All my best for you: a birthday retrospective

40 years alive, 20 years an agent, 5 years writing "Glow:" it's time to stop and look back.

Today’s my 40th birthday. Well, not really: you’re reading this on my 40th birthday, but I’m typing it on April 11. Today, April 17, I’m off partying like the middle-aged Caligula I am: sleeping in and then probably rockhounding for unakite in rural Virginia.

For me, this is but one milestone in a season full of them. Next week, it’ll be five years since I started writing “How to Glow in the Dark.”* It’s five and a half since I sent Kent a DM asking him to start Neon Literary with me; our company turned 5 last December. And in mid-May, it’ll be 20 years since I entered a literary agency for the first time—my life’s fulcrum in every sense of the word.

“Literary agent” is kind of my whole personality now. I haven’t worked another job since 2005. I married a client at my former agency; he later became a literary agent himself. At this point, I suspect all 3 of our children can recite the Standard Explanation of What We Do (“it’s like a talent agent, just for authors”).

What precious little wisdom that’s come to me Aeschylus-style over the years—a.k.a. drop by drop through the awful grace of God—is all highly specific to or at least heavily shaped by my career.

In honor of all that time, all of those drops, I’m doing a retrospective this week. Below are what I consider the 25 best “Glow” chapters to date, divided into 3 categories:

• Professionally essential: These are all the most practically important posts I’ve written. IMO, they’ll save you months (if not years) of effort as you work toward submitting your book. When the time comes, they’ll also make a good outcome much, much more likely.

• Spiritually useful: These posts are metaphysical but—in my mind—equally important. They tackle the psychological blocks and emotional wrenches that I’ve watched sideline many creative people.

• Personally meaningful: These are my favorite things I’ve written, here or anywhere.

I’m thinking a lot this week of Carrie Coon’s monologue at the end of The White Lotus. It made me cry and cry, which is evidence in itself that I am now a white woman in her 40s. But it’s true. Time really is the meaning of everything, isn’t it?

Thanks so much for (still) being here with me. What a gift it is to live and evolve alongside and because of you—even here, even now, even heartbroken by the world.

Love—and I mean it,

ASL

*

Professionally essential

Your comprehensive guide to writing a book proposal*

Why writing a proposal is so much harder than you think

Finding your argumentative throughline: it’s the most important skill nonfiction authors can possibly learn. It’s what I spend 90% of my editorial time coaxing out of my clients (LOVE YOU). I’ve written about it three different times in hopes of finding at least one way of explaining it that clicks, because it’s SO HARD—but nonfiction authors are screwed if they don’t get it.

What your editor ACTUALLY wants you to do with their feedback

“Author platform” is a misnomer (and here’s how to build yours)

A field guide to common publisher rejections (and how to avoid them where possible)

Don’t make your book a daily practice

Spiritually useful

What kind of procrastinator are you? (Hint: in book publishing, instant turnaround is a form of procrastination arguably worse than the regular kind)

Fight, flight, fawn, freeze: are you aware that your trauma response(s) are legible in your writing?

You do know people get more angry, needy, and critical of you when you’re successful, right? Not less?

The kind of author you don’t want to be (i.e., archetypes who get rejected on submission—and how to avoid being one)

Take your limerence and crushes seriously; your genius, power, and future are likely residing in them somewhere

The answer to that sticky problem is probably simple—you just might not be ready to face it yet

Readers don’t need you to be clever on the page; they just need you.

Personally meaningful

What Mike Knew (I still miss you, Mike.)

The Meaning of Life is Coming Apart (“I can’t go on, I’ll go on”)

The Ghosts on That Ridge (on writing, obsession, and neurodivergent shame)

“The Man in the Water”* (“I can’t go on, I’ll go on” again)

To Survive Our Time* (on existential loneliness and hope against the odds)

And finally, my three favorite unhinged histories of American publishing: Hachette, Penguin, and Macmillan. You really should study publishing history—it makes this whole field so much more interesting and meaningful to traverse.

*These posts are free!

Me about 35 years ago (gack)