The Lazy Genius Podcast - #375 - Behind-the-Scenes of the Book I Swore I’d Never Write

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

My third book, The PLAN: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius, releases in 78 days! Completely arbitrary, but on this random summer Monday, it sounds fun to talk about some behind the scenes details about the book. Helpful Companion Links Pre-order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy once it releases in October. Episode #166: Book Launching 101 Bonus: What’s the Deal with Bestseller Lists? Get Book Tour details for The PLAN here Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi, and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things. that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 375. Behind the scenes of the book I swore I would never write. My third book, The Plan, manage your time like a lazy genius. It releases in 78 days, a completely arbitrary number. But on this very random summer Monday, it sounds fun to talk about some of the behind the scenes details about the book. After I wrote my second book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen, I said I would never write a book again. And I'll tell you I said that. But then I did write another book. Again, it comes out in 78 days. Why did I write that book

after all? I'll share that too. And because I personally love behind the scenes info, especially in the areas of writing and publishing, I want to share some of the details of the plan in case you love that stuff too. So let's just jump in. All right. So first, I swear I would never write another book. Why did I say that? I always hesitate sharing this, but I never wanted to be an author. I went to school to be an English teacher. I love books and reading and talking about them. Clearly, if you get my newsletter, you know that. And I was a naturally good writer with some excellent teachers that made my writing better. But I've never been a person who thought, I should write a book one day. Even when I started writing on the internet and people around me were writing books,

I mean, I thought it was the coolest thing. But I never imagined it would be for me. I just didn't think I had anything to say that would fill an entire book. Plus, it seemed really hard. But eventually, I got to a point in my work where I thought, you know, maybe a book, maybe a book makes sense here. After years of talking about how to be a lazy genius and podcast episodes and then emails, I thought it might be nice to have one resource that people could go to to learn how to be a lazy genius. So I signed with a literary agent and wrote a book proposal in the summer of 2018. I got a book deal in November of that same year. And then I wrote the book in 2019 and The Lazy Genius Way released in August of 2020, a great time for an author to release a

book into the world. To those of you who came and met me in bookstore parking lots for like awkward social distancing air high fives and book signings, on August 11th of 2020? Thank you. That was still a really lovely day. Now, if you're unfamiliar with that book, The Lazy Genius Way, it describes the 13 lazy genius principles in detail

and gives you ideas of how to apply them to your life. It was a New York Times bestseller, which shocked all our pants off, and it has sold over 127,000 copies and is still selling. If you get value from this podcast but have never read the book, I promise you that it's not a rehashing of the podcast.

People reread it every year, as a refresher of how the principles are helpful in their lives right now. I am really, really proud of that book. After The Lazy Genius Way, I knew I'd write another book, not because I had an idea, but because I signed a two-book contract. That happens to authors more often than you would think. There is a lot of trust that you'll have another idea and you'll be able to write another book, which is a scary thing indeed. But that second book came to life fairly quickly. and now we have the lazy genius kitchen, a book that helps you have what you need, use what you have, and enjoy your kitchen like never before.

It is the application of lazy genius principles to the kitchen, a room that could really use some lazy geniusing. And I still love flipping through it. It is so cute and colorful and helpful and cool. Some of you recall that it went through a difficult journey to be made and then an even more difficult journey to get in bookstores after thousands and thousands and thousands of copies fell into the actual ocean. That happened. Just a couple of months before the book was supposed to release. Something happened with the shipping container and my books fell to the bottom of the sea.

Since printing a book, especially a color one, is like kind of a whole thing. We had to move the release date. We had to find a new printer and then try not to panic. Even though everything was saying to panic immediately. What a ride that book was. Okay, now to this third book thing. did I not want to write a third book because the first two were A, hard to write, and B, were affected by a pandemic and the gaping mouth of the open ocean? I mean, could you blame me, right? But that is not why. Not even close. The reason I always said I was done writing was because I did not think I had anything else to say, not in book form. If you have the 13 lazy genius principles in the lazy genius way and you have them organized specifically for your kitchen in the lazy genius kitchen, what more do you? What more do you? You have the 13 lazy genius principles in the lazy genius way. What more do you? You have them organized specifically for your kitchen. What more do you? You have you? need. I had people asking me for a book on how to lazy genius different rooms and organize your home. The Nestor writes about that better than I ever could. I had people asking me to write a book about how to be a person and make decisions. Emily P. Freeman writes about that better than I ever could. I had people asking me for a book on parenting. That's hilarious because I've barely started and also

no thank you. I had people asking me for a book on starting and running a business. But frankly, I'm just kind of trusting my gut. I'm listening to you guys and I'm saying no to things that most people say yes to. I am not an expert in running a business, nor does it really excite me to talk about. I really and truly did not think I would ever have anything else to say that would require an entire book. Then in the summer of 2022, not three months after the Lacey Jeannie's Kitchen was released into the world, I started working on an online course about time management. That is the topic most people ask me about. Those are the podcast episodes that get the most downloads.

