what works

On May 1, 2017, I resigned from the literary nonprofit organization I co-founded and led for three years. I also deactivated my account on Facebook, the platform that hosted the community of 40,000 writers where I’d first had the idea to start a conference.

my past life as a nonprofit girlboss / photo credit: Rebecca Aranda

As I’ve written about elsewhere, by the time I resigned from my role as executive director, I was in thousands of dollars of debt, dealing with a repetitive stress injury in both of my wrists from overwork, and taking anti-depressants. I needed to figure out how to earn more income, but I was also exhausted. I googled “coding boot camp.” I even applied for a job at The Wing.

my 2017 cover letter for The Wing

I was teaching a memoir writing workshop at Catapult and one of my students asked if she could hire me to read more of her work.

Over the next several months, I realized a few things. One, that writing workshops can be helpful for learning and practicing writing as a craft but that they don’t really serve writers who are writing a 300-page novel or memoir. There isn’t time to workshop complete manuscripts.¹ At some point, a writer needs someone to read their whole manuscript and tell them if it works. They might have the perfect friend/family member for the task. They also might want a professional opinion.

The second thing I realized is that whenever a friend-of-a-friend was in some kind of publishing crisis, they’d be told to call Leigh Stein. I’d developed a reputation as a writer who paid attention to how the publishing industry actually works, because I’m one of the few writers who’s genuinely interested in the business of selling books (not just writing them).

In 2017, as I slowly recovered from burnout and started to figure out how to run my own business as an editor and coach, I read a lot of self-help books and listened to a lot of podcasts. One of these podcasts was called What Works, hosted by

Tara McMullin

.

This week, in a beautiful full-circle moment, Tara had me on as a podcast guest, and framed my Instagram performance art as “a provocation to embrace your own social media use as a project of identity performance!”

Tara writes:

When I discovered Leigh's project back in January, I thought it was remarkable. Leigh revealed the project to her Substack audience in a post titled "autofanfic," which is how I learned about it. Because you see, Richual isn't a real company—but it really is the company at the center of Leigh's 2020 satirical novel, Self Care. [It appears my novel is on backorder at Bookshop for the SECOND time this spring…here’s an Amazon link 🙃]

In other words, Leigh decided to perform on Instagram as if she were a character in the world she created for her novel. It was an opportunity to create something funny and engaging while also managing her identity. "When I think about my future obituary," she told me, "I want it to say ‘Leigh Stein wrote funny books.’"

How we manage, perform, and play with identity in online spaces gets to the core of any discussion of the creator economy. And so today, I want to explore the question:

What if we embraced our online identities as works of performance art?

Thank you, Tara!

If you are a freelance editor or book coach, you might be interested in Tara’s upcoming workshop.

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Work with me

For years I’d been slogging away on my first work of fiction (a satirical millennial workplace novel), my frustration, burnout, and despair growing with every draft that saw my vision go unfulfilled. And then came Leigh. Her astute, intelligent appraisal of my manuscript, advice, edits, and, perhaps most important of all, her genuine enthusiasm for the project, not only steered me in the right direction, but stopped me from giving up completely. Almost a year to the day that I first met with Leigh to discuss my manuscript, I signed with a literary agent, and we’re preparing to submit to publishers. I doubt I would be able to say that today if I had not sought her help.

—Erin Van Der Meer

I have two openings for manuscript critiques in July and August.

I have also opened my calendar for 1-hour career coaching calls in May and June.

This is an opportunity to:

• Pitch the book you're working on and receive personalized feedback on the concept

• Get candid advice about the publishing industry

• Find out where your time and energy is best spent if you're trying to grow your audience or promote a book

• Figure out the next step to take in your writing career

After our Zoom meeting in January, the novelist Dena Soffer emailed me:

I just wanted to say thank you so much for meeting with me last week! Thanks to you I was able to completely re-work the ending of my novel. I so appreciate your careful listening and all your advice as I try to wrap up this latest draft.

1. I am aware that year-long, complete manuscript workshops exist. I’ve been invited to teach them. Typically, the teacher splits the revenue 50/50 with the writing program. These programs are expensive for the students and extremely lucrative for the writing programs. Because I’ve spent years building my own audience, I no longer need to teach for a program that’s going to take 50% of my revenue in exchange for marketing. I can market my offerings directly to my audience.