cal, who works at his father-in-law’s hardware store, and Margaret, an orphan who moves from the city as a young bride, along with their spouses and children, Ryan creates a panoramic view of the town’s evolution. We see this fictional community through a wide-angle lens, watching secrets ripple across decades.

Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs uses a dual-geography approach. This 550-page saga primarily covers half a century in Thomaston, New York and alternates POVs between two men who grew up as friends. The protagonist’s wife’s POV emerges later. We get Lou Lynch’s first-person, nostalgic account of growing up in the blue-collar town—he’s a convenience store owner who adores his father, his family and his life. This sits in tension with the close-third-person, present-day perspective of Bobby Noonan, a tortured artist who fled to Venice and sees Thomaston and his own family through a far more unforgiving lens.

Bruce Holsinger’s Culpability offers a completely contemporary vibe. Instead of a sweeping saga, it’s a pressure-cooker. The story detonates when a family’s self-driving car crashes, killing other drivers while the oldest son sat at the wheel. The novel’s fragmented structure mirrors the family’s disintegration: we rotate between protagonist Noah’s raw perspective, his teenage daughter’s chatbot conversations, excerpts from his wife Lorelei’s book on AI ethics, and Congressional testimony. This collage of voices and media depicts a family—and a world—shattered into conflicting fragments.

The Inescapable Town: Setting as Moral Landscape

In Buckeye and Bridge of Sighs, the towns of Bonhomie, Ohio, and Thomaston, New York, aren’t exactly thriving. Over fifty years, they face economic fluctuations—mostly decline for Thomaston, which is plagued by cancer clusters from the tannery’s toxic runoff.

Yet the authors render these places without condescension. The past isn’t merely inescapable; for some characters, they don’t even wish to escape. These small towns function as extended family systems where everyone knows everyone’s inheritance, everyone’s shame. But what moved me most was how, even in these tight-knit communities, the characters still suffer from profound loneliness—the kind you’d expect only in anonymous cities.

Culpability translates this dynamic for the twenty-first century. The primary setting—a Chesapeake Bay beach house—becomes moral geography. Holsinger starkly juxtaposes the family’s comfortable rental against the fortress-like compound of the tech billionaire next door. Noah, our protagonist, comes from a blue-collar background and narrates with a keen, chip-on-the-shoulder awareness of these socioeconomic fault lines. Here, privilege and technology define the landscape.

The craft lesson crystallizes: the midcentury ranch house, the family convenience store, the beach house dwarfed by the billionaire’s estate—each location embodies the characters’ economic reality and emotional weather.

Staying vs. Leaving: Character Arc Through Geography

The most powerful throughline, for me, was how each book interrogates the supposed binary of staying or leaving one’s hometown. One is not “better” than the other, though certain characters have a preference or even a primal need to escape.

In Bridge of Sighs, Lou Lynch is sixty years old and has “spent his entire life in Thomaston.” Russo brilliantly explores, as one reviewer noted, “how a person can live a wide life in the smallest of ponds.” His counterpoint, Robert Noonan, fled Thomaston when he was a teen and lived life as a famous artist living in Italy with shows around the world. Russo does not judge either character for their choices and we learn the secrets and motivations that made them stay and leave.

In Buckeye, most of the characters remain in Bonhomie through the postwar boom and the Vietnam era, watching their town metabolize change, bound by secrets and the stubborn gravity of family legacy. But Margaret has had enough of small town life after a certain point; she moves to the city, alone, and re-establishes herself while her husband and son are left to deal with the aftermath.

In Culpability, the characters face complex, complicated moral questions about responsibility and technology in their modest beach house in a rural area on the Chesapeake Bay. The looming presence of their next-door neighbor tech billionaire and a series of devastating events lead to one character’s choice to stay at home and not attend college.

Final Thoughts

These authors resist reductive narratives. Neither Lou’s optimistic rootedness nor Bobby’s Venetian exile delivers complete satisfaction. Similarly, in Culpability, Lorelei’s professional “success” with her AI program is shadowed by moral vertigo. The tech billionaire’s “success” manifests as an isolating fortress. Home, like achievement, reveals itself as a complicated and often bittersweet internal state rather than a fixed coordinate.

Small town isn’t a limiting descriptor—it’s an entire cosmos. When rendered with specificity, economic groundedness, and hard-won empathy, the small-town novel becomes a profound meditation on how place shapes identity, how landscape becomes destiny.

The lesson here: staying isn’t stagnation. It’s a complex, active choice requiring constant justification—to yourself, to your family, to the idea of what your life might have been elsewhere. What the books make clear are people who escape their hometowns can’t escape a sense of loss, and neither do those who stay.

In other words, geographic escape doesn’t guarantee psychological freedom or a sense of belonging, or even success. Because this:

What small-town books have you recently read and enjoyed? Please share in the comments!

I’ve been a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert since Eat Pray Love and Big Magic, and an even bigger fan after she shaved her head to save time and money taming and highlighting her frizzy, dishwater hair (how badly I would love to follow her lead!).