And it's my favorite topic. Everyone around me was making an online course at the time. So it made sense that I would too about a topic that I love the most and you guys wanted the most. Now you have to break an online course just like you have to break a book, meaning you have to figure out what goes inside it, in what order, for what purpose, and for what person. It is actually quite challenging to do. So as I started to break the time management online course, I stopped, I stepped back,

and I remembered that my audience is not an online course audience. We have done a couple of versions of memberships and courses over the years. And while they weren't failures, they just didn't resonate with you all in the same way that courses do from other content creators. Y'all just aren't course people, at least courses from me. You'd rather read or hang out with friends or watch the Great British Baking Show listening to my podcast while you're doing laundry or going for a run or whatever. And frankly, I am into that arrangement.

But you do read. You like books and you like my books, which I will forever be grateful for. I didn't need to make a time management course. I needed to write a time management book. I still remember boxing my agent being like, well, I know I said I wasn't going to do this literally six weeks ago, but I have a book idea. Tail as old as time. So in summary, I said I wouldn't write another book because I didn't think I had anything to say.

And I decided ultimately to write another book because I had something to say that was best said in a book. Pretty simple, but it also took months for all that to happen and make sense. And now we're 78 days away from the release. of the book that I believe my entire career and even life has been leading toward. And I really mean that. I don't mean that everything else in my life, like my other roles or relationships are secondary to this. But in terms of my vocation and what I'm putting into this world and leaving behind, I think this book is the thing. This is a message that has been missing from the time management

space to the detriment of a lot of people, women in particular. And I can't. cannot wait for it to make its way into the world. You'll hear plenty about what the book is and who it's for and why you're going to want it. Once we get into September, especially, but for the remainder of this episode, I'm not actually going to share that stuff. This is more about like the logistical particulars of what it takes to get a book into the world and the specific path that this one took. P.S. If you would like a little bit of extra listening about publishing related things. You can listen to episode 166, book launching 101, which is quite old, but hopefully not too old. And also the bonus episode, what's the deal with bestseller lists?

We'll have links in the show notes for both. Okay, so here is kind of the timeline of the plan and some fun details about how it's come together. This episode is brought to you by Tell Us Online Security. Oh, tag season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah. Cyber. Criminals love tax forms, but I've got TELUS online security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud so I can stress less during tax season or any season. Plans start at just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft.

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Via Rail, love the way. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder,

and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay. Like I said, I told my agent in August of 2022 that I wanted to write a time management book. Now, the first step was to write a book proposal. A book proposal explains the purpose of a book. It describes its audience, its competitors, offers marketing and publicity plans. It also has a detailed book outline and sometimes sample chapters.

Now, I didn't do sample chapters. since those are more to see if an author can write, and I had already proved I could with two previous books. But I spent about six months working on that book proposal. Fun fact, did I write the book I proposed? I did not. I did not. I wrote a lazy genius time management book, but it wasn't what I initially planned for it to be. It wasn't the same outline, all those things. And that is eerily common among nonfiction writers. You think you know what it is. But until you start writing it, you really don't. You really don't know what your book is going to be. All three book proposals for all three of my books were not the same book that came out the other side. It's pretty cool. Okay. So once I had a book

proposal ready, it was time to pitch it. Now, I did not have a book contract anymore, but I did have a clause in my previous contract that put some restrictions on how and to whom I could pitch this third book. and that's pretty standard, actually. It's very normal for a book contract to have some kind of stipulation where the publisher you're with gets to see your next project and make an offer before you can shop it around. Athletes have that in their contracts. That's very, very common. Now, here's a little publishing primer primer.

I think I use this analogy in one of the other publishing episodes I've done, but I'll share it again here since it's kind of relevant. All right. So there are five big publishing houses, okay? Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Harper Collins, and McMillan. They are literally called The Big Five. Okay? Now, I like to think of each of these publishing houses as a hotel, a very large hotel.

