How It All Started . . .

There I was, driving up I30 from Dallas, Texas to Hot Springs, Arkansas to pick up my boys from summer camp, singing my heart out to the Taylor Swift station and thinking about my future and the enlightening experience I just went through. I had recently returned from an amazing four day stay at Miraval in Austin. Miraval is a Wellness center, and I was in serious need of a mindset shift. I had been divorced from my third husband for a year. Why was I still so depressed, I thought to myself day after day.  When will I stop grieving and start living again? I had a great job, great kids, amazingly supportive friends and family, yet I still felt like a shell of my former self. A pitiful, aging, depressed version of who I used to be. I looked up Wellness centers online and Miraval seemed to have everything I needed. Greif and stress management classes, crystal meditation, yoga, hiking, fear conquering challenges like ropes courses, bee keeping, grounding through nature and on and on. Best of all, NO TECHNOLOGY! Four whole days disconnected from the hustle and bustle of life to focus on me. It was truly a life changing experience. I left Miraval with a totally new outlook on my future. As I was singing and smiling and taking in the beautiful tree-lined highway, I thought to myself, I’m going to start writing again. I’m going to start posting again. I miss those things. The thought brought a huge smile to my face.

I’ve put content out on LinkedIn for the past decade. Nothing major, just short posts here and there. Sales advice, lessons learned, funny stories, technology recommendations. Whatever inspired me at the time. Six months before I started going through my divorce, I had written a series called Truth or Dare, challenging advice for aspiring salespeople. I had twenty weeks of content written. I planned to post one Dare on LinkedIn every other week for a year. The issues in my marriage began to mount and for whatever reason, I just didn’t have the energy to start the series. So, there it sat on my computer, for over a year. Brittany Spears’s Work Bitch started blaring from my speakers and I snapped back into the present began started singing along. Then a light bulb suddenly went off in my head. I need to publish my series! Yes! When I get to Hot Springs, I’m going to sort through everything I’ve written and create my publication plan. When I arrived in Hot Springs, I found a cute brewery/burger joint, grabbed a tasty beer, found a shady spot on the patio and fired up my laptop. As I pieced together an outline, it suddenly occurred to me that I had A LOT of content sitting in front of me. I think I can turn this into a book! I thought to myself with both excitement and fear. There are already SO many Sales Advice books out there. Why would my advice be any different? I argued to myself. As I sat and pondered titles for my potential book I started thinking about the focus of the book: why salespeople suck and what they need to do differently. Do people even know they suck at sales? I thought to myself. As I continued to brainstorm, this one stupid idea kept popping into my head. Sales seems so much like dating. Many people say and do things on a first or second date that they don’t even realize they shouldn’t be saying or doing, and they’re left mystified when they never hear back. This happens in sales too! Cecilia, NOBODY is gonna read a business book that compares sales to dating! I thought as parallels were coming to mind left and right. Men and married people especially won’t read this book! They can’t relate!  My wiser self kept chiming in. Shut up self! Everyone has dated at some point! Besides, who cares! Write because you enjoy writing. Who cares if anyone reads it, I retorted back to my wiser self. And so, I began writing. I wrote all afternoon. I left the brewery and checked into my hotel. I unpacked my things and headed to the rooftop restaurant, laptop in hand, and wrote more. I ate dinner and went back to my room. I continued to write until nearly midnight. I had written for almost eight hours straight. Thoughts flowed out of me effortlessly. I was filled with an energy and excitement that I hadn’t felt in years. I had never experienced anything like the odd energy that was now flowing through me. I even felt, dare I say . . . HAPPY!

I became obsessed with writing my book. I wrote during any free second I had. I’d wake in the middle of the night with an interesting thought or a point I wanted to include, and I’d make a note of it on my phone. It was beautiful. I felt as though I had finally found my purpose. Writing became my happy place when I didn’t have my boys. My escape from a stressful day at work. My personal date night on a Friday evening when I’d venture to the local wine bar for dinner and write in a quiet corner while sipping on a glass of chardonnay. I was completely fulfilled with myself for the first time in my life. I no longer looked to others to feel acknowledged or whole. I loved every second of writing the first draft of my book. Never did I think I’d have the time, patience, knowledge or even the words to write an entire book, but suddenly none of those thoughts were true. Not did they matter. The more I wrote, the prouder I became of myself. And the better I felt about myself, the more healed I knew I was becoming. I was afraid to tell anyone what I was doing though. I thought my friends and family would just roll their eyes and think I was crazy. Maybe I WAS crazy!

As the weeks passed, I couldn’t contain my excitement about my little project. I had to start telling people. I started with my little sister and her husband. Hey Cil, wanna go to dinner with me and Patrick? My sister text one night. Oh, I can’t. I’m writing a book, and I need to work on it tonight. I replied. Oh, OK. That’s cool, she replied without really even asking what it was about. A few days later I found out that she totally thought I was writing a book, at long last, about our crazy family. Wait, it’s not about us? She exclaimed. Nope. It’s a sales advice book. I replied nervously, knowing I had totally lost her attention. That’s awesome Cil, her husband exclaimed. At least somebody was excited, I thought to myself. I slowly started telling other family members and close friends. While I feared their judgement and criticisms, the fire that had been ignited in my soul to finish my book could not be extinguished by the opinions of others. I knew I had to keep going at that point. I couldn’t just say I was writing a book and then not finish! I began reaching out to customers in my network to do interviews for my book. Much to my surprise, they were totally willing! How exciting! I continued.

Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely days I wanted to give up. I’d been writing for what seemed like an eternity. 25,000 words. How many pages would that be? I looked it up. Like 50. Ugh. Not enough. 35,000 words. I feel like I’m almost done, and I don’t have enough! Why did I tell people I was doing this? 40,000 words. OMG, I hit 40,000 words! I think that’s like 120 pages! That’s enough! And I’m not done yet! I finally typed the last word and saw that I was at just over 50,000! OMG! I wrote 50,000 words! AHHHHH!!!!! I wrote a book! I did it! Almost exactly four months after I wrote my first word at that brewery in Hot Springs, I had finished my first draft. I fired it off to my new editor in anxious anticipation. I thought that would be it. Hard part behind me. How To Lose a Buy in 10 Days  will be published by Christmas! Clearly these were the thoughts of a first-time author. Little did I know, the hardest part was yet to come . . .