Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space for vulnerability.
Think about your favorite books. Preferably nonfiction, preferably story-heavy, though neither are really required for this exercise.
What are those books about?
If you sit with that question for a minute, you might come up with a long-ish answer about the depth that impacted you, the stories you were wowed by, the connections that they made.
I feel that way about Ten Steps to Nanette, by Hannah Gadsby.
I usually start with “UGH it’s so good." Then I explain Hannah Gadsby’s specials and how interconnected they are, but how Nanette was the first one that I saw, and how powerful it was, and how many Easter eggs about the show are baked into the book…
But then it’s also a memoir about Hannah’s life—oh, and it starts with early realizations about autism, and honestly it’s a masterclass in creative safety when traumatic content is involved, both for the audience and for the author…
And I’ll end somewhere around, “You haven’t READ it? UGH, go read it.”
Good books are hard to put into words.
So when we try to put what we hope will be a good book into our own words, every book that ever left its mark on us looms over our shoulders.
Watching us type.
Reminding us that our draft sentences are fine, I guess, but they’re no Nanette. Or [insert your ‘UGH it’s so good’ book here].
Early readers give us feedback with their own good books looming over their shoulders, too.
They might not know what your book needs to be, but they do know that Elizabeth Gilbert told those kinds of stories. Brene Brown did that kind of research. James Clear included these kinds of steps.
None of this is inherently bad…until it dulls our own instincts and scrambles the transmission we initially felt pulled to share in book form.
Try too hard to make your book look like someone else’s, and you might succeed. But publishing that book won’t satisfy the itch to write this book.
Getting there won’t be easy, either. Sometimes, it can lead us into dangerous territory.
When we’re trying to replicate someone else’s research and how-to steps, the worst case scenario looks like unnecessary time and energy spent on content we didn’t need. It might also lead to unnecessarily complicated content on the other side.
Annoying, but not a huge deal.
But when we try to replicate the vulnerability that we perceived in someone else’s story, there’s a whole lot more at stake.
It’s far too easy to read far too much into someone else’s story.
Without knowing that author or what went into their writing process, all we can gauge is what we can see. And we can see that they’ve shared details that we haven’t or wouldn’t. They’ve had experiences we haven’t come close to.
So replicating their impact feels like replicating those visible details: Don’t we have to share something we haven’t shared before, wouldn’t otherwise share, or that no one else has experienced? Isn’t that what vulnerability is?
Isn’t Ten Steps to Nanette a deeply personal memoir about Hannah’s trauma and vulnerable process of self-discovery, and wouldn’t my deeply personal memoir have to look the same?
Well…no.
Our first misunderstanding is that books are about their details.
They’re not.
Books use details to emphasize their message, within the container of what they’re actually about.
Hannah used details about their life to emphasize their message of self-discovery and healing, within the container of a book about writing the special Nanette.
So really, Ten Steps to Nanette is about a comedian writing a comedy special.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is a book about a therapist going to therapy.
Eat, Pray, Love is about a woman on an extended vacation.
Wild is about a woman on a hike.
This brings us to our second misunderstanding: that remarkable books start with a remarkable premise.
As authors, the problem with both of these misunderstandings is that they skew us toward performance instead of purpose.
A performance of vulnerability is dangerous to ourselves and to our audience.
In fact, that’s exactly the part of Ten Steps to Nanette that impacted me so much. Around the eighth or ninth “step,” Hannah realizes that the show Nanette really has something to it. Only, in its earliest iterations, they’re tripping into trauma triggers right and left.
And what does a “fight or flight” trigger look like when you’re standing on a stage with nothing but a microphone to protect you? A whole lot of fight, thrown right onto an audience who hadn’t asked for any of it.
The rest of the book is about how Hannah created safety around that experience—and if you’re paying attention, the first parts of the book include those same mechanisms.
At one point, there’s a line about how glad they are to be writing the book personally, because a ghostwriter would definitely want them to tell us all the details of a specific trauma.
And Hannah simply refused to do that. It wasn’t a necessary detail to emphasize their message within the container of “a comedian writes a comedy special.”
This is just one example of the fact that what looks like a tell-all from the outside is very frequently, if not always, a “tell some.”