Each floor of the hotel is a publishing group or division. So there might be a children's lit floor and a business floor and a religion floor. and a religion floor and several fiction floors. They're all contained inside the hotel, but each floor has its own vibe and kind of specialty, right? Okay, so then within each floor, there are many rooms, right? Just like at a regular hotel. Each of those rooms in this weird publishing analogy is called an imprint. The imprint has its own staff and vibe, and it is is really the publisher an author signs with. Unless you're Michelle Obama, who just signs with the hotel proper,

most authors are with an imprint or they hang out in one room. And inside each room or imprint is a single or group of acquisitions editors who are in charge of acquiring or getting an author to commit to that room. They're the ones who read the book proposals and decide if it's a book they want to publish. Okay. Okay. So for me, back in 2018, I signed my first contract, a two book contract, with an imprint called Waterbrook Multnomah, which is its own room. It is on the crown floor of the Penguin Random House Hotel. And after I wrote and I launched the two books in my two book contract, I wanted to try a different room. That is very normal. Author switch publishers all the time.

Like any experience, there were some things that went great and others that did. didn't, but ultimately my vibe and audience, it just didn't match the Waterbrook room anymore. It didn't a lot when I started, but it definitely didn't when I ended. Still, as I already mentioned, there's that standard component of a lot of publishing contracts, the first rights clause. It makes sense that the room you're in is unlikely to just like let you leave without knowing what you're writing next, right? They've been your room so far. They want a shot to stay your room. But I knew I needed to change. rooms. However, one of the tricky things about this clause sometimes is that very often, if you say no

to the room, you're saying no to the floor and even the hotel. And I really like the Penguin Random House Hotel. I like the floor I was on to. I really liked it. So the folks in charge of the entire floor of the Crown Publishing Division, they said to me, Kendra, we think this room over here is better suited for you. So I had a meeting with all the people in that room in the Convergent room in May of 2023. So just a year ago, y'all, to see how the vibe was. And if they understood the book that I wanted to write, they did more than I actually dreamed that they could.

And it has been an excellent partnership so far. What a good room to be in. Plus the Convergent room, it aligns a bit more with who you guys are. On their website, this is the vision of Convergent. Convergent publishes books for the human spirit. our authors are community builders, experts, and storytellers, helping people to nourish their inner lives and find meaning, connection, and understanding in a changing world. I mean, that sounds a lot like us, right?

Plus, a lot of you are very familiar with the family of convergent authors, Kate Bowler, Sarah Bessie, Richard Roar, Austin Channing Brown, Henry Nowan. it is a room that makes sense for the kind of book I wanted to write. So in the summer of 2023, I officially agreed to live in the convergent room for this next book. And then the manuscript was due November 1st. Y'all summer to November is not a lot of time. Good golly. Let's go. So writing a book is no joke. It is so hard. We often think that writing a book is doable, especially when we read ones that work really well and they feel very effortless. But most things that seem effortless require so much effort. That's for everything, not just writing. We all know this.

I always think about how the nester, Michael and Smith, can just like make a mantle beautiful and it looks effortless. But it actually took effort and knowledge that we don't see, right? It's not that things that just look so easy to all these people are so easy to do in general. There's a lot of, a lot that goes into it that we don't see. And the same is true for writing. And writing books for me, y'all, it is very, very difficult. I have to calm my perfectionist tendencies because there is no actual way that you can write a good book on the first pass. No shot. No shot. So to do that in five months and to do it without having a mental breakdown because of, you know, how hard it is to try to calm down that perfectionist tendency, that is a tight timeline and a difficult.

ask. So for context, the lazy genius way, it took about nine months to write. And I wrote the lazy genius kitchen in 10 weeks like an idiot. No one should ever do that. But a lot of authors get at least a year. But because of when we wanted this third book to release, which is October of 24, I needed to get the manuscript in pretty quickly in about five months. So I spent the summer of 23, just last summer, writing this book. Now, what does writing a book mean? That's not a stupid question. Every author has a different process. For me, I started out by putting a bunch of ideas on sticky notes and then like moving them around a lot, trying to find where things lined up, you know. I wrote thousands and thousands of words just to get something on the page, since you cannot edit a blank page.

I made outlines. I wrote from that outline. and then I changed the outline because the structure didn't hold up as I wrote. So then I would change the structure again. And I would write more until that structure fell apart. And then I come up with another structure. I did that multiple times until I found the book. That is a phrase that I use and a lot of my author friends use. You write until you find the book. You kind of know what you're looking for, but you have to write to find the real bones of it at all. And it is pretty laborious. You sit with bad to mediocre writing for weeks until something clicks. And you go, oh, I think we're getting somewhere. And then you keep writing in that direction.

