📖 I'm writing a book! 📖

You are invited to follow along and see what happens next ...

Hello, dear friends,

I have news! I’m writing a book! And I’m inviting you to come on this journey with me.

The book will be about the human experience of illness. We have so many books about the technical medical side — the symptoms, the treatments, the anatomical explanations. We have so many memoirs that chronicle in detail one specific person’s experience.

But what about the emotional, spiritual, identity part of illness, not one individual’s story, but the overall picture?

Whether you have cancer or IBD or heart disease, the specifics of treatment and symptoms are very different.

But the internal experience can be eerily similar: big emotions, grappling with uncertainty, the fear, the worries, the relief, the pain, the ways we change, how our identity is affected.

All the parts that the medical system skips.

I have in my mind something like Rick Rubin’s marvelous The Creative Act: A Way of Being, or Julia Cameron’s classic The Artist’s Way. Or even a format like the wonderful Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird or Steven King’s On Writing— practical, helpful, you-are-not-alone book for wading through a life-altering time.

The book I’m imagining is a book I haven’t seen anywhere. It’s a book I really think should exist in the world. In my dreams, it’s one of those dog-eared favorites that gets picked up again and again and again.

(Psst, at the very end of this post is a book excerpt.)

Here’s a mock cover I created to help make this more tangible (fun fact: my first full-time job was as a newspaper page designer) …

Next steps

One thing I’ve learned is that if you are trying to traditionally publish a nonfiction book (i.e., through an agent and a publisher), the book is sold based on a proposal with a few sample chapters.

You don’t have to write the entire book at first. Amazing! I really could not believe this when I learned it.

So while I’m working on chapters, bit by bit, I focused on finishing the book proposal first.

The proposal has many parts, including comparable books (“comps”), author bio, summary, table of contents, outline, marketing plan, sample chapters. I’ve written the proposal, and now I’m sending query letters to agents to ask if they’d like to see it.

Self-publishing is another possible route, which I might try at some point. But I have so much respect for professional editors and designers from my years as a newspaper editor that I’d love to work with a publishing team.

How you can support this book

Honestly, dear friends, this is a big dream, to start writing books.

I have noodled on this idea for years. I’ve worked on drafts and then put it away for a while. Life intervenes. You know how it is.

But I’ve started to wonder: Will I ever start writing books? What about the dozen of books I know are in my head?

I know as acutely as you do that life can change in an instant.

So I’m taking a step today with you.

1. I’m setting up a new section of Odyssey of the Body called “First Readers.” Twice a month or so, I will send you an update on this book-writing journey. It might be a draft excerpt, a topic I’m puzzling over, a behind-the-scenes look on marketing, a call for people to interview about their health experiences. I would love your input and insights.

2. I’m turning on paid subscriptions for any readers who would like to support my writing for $6/month, basically a cup of tea and a scone. I’m not putting any posts behind a paywall now, but I am wondering what extra perks you would like…

If you aren’t interested in book updates, you can turn the First Readers posts off. Go to the the Odyssey of the Body front page, while you are signed in as a Substack subscriber, and in the top right corner, go to “Manage Subscription.”

Scroll down and you’ll see this:

You can turn email updates on or off for First Readers or any type of post. If you change your mind later, you can go to the First Readers section to read posts you missed:

Finally, I’m going to share with you the draft opening of the book below.

Any feedback, input, insights, suggestions are welcome. I hope this book is helpful to you and many other people. Thank you for being here!

To our journeys,
Brianne

This is part of my book draft, the first few pages, an introduction of sorts.

The Beginning

I wish you weren’t reading this book.

I imagine you wish you weren’t reading it, too.
Here is the start of this new part of your life —
a break in the line of what you thought was coming next.
One day, after another, after another
until the bump, the spot, the rash, the blurry vision, the fall,
the moment when life tilted.

It can happen to any of us.

You know this now.

Some people still don’t believe it.

It’s hard to truly believe it and live in the same breath —
to know that one’s own life is permeable, fragile, illusory
and still shop for toilet paper, pair the white socks, fret over inbox overload.

It can happen to any of us
At any time
At any breath
At any place on Earth.
No one is safe.
No one is immune.

The Beginning is different for each of us, because each of us is unique.

I want to tell you that it will be OK.
I can’t tell you that.
I don’t know your illness,
but more importantly
I don’t know what OK means to you.

Will you die?
Yes. We will all die.
Will you die early?
Maybe you already missed dying a dozen times,
in unknown, unseen, unnoticed
moments of chance
while living a life that would have been ancient
in a different era.

This book has none of the answers
that we all want most.

But I can tell you
not knowing your beginning
not knowing your illness
not knowing your OK
that you are not alone.

So many of us have been here, at The Beginning.
It can be lonely.
It can be isolating.
It can be scary.
This book is one companion,
one I made for you out of ink and trees and computer code.
But other companions are here, too, a little farther along.

They have lived their own illnesses and hardships.
They may not speak of them —
Many of us don’t.
But look for them.
They need you, too.

Last note for The Beginning:
If you are reading this, you aren’t actually at The Beginning any longer.

The journey is already underway.