It’s just that the “some” of good writing allows us to see something we haven’t seen before—which is vulnerability on the author’s part, without having to be complete exposure.
See, vulnerability is allowing part of you to be seen in a way that could invite danger or pain. But we don’t have to harm ourselves first to prove that we’re doing it right.
Picture the climactic scene of A Knight’s Tale, where Heath Ledger takes off part of his armor so that he can move better and then win the day.
He’s vulnerable, but it’s intentional. He knows the added advantage he’s getting from that vulnerability and makes the calculated risk to go for it.
Performed vulnerability would be more like me going into a joust without armor because of what I saw in that scene. (I wouldn’t have to be “weighed or measured” to “be found wanting,” and I certainly would not win the day…So many bonus points to anyone who gets all of those references.)
Vulnerability allows part of you to be seen in a way that could invite danger or pain—and vulnerability in good writing does so with calculated intentionality.
It also helps readers feel seen in a way we hadn’t before, which actually makes us, the reader, just as vulnerable. In a less public but no less real way.
So when Hannah shares personal details that help us see their process, we feel seen within our own processes. But not all details, and not all processes, and not all readers.
Hannah even makes specific choices that will help the wrong readers filter themselves out before things get too personal.
By remaining fiercely stubborn about these boundaries, Hannah keeps everyone safe enough to survive the impact that their book (and show) was intended to make.
We have many examples of artists who lost those boundaries in their work and lost their safety alongside it. Arguably, Heath Ledger is one of them.
Two others came up almost simultaneously over my winter of reading. Both Tom Wolfe and Pat Conroy were famous for writing fiction derived from personal experiences. Both were sued. And both were miserable, at least for significant portions of their lives.
In Editor to Author, Tom and Max Perkins exchange excruciating letters about what was lost in their relationship, in Tom’s health, and so much more.
In Death of Santini, Pat Conroy writes about the deep depression he fell into after every new book he published.
It’s easy to read too far into someone else’s story—and it’s easy to assume that they must be kind of superhuman to be able to share so much so freely.
But if you chase those assumptions so far that you forget what you’re really writing to convey, you’re going to trip into your own trauma triggers. And then you’re either going to fight the reader or run from yourself. Possibly both.
Now, Tom Wolfe was not my author. Neither was Pat Conroy. And I can’t say for sure what their experiences were like or how they could have gone differently.
But at least for these few minutes, you are my author.
And I want you to know that no author is superhuman. Not even the ones that have impacted you so much through their books.
I want you to know that you don’t have to be—or even pretend to be—superhuman to impact your readers to those same degrees.
More than anything, I want you and your readers to survive that impact.
So, let’s forget about all of the details that those powerful books have in them, and look instead at what really matters:
What did you see in those authors?
What did they help you see in yourself?
These are personal questions with personal answers. You’ll also have to get personal when you’re naming the message that you’re feeling pulled to write. And again when deciding which details will help you emphasize that message.
The only thing we can replicate is the question we started with, now that we know how to answer it. So let’s try that one again: Think about your favorite books. What were they really about?
Taking a hike? Learning a skill? Writing a comedy special?
I’m willing to bet you’ve taken hikes. You’ve learned skills.
You have created. You have traveled.
You have healed. You have lived.
What is your book really about?
Set that container down like a boundary around your message. Put it on like armor.
Then you can bring your details to the page—but only the ones that belong in that container, so that both the details and the container will emphasize the message that brought you to this work in the first place.
Good books are hard to put into words, it’s true.
Good authors try anyway, willing to show up exposed and vulnerable if that’s what it takes to get their message across.
But it’s good boundaries that make sure the message actually makes it into the book, and that the author survives the effort.
That’s good writing.
The kind that helps the right reader see themselves in a clear, direct light.
The kind that makes them wonder how you ever managed to make such a powerful, vulnerable experience come to life on the page.
The kind that makes you shrug and say, “I don’t know. I just felt like I needed to write about that time I took a hike.”
Hey, thanks for creating this space with me today. Whether or not you’re ready to dive into writing quite yet, remember that the best authors show up fully, just as they are. That’s all it takes—and you're already doing it.
Be sure to subscribe here on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts. And when more of your book is ready to emerge, the space we made today will be here waiting for you.
And so will I.
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