I have always loved writing and have always wanted to write a book. The day, a good six years ago in France, that the idea for The Skinny, Sexy Mind: The Ultimate French Secret conceptualized itself in my mind is a day I will always remember. I didn’t spend all six years writing, actually, I spent a few good years actually avoiding writing, telling myself that I was not good enough, qualified enough, nor with a good enough story to tell. I sacrificed my vision and dream to appease an unhealthy relationship for a few years, and then, when I broke the relationship off and started to put the pieces of my life back together, writing found me again.
For almost a solid year I spent most mornings and every evening at my laptop, writing page upon page and trying to connect the gigantic puzzle of an idea from my mind to the pages so that my story would have the power to help change others’ lives. I discovered a life-changing secret when I lived in France and I battled with my words on how to most effectively share that secret with others. My roommates thought I was a social recluse when I would turn down nights out on the town for a quiet evening of writing by myself, and I can’t tell you how many thousands of times I’ve not had an answer to “so, when’s your book coming out?”
To get The Skinny, Sexy Mind published I had to learn to embrace rejection. And I do mean embrace. I learned to hear the word “no” and move forward anyways. I was the first person to say “no” to myself during the years when I didn’t believe in my book, the years that I put away my typing fingers and lived in complacency. Then, once I moved forward and changed all my “no’s” to “yes’s” I ran right into a whole new wall of “no’s” from literary agents and publishing houses. Every letter of rejection and “no” that I received was one step closer to the “yes” I needed, and one day, after uncountable rejections, I got the “yes” of my dreams. Signed by my dream literary agent, Kimberley Cameron, an American francophile enthusiast herself, I found renewed courage. Kimberley believed in me, a first-time author, and gave me the confidence to press on through two more years of editing, waiting and publishing muck.
Today my book is available on Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com, and the Kindle version is on its way. This is a day that seemingly would never come, but it did. So too will it be for you and your dreams when you pursue them with unbridled perseverance. Nothing can summarize my experience better than the below words and thus I will leave you with them today and encourage you to hold on to them for yourself:
Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged people who kept on working!