We sat on opposite sides of a long table full of people who were strangers. We’d agreed to not tell anyone our last name or say anything about what we do for work for the entirety of the program I can best describe as “Bougie Adult Therapy Camp.”

He asked me where I was from and when I said Maine, we were off to the races with the shared spark of our love for Elizabeth Strout novels. Later we found ourselves in the same small group, baring our souls in a process that can best be described as improv meets group therapy (the clinical term is psychodrama.) Despite not knowing each other’s last names or what we did for work, Andrew knew more about me within 5 days than people I’ve known for decades.

When we all revealed our careers before we went home, he told me he had a debut novel coming out six months later and I immediately knew I wanted to read it and have him on my podcast, Plenty.

It was his eighth manuscript. He’d been writing for a decade and what stuck with me is that the book that finally broke through was the easiest one he ever wrote.

How the Story Goes swept me away — it has all the funny romance of a Nora Ephron film mixed with whip smart writing. Plus I really related to Merrit, the heroine, and her resistance to being seen for all she has to bring to the table. It’s also set in a charming New England town that Andrew totally nailed the feeling of, despite having grown up in Texas.

But it’s the story behind the book that I can’t stop thinking about.

Andrew has a full-time job and four kids under ten. He wrote this novel in thousand-word bursts, late at night, after a bedtime routine he says “takes far longer than any human should have to endure.”

For years the dream didn’t happen. Three books went out and none sold, a rejection could take months to arrive, and he’d hit little bursts of despair where he thought: if this were going to happen, it would’ve happened already.

Then he gave himself permission to write the book he wanted to write — and it sold in about a month.

In the episode that released this week we cover:

— why suffering doesn’t make your work better (Andrew’s take on the “tortured artist” myth will start an argument in your group chat)

— the difference between the thing you force and the thing that flows, and why the book that “just came out of him” was the one that finally sold

— where ideas actually come from, and the one job Andrew says is his

— how to find the fortitude to keep showing up for a dream that hasn’t arrived yet, even when every piece of evidence says stop

So if you’ve got a dream you keep circling, I’m so glad you’re reading this. Andrew is proof that the timeline you’re panicking about might be exactly the right one.

Listen in to the episode that elicited an unusually enthusiastic message from our podcast editor about how much he’d loved it and how he’d ordered Andrew’s book immediately after listening.

 

 

Xo,
Kate