And eventually you find the book. And then you write the book. That whole thing, it takes quite a while. Now, I don't write well in like two to four hour chunks, which is how my regular job is usually set up and how a lot of authors do. I need long days to write because sometimes writing, it involves sitting in silence for two hours, trying to figure out what to write in the first place. So the best situation for me is to get away for at least three nights in a beautiful environment because my environment is super important to my energy. And I write when I want to write. And I do this kind of like weekend, so to speak, about three to four times over the course of writing

the book. So what that means is I can write through meals and into the night. I can sleep from 4 a.m. until 10 a.m. and then get up and write for seven hours straight and then take a quick nap while I wait for a door-dash meal. I need to have wide open space to fill with writing as the words and energy comes, where I'm not interrupted by somebody who needs something. I don't have to follow the conventions of when people eat food or sleep. I can just write. I can just write. I I can follow the energy. This is why, or one of the reasons why, authors are paid and advance. Not in advance, although that's also true, but in advance.

You get money at the beginning. A publisher says, hey, I know this is going to take a lot of work and time and adjustment in your life because writing an entire book is a super big deal. So here is some money. So you don't have cash flow issues and you can rent an Airbnb or you can hire child care or you can do whatever you need to do to get this thing written, right? It is imperative to have some cash so you can fit writing a book inside your regular life because it is, it is a big deal to add that. It takes some resources. Okay, so last summer and into the fall, I wrote that book.

I took a few weekends away, one of them. I was, I don't know if you guys recall this. I was supposed to go away for the weekend to write or I was actually going to be home. I was going to be home by myself and all my family got sick. And so I had to care for them and try to fit in writing a book, which is hilarious. Oh, you know what? You don't know that. You don't know this story. You know why? That story's in the book itself. It's in the plan because sometimes plans do not go according to plan and you have to figure out how to pivot your plan. That's why you haven't heard it before. But why it feels so familiar because it's in the book that comes out in 78 days. Okay. So I felt so good once I found this book, y'all. Like, like so good. It still feels so good. I remember being so

excited by like a particular element of the structure. It was the acronym, the plan acronym, which is prepare, live, adjust, and notice. And everything, it's like, it's like everything that I had written just fell perfectly into those columns. And I, I remember being so excited by that that I ran around this apartment that I was renting, waving my arms in the air like I was a toddler at a bounce house. I was ecstatic. And you live for those moments because they don't come very often when you're writing a book. And when you do, you celebrate and you act like a crazy person because everything was already there. And then suddenly it all falls into place. And you're like, oh, here we are. It just is the best feeling. So over that summer, I wrote the book over several weekends. I turned in the first

manuscript November 1st, okay? And then about two months later, I guess, over the next two months, the book went through a few rounds of edits. I think they were all done by the end of December. First, you have editorial edits where your editor confirms that this is in fact the book, right? That's the first pass. When I turned it in on November 1st, my editor, Susan, who was edited my other two books. She looked at everything. Now, she confirms that you find the book. Sometimes you have not found the book and you have a lot of work to do. And that's a tough feeling. But my editor did love this book. And she spotted a lot of broader inconsistencies and concepts that needed more clarity. She's a really good editor. Then she gave me back those edits, those notes.

and then I had about three weeks to complete them. That's another thing about editing. The editors themselves don't change anything. They make all of these notes with editing software, so you see what they say to change, but you literally change it all. Okay. So she gave me back her edits. I had about three weeks to finish them.

And then after that, the book went to a copy editor who made sure I didn't repeat certain words a lot. And frankly, I do. And frankly is one of them. and made sure that I wrote good sentences with good rhythms, you know, that kind of thing. A copy editor helps make the book read well. So after I made those edits, took a couple weeks to do that, it went to a line editor who checked like footnote references, misspellings, more granular things.

That's what happens with editing. It goes from broad to granular. An editorial edit could have tons of misspellings and grammar problems, but that's not the point of that round of edits, you know? That's not what you're fixing right now. So eventually, the thing was so final that I printed it out on paper and I went through it line by line with a red pen to make sure we didn't miss anything. We might have because there's always something, but in February of this year, it was locked. All right, now around that same time, we were working on book covers. We went through a lot of great ones. And I will actually share some of them in the

next newsletter that goes out in a couple weeks. So you can check the link in the show notes for that. but covering a book. It is so hard for me, you guys. I am so aesthetically particular. So like bless the designer and the team for all the back and forths. But a book cover is very important, obviously. So if you're an author and you're ever in a position to choose a book cover, I want to give you a piece of advice that Emily P. Freeman gave me with my first book.

