With Lia Leendertz Pt 1

Morning.

I hope life is treating you nicely and that you’re enjoying this ongoing shared space about writing a book. Your comments and emails are making me smile, and I’m glad so many of you are finding this useful.

I’m delighted to have bribed Lia Leendertz into sharing her experience with us. You may know Lia from her garden writing, her early books or most likely her bestselling Almanac. She’s always been a great writer, but a few years ago she made the shift from selling in nice numbers to her books being huge successful.

She hit upon a great idea, that just happened to be repeatable, and worked on it, taking an unusual avenue both to publishing her first Almanac and since.

I thought it might be interesting to chat with her about that (God, I hate to say ‘journey’ but it’s early and I can’t think of a better word - see the power of allowing time for editing) journey, as I think it may have a lot that is relevant for anyone trying to get a book published - whether you have already been published or not.

I’ve split our conversation into three: my own experience with newsletters and film clips is that if they are too long I mean to get round to reading them but...so here we go, with the first part, about the germ of the idea, developing it, and rejection.

I’ve made this first episode to everyone. I hope you enjoy it. And if you feel like more in a similarish vein might help you with your writing, and/or your desire to get your book published, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to see everything that paid subscribers enjoy.

Thanks again to Lia - you can find her excellent Substack here.

Happy weekend to you.