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Jess Lahey is the OG host of the #amwriting podcast and the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. She’s a teacher, a speaker, and a very accomplished journalist who writes for The Atlantic, The Washington Post and other media outlets.
Now she’s writing a novel.
Jess has been working on this novel, on and off, for fifteen years, and recently put it through my Blueprint for a Book process — a method of inquiry for getting your book out of your head and onto the page. When I read her Blueprint, I had one overwhelming reaction: she was holding back.
The story she wants to tell is about memory and identity and family and the enormous weight of other people’s expectations. But on the page, it felt careful, contained, and buttoned up.
When I said this to Jess, she immediately knew what I was seeing. She had written the Blueprint the way she writes nonfiction: carefully. She is used to getting things right, backing things up, not overstating the case. And whenever she had written something that felt too emotional or too big, she’d cut it.
What was fascinating was that when we stopped talking about the Blueprint and Jess started talking about the actual kids she has taught over the years, all that carefulness disappeared. She was passionate and emotional and absolutely certain about what mattered to her.
I thought: There it is. That’s what’s missing from the page.
This is one of the strange things about becoming good at something. The skills that have served you well can become the skills you hide behind. Jess knows how to be careful. That’s part of what makes her such a good nonfiction writer. But this book is asking something different of her.
At one point, she told me she was afraid that if she really let herself go, she might go over the edge and write something overblown or overwrought. I told her I didn’t think she could go over the edge if I paid her a million dollars!
Where have you decided something is too emotional, too strange, too ambitious, too earnest, too much—and pulled back?
Maybe it is too much. But you don’t actually know that yet.
You can always pull back in revision. First, you have to let yourself go far enough to find out where the edge really is.
Want to try the Blueprint on your own book?
You can buy Blueprint for a Book here, or take my $19 Blueprint for a Book video course, which includes the full text of the book plus 14 video lessons that walk you through the process.
Want to check out the full Hot Seat Coaching session and get access to Jess Lahey’s blueprint and Jennie’s editorial notes? Become a paid subscriber below.
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