I got my first cover back. And I didn't like any of any of the ideas at all. none of them at all. And so I remember looking at the one that was like the best of the worst and going, well, I mean, I guess if we changed this, let me change that. And she said to me, Emily said to me, if you don't like a cover, don't tinker with it. Because once you start tinkering, it becomes the cover. You are allowed to ask for a completely new set of ideas. And I am so glad she told me that. And I have told other authors that over the last few years. And it's been true for all of my covers. Because sometimes we don't want to make anybody feel bad, you know, for like a design.

We think we're being difficult by asking for something else. Neither of those things is true. You get to work hard until the book cover or whatever it is that you care about is right. And you don't have to feel bad about that. You can ask for another idea. Again, in the next newsletter, I'll show some of the iterations of the book cover. There were very, very many and why we went with the one that we went with. Okay. So that was the covers. last month, where we are right now, I finished rounding up like blurbs and endorsements for the book, and they were so fun to get. People were so kind and lovely.

Suzanne Stabiel, Kate Bowler, Cal Newport, Nedra Glover-Tawab, Emily P. Freeman, Eve Rodski, Kelly Corrigan, and the office ladies, Jenna and Angela, all had the most beautiful things to say about the book. I'm so honored. It's just so kind. Kate Bowler references like early aughts, low-fat yoga commercials and, like, like, like women having it all and how we really can't have it all. And this book is an answer to that. It's like so specific and so Kate. I love it so much. So right now, just talking about the timeline, thanks for the book are a little quiet right now. I've done a small handful of interviews,

one of which was published in Publishers Weekly Magazine, which was super cool. But all of that, kind of the interview like publicity part of things, it will pick up hoard in August and September. watch out, y'all. Kendra is going to be all up in your podcast feed come October. My apologies and thank you. But already, I am really loving talking about the messages of this book, the practical help that it offers. This book is so needed. It is so needed. And I am just freaking out that it's almost in the world. I am so excited. I also love talking about it in person, which is why we are planning a handful of book events in October. I'm not sure when we'll be able to share all of the actual dates.

But I do know for sure. Here's what I know for sure. I'm going to be at Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on October 9th. I'm going to be at Quail Ridge Bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina on October 10th. And then we have got things working in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, maybe Greenville, South Carolina, maybe L.A. we're not sure yet. More to come. But I will be out and about in October, celebrating and launching this book into the world.

I'm so excited. So for practical purposes, anything regarding the plan, it will always be at the lazy genius collective.com slash the plan. Events, info about what the book actually is, pre-order stuff when that gets announced later in August. All of it will live on that page. So I know this episode is a little different than usual, but sometimes it's fun to get a peek behind the scenes.

I'm not going to promise this because, summer, but my plan is to do an Instagram live this week where you can ask me any questions about the book. I will keep you posted on that on Instagram at The Lazy Genius. I'll make an announcement if I'm going to do it. But thank you for being here today and for already being excited about the book. Like a lot of you have been able to read the plan on NetGalley and your feedback. I've been so encouraging you do not even know. And that's the behind the scenes of the book I swore I would never write. All right, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Julie Palm. Julie writes, I have a summer tip you might appreciate. Keep cold

lavender towels in the fridge. It is a life changer. Buy a bunch of cheap washcloths, wet and ring out till damp. Sprinkle with lavender oil or peppermint oil or whatever you like. Roll up and store in plastic bags in the fridge or freezer. When it's really hot, I carry them in the car when I'm running errands. I use them to freshen up quickly during the day when I'm gross, but I don't have time for another shower. I leave one out for the dog walker so she can cool off. They make me human again when it's sweltering, trying to stay cool over here in Winston-Salem. Winston-Salem. It's my next-door neighbor city, which is why I'm going to bookmarks over there. I love this idea, Julie. Also, why is the smell of lavender, at least for some, like so luxurious? It's so great. I love this approach.

batching cold comfort. It's great. Thank you for the idea, Julie, and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey. The Lazy Genius podcast is enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. Thanks y'all for listening, and until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. felt like you were living just a B or B plus life, it's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life, because when you're living a B or B plus life,

you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.