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With Susan Jeffers, author of The Feel the Fear Guide to Lasting Love, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, and many other best-selling self-help titles
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The Writing Show (WS): This is Paula B. Self-help books are one of the most popular genres. What goes into a self-help book? On this special Valentine’s Day edition of The Writing Show, we take an inside look at this exciting specialty and find out how to improve our love lives at the same time.
Welcome to the Valentine’s Day edition of The Writing Show, where writing is always the story. I’m your host, Paula B., and my very special guest today is Susan Jeffers. Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., is considered one of the top self-help authors in the world. In 2004, the Times of the UK named Susan the Queen of Self-Help. Her books have been published in over a hundred countries and translated into at least thirty different languages. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway launched her career as a best-selling author. Some of her many other titles include Feel the Fear and Beyond, End the Struggle and Dance with Life, Embracing Uncertainty, and Life is Huge. Her newest book is The Feel the Fear Guide to Lasting Love. Her popular Web site is SusanJeffers.com. Welcome to the show, Susan. I am so excited that you are here.
Susan Jeffers (SJ): Oh, it’s my pleasure to be with you.
WS: Can you give us an overview of your book, The Feel the Fear Guide to Lasting Love? This is a wonderful book, I have to say. I’ve read it cover to cover.
SJ: Oh, good, and I hope you keep practicing the lessons.
WS: I’m trying.
SJ: I wrote the book because so many people are having a difficult time with relationships, as is obvious to anyone who looks around, and for many years, I had difficulty in relationships, as well. I was married for sixteen years the first time and divorced, and twelve years between my marriages, lived a real dating time, and I went from man to man to man. And one day, I said to myself, “They can’t all be that bad. Maybe it has something to do with me.” And then I started my road to lasting love, and I have been married now twenty years to the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person in my life.
It’s constant use of the tools that keeps you on the side of love instead of anger and resentment. It’s a wonderful process. I set forth in the book the erroneous ideas we have about love and then present all the tools to help us move toward love. I am getting some wonderful feedback from it.
WS: Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the ideas in the book?
SJ: I believe so much that we can change so much in a relationship all by ourselves. Now, why is that? It’s because–I don’t know if everybody has been keeping up with quantum physics lately–but so much about love in our life is about our own energy. Is it about anger and resentment, or is it about love and caring? And I think that’s really key.
So, what’s the big tool to be able to keep us on the side of love? It’s to pick up the mirror instead of the magnifying glass. And by the way, that’s a wonderful tool to use in all aspects of our lives, work, etc. In other words, when things aren’t going well, stop the blame. Get powerful in yourself by seeing what you can do to change what doesn’t work. That is so powerful. It’s amazingly powerful. And that doesn’t mean we are a doormat or anything like that. In fact, the mirror can show us when it’s time to leave if that’s the right path to take. But when we look at ourselves, we become aware of our own fears that keep us trapped and [become aware of] what we can do to change things that aren’t working. This is so, so powerful and makes us much, much, much more loving as human beings. That’s basically the thing you have to understand. We have the power to change what isn’t working.
WS: You have very similar themes among some of your books, one of which is fear–how to handle fear–and another one is the idea that I can handle it. And, of course, you have a book of that title that was written for children.
SJ: Children, yeah. Well, I think that once we understand that we can handle whatever happens to us, everything in our lives is made much easier. And in terms of relationship, I think so much of our fear is about this neediness, and if we could say to ourselves, “No matter what happens, I’ll handle it,” “No matter what happens, I’ll handle it.” “What if he leaves? I’ll handle it.” “What if she has an affair? I’ll handle it.” And on and on and on. And to me, as we really understand that, the fear about everything in our lives goes away, and we can move forward. It’s as though the weakest part of our body is being nourished by the healthy, strong part of who we are. We just tell the part of ourselves that is very scared, “It’s okay, it’s okay, honey. You’ll handle it, you’ll handle it, you’ll handle it.” And that to me is so, so powerful.
WS: The feeling I guess a lot of us have is that we are going to be destroyed somehow.
SJ: Right.
WS: Bad things happen to us, but bad things are really a part of life.
SJ: It is a part of life, and quite frankly, most of the time, if you ask somebody when they have had something terrible happen to them, “Tell me about it,” they’ll say, “It made me stronger.” I had breast cancer many years ago, and I think of it as one of the most enriching parts of my life, and again, I learned from it. I grew from it. And if we learn, we can learn and grow from anything that happens to us in our lives. It’s as though nothing is really bad. It might be uncomfortable or might leave us with a hole in our hearts when it comes to relationship or all that, but we can learn, and we can grow from it all, and that’s a guarantee.
WS: It’s just such a different way of looking at life. It’s sort of paying attention to what’s happening to you instead of letting it sort of wash over you in a way.
SJ: Well, I think it’s a very active process. It’s like when I was lying in bed with a mastectomy, it was well over twenty years ago, I said to myself, “Okay, do you say no to this and be angry and be victim, victim, victim, or do you say yes to this and say, okay, I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to find something good from this?” And indeed, I did find something very good from it all. It made me appreciate life more, my relationship with Mark, who I was just dating at the time. Oh, it brought us so much closer together, and on and on and on and on and on. I even won an award for the spirit of discovery with the John Wayne Breast Cancer Association because I had a positive attitude about it. So you don’t know what you are going to learn, but you look for the learning. You find the learning. You go out there and say, “Okay, how can I use this in a very positive way?”
