It’s official. As some of you already know, my first book
Branding + Interior Design
will be published by Schiffer Publishing this Fall. It’s been a long road and I’m excited that I will FINALLY get to share this book with you.
It all started with an e-book—at least I thought it was an e-book—I wrote during my first year in business. I sat down one Saturday morning and by Sunday had poured out 50 pages. I didn’t realize I had so much to say! Then I did something uncharacteristic, something I don’t enjoy doing: I waited. I realized my e-book was something else but I hadn’t quite figured out what yet.
Three years, two telesummits and several interviews later, I knew it was a book, a book I had to write. So with fear, procrastination and doubt waging their assault, I wrote a proposal, hired an agent and we started pitching. In hindsight, that was the easy part. Next came the hard part: writing.
You already have 50 pages. This will go quickly. I thought smugly.
But like many creative ideas, this book, which I planned one way, seemed to have a soul of its own. The detour started with a quote I fact checked that was wrongly attributed to the architect Julia Morgan. That led me to one book and then another and then that footnote I mentioned a few newsletters back, remember? It was the footnote that told the story of Ruby Ross Goodnow and her vermilion room. Now I had officially fallen off the outline.
That led me to another book and another and another that was out of print, which meant I had to track down the authors to get to it. Now I was rewriting and cutting, rewriting and cutting, avoiding, swearing, crying, (occasionally drinking!), discovering and hypothesizing. It felt like this book was writing me, or, as I’ve joked many times throughout the process, that the dead ladies were leading.
Because designing women are the backbone of the profession, one that started just over 100 years ago with Elsie De Wolfe. This book is not only about the work I’ve done with many of you, it’s about theirs too. It’s also about leadership, branding, the new rules of marketing, creativity and my favorite topic, visibility. How can you become available to take your business to the next level, now? This book will give you the tools to do that in your own way.
It’s hard to believe that Me By Design will be 5-years-old in December, and that the seed I planted on that weekend so long ago has finally broken ground. I thank you for your business, and for reading my newsletter every week. Your feedback and questions have been instrumental in shaping what I write and knowing that you enjoy what you read has kept me going. I am truly grateful.
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