How to keep moving forward when your dreams hit a snag

If you’ve been here for a while, you know that my team and I have been working to bring the second book to life. And to be honest, it’s been a journey of excitement, frustration, ups, and downs.

Right now, we are in a part of the project that feels like a setback. It made me think about how hard it can feel to get back up and keep moving forward when you feel defeated, so I thought I would write a little bit about what we are going through in hopes that it might help you the next time you are faced with an obstacle.

We are in the proposal process, which is essentially when you have to explain what the book is about on a high level. There are five key questions we must answer: What is the book about? Why is it unique and essential? Who is it for? Why am I the person to write it? What is each chapter about and what are the takeaways?

We didn’t have to go through this part of the process with Permission to Screw Up. Because we got the contract in a bit of an unconventional way, we ended up skipping the whole proposal part, but that turned out to be a challenge in and of itself. Because we didn’t have a proposal, it meant we were figuring out the book as we went along, and it got messy. It was also the reason we went more than two years past our original deadline.

I’m grateful for the proposal this time around because it has caused us to get clear on what this book is about before we start writing it. Our book coach always says, “Clear thinking is clear writing, and clear writing is clear thinking,” and she’s so right. The proposal is giving us a level of clarity we never had with Permission to Screw Up. And at the same time, I must admit . . . . proposals can be a frustrating process.

We’ve been working on this proposal since August 31st, 2021. That was when we had our first meeting to begin to flesh out our ideas. It probably took from August until April to get clear on the main ideas of the book, and then April until May to actually write the proposal. We felt so good about it and really proud of it. With our amazing agent’s help and feedback, we made some final tweaks, and then sent it off to publishers.

I’ll be honest, I thought it would be a fairly quick process after that. Everything happened so fast last time, plus, I’m already an author, and our first book continues to consistently sell each week. But it hasn’t happened quickly, and in fact, it has required a lot of patience. We got feedback from the publishers we pitched to that we need to rework the proposal in a few key areas. Essentially: Less memoir-y, more practical advice and takeaways, and reframing the main idea to be a little more fresh and original.

My first internal reaction was “UGH.” I knew it would be a lot of work, and we had already done so much. It hurt a little bit. It’s never fun when you get tough feedback about something that you put your whole heart into, ya know?

I gave myself a chance to feel frustrated, but then I reminded myself of something really important: The publishers care. They are giving feedback when it would be easier not to. They see an elevated version of this book. They are challenging my ideas and making them better. And, as hard as it is, I’m deeply grateful for their feedback and for the chance to try again.

In the end, I know I’ll be so happy that we spent so much time on this part of the process. I know that it will help us write a better and more meaningful book. But it doesn’t take away the fact that setbacks are hard. It would be so easy to hit the pause button and say that we will revisit the book in “the future” and then never actually revisit it again. It would be so easy to stay stuck and not move forward on a revamped proposal. It would be so easy to allow something like this to prevent me from wanting to create again. But . . . no. That’s not what will happen here. I know better. I know that the most meaningful work follows challenges and obstacles. I know that life wouldn’t be as fun or memorable if everything went smoothly on the first try.

Facing this obstacle reminds me of the importance of leaning on others. I am so grateful for our team, our book coach, and our agent. Together, we are working to bring the second version of the proposal to life, and we are already in motion. Action and support are the ways that I keep moving forward in the face of a setback—that and reminding myself that the things in life that matter most usually don’t come easy.

I can’t wait to share this book with you. I can’t wait until I can put what is in my heart onto the pages. I can’t wait to tell you that the entire proposal process was so worth it. And my hope is that you feel it was worth the wait, too.

Most of all, I hope you remember this story the next time you are in a place where you have a choice to either back down or get back up again. Please pretend I am saying this with a megaphone: You’ve got this, we’ve got this . . . Let’s do this!

Book #2, Proposal #2, here we gooooo!

Big hugs,

Kristen