Jennie Nash shares a #amwriting “Write Big” session on letting go of “pick me” energy in publishing. On the day her new agent submits her new nonfiction proposal, Nash—author of 13 books with both Big Five and self-publishing experience—describes feeling calm because she’s also “picking” her agent and potential publishers, clear on the value she brings and what she wants in a partner.
She argues writers aren’t limited to gatekeepers anymore and can give themselves permission and define success. Nash notes pick-me dynamics appear in workshops, writing groups, beta reads, and awards, and urges turning that outward grasping inward by choosing and elevating yourself and your project.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, it’s Jennie, and if you’ve been listening to me coach Andrew on some of the recent episodes and you’re curious about becoming a book coach yourself, I made a little course that answers some of the big questions that people have when they start thinking about doing this work. Questions like, “Who am I gonna serve?”
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Hi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to [00:01:00] the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. This is a Write Big session, where I’m bringing you short episodes about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters.
Today, I’m talking about the concept of being picked, which is a huge concept in publishing. So often we put ourselves into positions where we feel that we are getting picked for something, picked, like plucked out of the line of other people and elevated and lifted up and chosen. And this happens particularly when you’re in the path to being traditionally published.
You’re trying to get an agent, and then your agent is sending you out on submission, and you’re trying to get picked by a publisher. So there’s a whole lot of this pick me energy that can come into play, and this conversation today is very personal because today is the [00:02:00] day that my new agent is putting my new book proposal out on submission.
I’m in it right now, and I’m actually really proud of the mindset that I have about this entire experience. I come to this after a long career as a writer. This will be my 13th book. I published six books with Big Five publishers, and I self-published six books. I made the choice to self-publish those books, which are my blueprint books and some other books on book coaching, because I wanted total control over them.
I wanted to be able to have the author accelerator coaches that I train to be able to use my book with their writers and to be able to download copies for free and share them with people when they’re coaching them or running workshops or things like that. So it was very important to me to have that creative control.
I loved self-publishing them and having the ability to do that, and I’ve been very successful [00:03:00] at self-publishing. With this new book, I wanted to approach a traditional publisher because I felt like this was a book that could be really big. It was me doing the work of writing big and realizing that I wanted to go out in a new and different way with it.
I’ve had several agents throughout my career, but the last agent I worked with doesn’t represent nonfiction, and so I needed to go out and get an agent my own self, which I did. I wrote a book proposal straight out of the steps that I teach in Blueprint for a Nonfiction Book, and I set about researching the agents that I thought would be great for it.
I actually know quite a lot of agents, but I wanted to start from scratch in my search to try to find the agent I thought would be the right one for me. I did that. I worked with the agent on the proposal. We got it into really great shape. I’m really proud of it. I love it so much, and today is the day that she finally thought it was ready to go out on submission.
She’s [00:04:00] been doing her work of prepping that sub list and talking to those people and getting it ready to go out. And what’s really curious to me is I’m not nervous on this day. I don’t have pick me energy. I have the advantage of having been in this business for so long and knowing how it goes, that I know that I’m also picking them.
I picked this agent to work with me, even though she picked me, and I feel the same way about the publishers. I’m going to pick them. They’re going to pick me, and I’m going to pick them. I know very clearly the value that I’m bringing to this project, and I know what I’m looking for in a publishing partner, and so I just feel very calm about it.
I’m excited, but I’m looking forward to seeing what unfolds. I don’t have this sort of cross my finger, clenching attitude of, “I have to be picked, and I have to be chosen, and I have to be singled out, and I have to have somebody [00:05:00] else roll out a red carpet for me.” I know how hard it is to write a good book, and I know how hard it is to connect with the readers once you have that book written.
I know that there’s just a whole lot of hard work in front of me, and I’m looking forward to having a partner to lift me up in that work and walk alongside me in that work, but it’s very different from pick me energy. I love the energy that I have today. It feels really good, and I also am really clear that if I don’t find a publishing partner who is excited to work with me and gets my idea and gets me and wants to be that partner, that there’s other paths that I have to bring this book to life.
It is not the only path that I have. It’s not pick me or die. And I’m sharing how I feel today and how proud I am of this feeling and what it’s like- In hopes that if you feel any tightness or clenching or gripping or [00:06:00] grasping around the work that you’re doing, that you try to let it go, and that you try to adopt some of this sense that you own the work.
You own the work, and you’re looking for people to work on it with you. You’re not looking to be picked. You’re looking for partners that you need to bring this book into the spaces where you want it to go, but you’ve already picked yourself. That’s the point, and that’s what I’m feeling today. I picked myself, and I picked the path that I’m trying to make for this book that I think would be right for this book, and I’m doing the best that I can to have success on that path.
But I am well aware that it is not the only choice I have or the only option I have or the only shot I have. I think it used to be more this way in book publishing, for sure, back in the day when the agents and the publishers were the gatekeepers, and the only option you had for reaching readers was to go through them.
That’s [00:07:00] just not true anymore, and from where I sit and what I’m feeling today, it’s a great time that we live in. It’s a great place to be as a writer because you’re not dependent on just a few people giving you that yes or no. You give yourself the yes. You give yourself the permission, and this is very much what it feels like to write big.
No matter where you are in the writing process, if what I’m talking about today resonates with you, I would urge you to do some reflection on the power that you have to bring your work to life and the power that you have to own it. And if you’re looking for partners, to reflect on what you want in those partners and what kind of people or what kind of feeling you’re looking for, just to make sure that you’re in charge of what this process is and you’re in charge of what success looks like.
Nobody else can do that for you, and doing some reflection on what success looks like for you and what it means to you [00:08:00] is a great way to bring calmness to this part of the process. We can feel pick me energy at all different parts of the writing process. If you’ve ever been in a writing workshop, there’s pick me energy there.
Everybody wants to be the writer who the teacher holds up as an example, or that all the students are buzzing about after class. There can also be pick me energy in a writing group. Is there somebody who’s the star of the writing group who always brings fabulous polished pages to the group and always gets a lot of energetic response?
You can even have pick me energy around beta readers. Do they love your work? Do they praise it? Do they get it? Do they give you back what you were hoping to get from them? If you’re submitting for any sort of award or fellowship or mentorship, there’s pick me energy. It turns out that there’s pick me energy all over the writing process, but this energy is outward facing.
And for our reflection today, I [00:09:00] want you to think about how you can pick yourself. How can you turn that pick me energy inward to yourself so that you’re the person who’s doing the picking? You’re choosing your own self. You’re giving your own self permission. You’re saying, I pick you, writer. I pick you, project.
I want what’s best for you and right for you, and I elevate you up. You’re saying it to yourself. You’re turning it inward. I can promise you because I’m sitting in it right now that it feels so good to do that, and it feels so right to do that and so empowering. And like I said before, I’m really proud of myself for being here because I wasn’t always here in my career.
Even when I picked myself at different points along the way, there was still a desperate clenching energy to it. Sometimes there was a I’ll show you energy to it. And sometimes that energy can be really motivating and good. But the calmness that comes with knowing you’ve done good work, knowing you’re going to get it into [00:10:00] your ideal reader’s hands at some point in some way, knowing that you have what it takes, it just feels great.
And I wish that for you, no matter where you are in your writing path today. Picking yourself is a way of writing big. Until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.
The hashtag amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their [00:11:00] work.
