Why I Really Do What I Do
Today’s blog post comes to us from Author Accelerator CEO Jennie Nash. If you enjoy today’s content, you can sign up for Jennie's weekly newsletter here.
A client whose book I helped coach from zero landed an amazing agent – someone who championed his book and shepherded it into the world. The book itself is an intensely personal memoir, an adult's hymn to his brilliant and tortured 14-year-old self, and working on it with him was an intense and singular pleasure. It's a story about speaking up for oneself and speaking up for those who can't. Jane Goodall wrote the foreword, which was some very sweet frosting on an already sweet cake.
While we were working together, this writer's wife was pregnant. The book took longer than the baby, but they ended up being finished at almost the exact same time. When the baby was born, I got a text with a picture of this precious new life and the words: “Hi Jennie. I'm Noah.” Then my client wrote, “I just wanted you to meet our son.”
I'm a book coach. Someone who helps people tell their stories and make their points and write their books. So why was I on the list of people who got a personalized text announcing the birth of a child? Because there's a story thrumming beneath the story. Because what I do is not really about making books. It's about making connections – coach to writer, writer to reader, human to human. It begins with some words on the page, but it spreads out like an echo, like a wave, like a song.
