As you may have heard (since I’ve been talking about it almost non-stop here), I’m still writing my book proposal for my third book. Book proposals are a slightly complicated, gigantic document that contains the summary of your book, who the book is for, and what magic fairies you’re going to conjure to help you sell the book.  It contains other things too, but my point is, the way I describe writing book proposals is it’s like that school project you have that is enormously time-consuming, super boring, a metric shit-ton of work, and 99% of your grade is riding on it. Oh, and the class it’s for is the Big Enchilada Important Class. No big deal.  As I’ve also mentioned before, this book will be slightly different than my first two. Still self-helpy, but it will have an edge. More opinionated. More in tune with what’s going on culturally and politically.  And all of this is scary for me, as this entire year has been about healing, moving through all sorts of old shit, and leveling up.  One of the things I’ve done to help myself is writing a letter to fear. Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this and I decided if it’s good enough for Liz, it’s good enough for me!  In this week’s episode you’ll hear a few other things I’ve done to move through this time in my professional (and personal) life, and here is my letter to fear… Dear Fear,  I’m not sure why I’m addressing you as “dear”, as you’re hardly dear to me in the least.  Let me start with some compassion since you don’t necessarily deserve to be yelled at, berated, or chastised. So, I get it. I get why you’re doing what you’re doing. You know, or at least are very certain, that if I write a BIG book, (and by “BIG”, I mean with lots of opinions, and “with lots of opinions” I mean opinions that millions of women and men also have the same opinions. Oh, the irony) there is a HUGE risk involved.  What if people disagree and write mean things about me on the internet? What if I don’t know enough about the topics and I’m criticized for that?  But, I think the thing that scares you the most, is not bad reviews or haters...but the success of this book. With HTSFLS doing so well, this book has big shoes to fill. And by big shoes, I mean 100,000 copies in 16 months. A big book advance to PROVE how worthy my creativity is. Numbers have weight and there are so many numbers to contend with. To you, Fear, big numbers equal everything good and right in my life.  There are so many what if’s and OMG’s and expectations. I understand your job is to know these backward and forward. To yell “WATCH OUT” at every turn, every second, and I believe your goal is to convince me to write a book that is so incredibly vanilla that it will be agreeable to all, or if you really had your wish, I just wouldn’t write another book at all. We’d just leave the party of authorhood with HTSFLS, blowing kisses to everyone and call it a day.  I understand that you are convinced this risk is equivalent to my possible death-- playing Russian Roulette with the general public. That any failure of this book will not only result in public humiliation but will be my death. Death from starvation, or being stoned to death by my haters, or death by massive shame. Or maybe all three.  Trust me, I feel all of this in my marrow. Every day as I sat down to write the proposal for this book I hear you and feel you. I wring my hands and I worry. I make the anguished emoji face. I get GI issues.  So, we’re going to make a deal. You and me, fear. But, I need to tell you first that while I get you and see your job and even respect and admire your tenacity for doing said job, I have got this.  If you remember, I used to sit in my room for hours writing stories from the age of 9. This continued well into my teens and then for a decade or so I stopped writing because I lost myself, (but that’s a letter for another day), but when I picked up writing again it poured out of me. And for years this happened and then I wrote my first book. I actually d