Watching Liz Gilbert command a room of 150+ people like the absolute powerhouse she is—including her fashion, her stage presence, the way she structured the event and did it all solo—was inspiring in so many ways. Note: I have only listened to the first 25% of the audiobook version of this memoir, read by the author, and have no commentary on the story or writing itself as I am still digesting.

As an aspiring writer, here are some of the things I learned:

How to Own a Stage Like Liz Gilbert

From the moment she walked on stage (wearing an oversized navy plaid blazer, soft black pants, camel Adidas Sambas, and coral reading glasses atop her shorn hair), Gilbert owned the room. Gold bracelets caught the light as she held the microphone. Her shaved hair framed a face that seemed makeup-free, radiant with confidence. Even sitting in the back of the church, I could see Liz's eyes are so sparkly, she doesn't need hair or makeup. And no one was looking at any marginal wrinkles!

But here's what made her a total boss: No notes. No teleprompter. No moderator. Just pure, unfiltered charisma and the ability to hold an entire room captive with nothing but her voice and presence. She did the entire event solo, standing on stage, working the room, mixing humor and mysticism and heart-wrenching grief as she talked about the process of writing the memoir.

Curiosity Beats Fear Every Single Time

Gilbert noted everyone has the same types of fears, and if we lean into them, we'll have the same lives as everyone else. But our curiosities are different—that's what we should lean into.

She also shared psychologist Martha Beck's idea that the opposite of anxiety isn't calm—it's curiosity and creativity. When you're anxious, instead of forcing calm and relaxation, do something playful and creative, and follow your curiosity.

I—a long-time anxiety-haver and studier of all things mindfulness related—had never heard of this! Next time I engage in my comfort-anxiety spiraling (usually about leaving my house and attending events like this one!), I hope to remember Gilbert’s words and toggle into creativity and curiosity. (I feel like I should also have this saying on post-it notes all around my house to remind myself of said toggling!)

Write from Healed Scars, Not Open Wounds

Gilbert's memoir deals with her partner's cancer diagnosis that came with a six-month death sentence, then addiction, codependency, and taking care of a person she called a "vampiric savage addict." Extremely heavy stuff!

In the opening of her memoir (which she read to the audience during the event), the ghost of her partner visits her and tells her to tell their story. But she emphasized that she couldn't write this story until five years into recovery—when she could examine the past forensically from the perspective of the present. Conveniently, the ghost visited her on this five year date.

"You can't write when the wound is still open," she said. Great instruction to allow yourself time to process traumatic experiences before writing about them, though it's usually through writing that we process them.

Truth-Telling as Armor

When asked about writing such vulnerable, controversial material (the book was actually embargoed because of sensitive content—including her admissions about having murderous thoughts toward her partner during the worst of their struggles!), Gilbert's response was brilliant:

She said no one can hurt her by telling a truth she told them.

I loved this! She owned her truth and claimed to be unbothered by anyone who is throwing it back at her. (And I couldn’t help but think of the amazing publicity controversial headlines bring to piece of art. . .)

Recovery and Spirituality Grounds Her

As is her brand, Gilbert also talked extensively about mysticism and self-improvement, including her addiction recovery—she said she attends 12-step meetings daily for multiple addictions like love, sex and codependency. While her discussion of addiction has been controversial, watching her speak about it in person makes clear it's become the foundation for her brand of truth-telling.

Whether or not you buy into her particular spiritual framework, seeing/hearing her in person makes clear how skillfully she has figured out how to transform pain into art into love into commerce (she's sold over 25 million copies of her books!)

Learning in Public is Service

Gilbert said she writes because she's "doing her learning in public." She said she benefited from people who had done that for her, so she wants to do it for others.

This really resonated with me, including why I feel compelled to write about switching careers on my Substack, BigLaw to Books. When I first seriously contemplated leaving my BigLaw life, I read so many books about career changes— like Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans and Pivot by Jenny Blake. There were other books and podcasts, too, about leaving the law. All these writers and others who spoke about switching careers midlife helped me so much!

After Gilbert spoke about learning in public, I realized if I share my learning in public, maybe it will help someone else also thinking about a career shift. I want to pay it forward.

Why This Matters

At the end of the event, twenty-one people lined up for Q&A, mostly young women asking variations of "How do you blow up your life?" "How do you tell the truth in a memoir?" "How are you so brave?"

Gilbert's answers were simple: You're the only one who can blow up your life. Tell the truth about you—but don't expose others. God helps us be brave, plus being in service to others.

Watching her work that room, I realized what makes someone a boss isn't just talent or success or charisma—it's the willingness to be completely, unapologetically yourself even if that self changes all the time. She exuded pure confidence and calm, a super appealing state of unbotheredness, and her fashion choice echoed her brand.

Pure boss energy, the very thing I am both writing about in my debut novel AND want to channel as a writer myself.

What author has inspired your creative courage? I'd love to hear about the writers who've made you feel like the impossible is possible!

Looking back, it’s difficult to fathom how truly amazing my experiences were, especially for a little girl who grew up in East Peoria, Illinois. But that little girl also wanted to be a writer in addition to a lawyer, a fashion designer, and an animal advocate. I checked the box on lawyering, fashion (purchasing), and animals (adopting), so here we are!

