Part One

Not only was this the most pressing question that I faced when I began, it’s also the most frequently asked questions by my friends, acquaintances, and total strangers who hear that I’ve sold my book.

Here my story:  I met my agent at a conference five years prior to working with him.  I took a minute to describe my book idea to him and he got the concept immediately.  Then, he asked me a critical question:  “Are you willing to tell the truth?”

My book is a memoir, and the agent explained that memoirs go bad when authors step back from their stories because they feel afraid to really disclose the truth of their experiences. I replied, yes.  But as I thought about his question over the next few days, I knew that I really had much more to think about to answer as honestly as I wanted to.

The other critical thing he said was “When you’re ready, contact me.”

Well, it took me five years to really get myself ready. I kept writing over all those years, but I kept coming back to the question of being ready to tell the truth.