(My favorite form of stress-reduction as a lawyer: shopping with my dog!)

When I tell people I “retired” from law, no one asks me why—it’s pretty self-explanatory that trading a life of wholly-consuming stress and aggression and billable hours for a life of reading and writing is likely more fun, more peaceful, better for one’s soul, especially if one need not worry about financial security having saved a bunch over the years. But I also do not regret for one second my life in BigLaw, and I still miss it some aspects (like working with friends! buying whatever I wanted!) some/most days.

But the real why? The pandemic. Switching firms and then, later, a combination of burnout, global instability, and some health wake-up calls made me realize that if I didn't make a change soon, I might never get the chance to do all the other things I wanted to do when I was a little girl.

So I made the most expensive decision of my career to date: I stopped the clock and resigned from my partnership at the world’s richest law firm.

But at first, it was only a sabbatical. Time to let my brain recover from 21+ years of non-stop stress. I listened to every single podcast about career pivots and burnout while knocking out 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles every couple of days. I still read the legal news. I still expected I would return to law eventually.

(Gateway Puzzle: 1,000 piece Ravensburger!)

Sadly, you can only assemble so many puzzles before your brain starts to blur, and my lawyer mind needed a new mountain to climb. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I signed up for a creative writing class through Harvard Extension School.

And I got hooked! Not just on writing, but on learning again—both the craft and the industry. With each writing class and hours spent drafting a novel, short stories and essays, the embers of my long-dormant ambition re-ignited. And I realized, this wasn't just a hobby or a sabbatical activity: writing was what I was supposed to be doing all along.

In January 2024, I decided to treat it like the profession it is. I write every day. I learn about craft or the business of writing. I work on business-related things every day (who knew being a writer meant also being an entrepreneur??) I am trying to make myself get into “social media” after not being on it for several years though it still feels so “cringe” as the kids say.

I've made zero dollars thus far (and spent thousands on writing classes, software, craft books, a website, etc.) but it’s with the hope/faith I will sell books one day and support myself!

And I’m appreciative of several things that made this leap possible: first, BigLaw salaries and bonuses! I love them and miss them! Second, I've been single and childfree by design, which means my financial responsibilities and life choices are entirely my own. I’m super grateful for this freedom! Third, I SIGNIFICANTLY cut back my spending (including on my kryptonite, fine jewelry and luxury goods, please see above) and I bought a house well below my price range during the pandemic. Accordingly, leaving behind my BigLaw salary, while still a little terrifying, wasn’t the biggest leap. I have never been worried about affording groceries and insurance and vet bills. I am lucky. Finally, my people! My family and friends all support me every day, and I love running into an old colleague or long-lost college friend and saying out loud I am an author now.

But I’m still a lawyer, even if I’m not practicing law. I have finally learned to accept all parts of my identity and integrate the two so I can leverage my BigLaw life as a writer, and not try to rid myself of everything in an effort to start fresh. Like my memories: for the first year or so after retiring, I didn’t want to think/look/say/identify with anything law-related! I needed a cleanse. Now, I am dipping back into my memories and appreciating the both my career and the actual experience of BigLaw stress —it really helps put any “stress” I feel as a writer (e.g., rejections from literary magazines and contests, querying agents, finding a publisher, or negative reviews on Goodreads) into perspective!

And my memory bank is FULL of inspiration! For example, I am querying literary agents to represent me on my current novel, featuring a scrappy female founder who is caught between her bohemian best friend and their billionaire angel investor as they race to build a global jewelry brand.

Women navigating power, ambition, and impossible choices in a sparkling high-stakes world plus . . . can't imagine where that came from. :)

The most surprising plot twist of this entire career pivot? Turns out I still track my time (!!) Like when I was a lawyer, I still love the satisfaction of looking at my time entries and seeing how hard I am trying! Hard work is no substitute for actual talent, of course, but pride in the effort goes a long way toward making this feel like it could be real.

In future posts, I will explore:

• What I gained by leaving BigLaw (and what it cost me)

• How I went about this drastic life change

• How I structure my days as a novelist versus a partner

• The parallels and differences between BigLaw and publishing

• What I miss about BigLaw (besides the obvious: money!)

• Managing the psychological challenges of changing professional identities when work has always been everything

• How I changed my spending and savings for this new (negative income) period

• How I'm trying to prioritize balance

• How I recovered from BigLaw burnout (multiple times)

• Applying BigLaw training to writing and building an author brand business

• Finding motivation and accountability in an entirely autonomous job

If there are any topics you’d be interested in reading, let me know in the comments!

And thank you for reading this post, first in my BigLaw to Books series (on the blog and here on Substack!)

If you're simply curious about what happens when someone throws caution to the wind and chases a dream in a rapidly declining industry during end times when everyone is too burned out to even pick up a book—well, stick around! We’ll find out together!

And if you're a fellow lawyer turned writer, or someone who maybe wants to leave law for writing, or someone who has contemplated switching careers, I want to hear from you! There are so many of us -- I have a framed picture of Kristin Hannah hanging above my desk for a reason. Goals!

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