WS: One of your other ideas that I really love that you don’t go into that much in this book but you do in some others is the idea of finding out what’s going to happen next in the story.
SJ: Oh, yes, yes.
WS: Will you talk about that a little?
SJ: Yeah, that’s living a wondering life, right? I think that’s what you’re talking about.
WS: Right.
SJ: Instead of a hoping life. You go for a job and say “Oh gosh, I hope I get the job, I hope I get the job.” Well, you may, or you may not, but if you don’t, you are usually disappointed and upset. But if instead of hoping, you say to yourself, “I wonder if I get that job. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. If I get the job, that’s fine. If I don’t get the job, that’s fine. I will find something else.”
By the way, hoping is better than no hope, don’t get me wrong, rather than being this poor, poor, poor person. It’s better to have hope, but if we could just switch that a little bit. Instead of “I hope this will happen,” “I wonder if this will happen.” It’s as if we are going to a new film out there, and you don’t want anybody to tell you the ending. You want to see the ending for yourself, and if we could see our lives that way, too. “I wonder what will happen with this.” “I wonder what will happen.” And as we are raising our children, “I wonder how they’ll grow up,” instead of, “Oh, I hope they grow up healthy, happy.” You wonder. You do your best in all things. You do your absolute best, and then you let go the outcome and watch it all unfold.
WS: As if your life is a story, and, of course, because we talk about writing here and story-telling here…
SJ: Oh, yes. Interesting work.
WS: Yeah, it is if you look at your life that way. It’s a whole different way of watching what happens to your self.
SJ: Yes, absolutely.
WS: Now, you are a big believer in affirmations, too.
SJ: I really am. I really am, because I think that so much of the negativity that we hold within ourselves is pure habit. You know, our minds just keep telling us negative things, and we need to keep telling it positive things until our mind actually believes it. Affirmation is a form of “act as if.” If you act “as if” long enough, it surely starts to be that way. It’s the same way if you feel negative all the time: sure enough, things will turn out negatively. If you start pushing that aside and start thinking really, really positively in the beginning, only act “as if”–and believe me, when you say these things, whether you believe them or not, the body somehow takes it in–we become much stronger physically. We stand taller, etc. So we can say, “I am powerful and loving, and I have nothing to fear.” “I am powerful and loving, and I have nothing to fear.” “I am powerful and loving, and I have nothing to fear.” You just keep dancing to that and saying that to yourself all day, and that becomes a habit, a good habit. So I do, I believe in affirmations very, very much.
WS: I would just like to read a few chapter titles here, because I love these chapter titles. Your first chapter is “What Does Real Love Really Look Like?”
SJ: Yes. I certainly believe that in our society, we have no clue if we listened to the stories that come out as we are growing up. I mean, Romeo and Juliet, the greatest love story ever told, it’s a story of two fourteen-year-olds who would rather kill themselves than obey their parents, if you think about it. This is what’s considered the greatest love story ever told. And the whole concept of falling in love. When you fall, you really can get hurt. And the whole idea of love at first sight. How could you really love somebody you don’t even know? They could be the worst person in the world for you.
And then, of course, you just look at the tabloids. I mean, my goodness, they can’t really tell us that this is real love that is being demonstrated here. And I think we really have to re-think what real love is. By the way, I call this “enchanted love,” and enchanted love is wonderful while it lasts. It feels terrific. I’ve been there. And one thing I can guarantee is that enchantment will wear off, usually between six months and two years [later]. You don’t have that “I can’t keep my hands off of you” feeling after that time, and that’s the time when you have to move yourself into real love, or else the relationship will break apart. And to me, real love is about those sacred, ordinary moments that we make extraordinary in our lives–sitting down together, toasting each other and saying, “Thank you for being in my life.” Taking a walk together, enjoying television at night or whatever you love to do. It isn’t these grand splashes of brilliance that only happen once in a while. We have to use the everyday moments to improve our ability to love, and that, to me, gets you to the point where you actually do find your what I love to call “soul mate.”
For a long while, I didn’t think it was possible to find a soul mate. By the way. I listened to J.V. Knight, who channels Ramtha, say that the likelihood of finding your soul mate is almost non-existent, but to comfort yourself in the fact that you are with someone else’s. I just love that line. However, one day sitting at the dinner table, I looked at my husband, and I said, “My goodness, there he is: my soul mate.” But it was after many, many years of working on the relationship, going through the difficult times, going through the joyous times, and handling all the incompatibilities and the problems that come up just in the process of living. And little by little by little by little, wow, something gorgeous happened.
WS: That’s wonderful.
SJ: Yes, it is wonderful. I believe that we have to use our relationships to learn how to become a more loving person. I always joke that relationships are the best workshop going because they touch on so many issues that we need to work on within ourselves, and as we learn and grow, we become more loving, we become more secure, we become more powerful, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful process.
WS: Your second chapter is “How Fear Subtly Destroys Love.”
SJ: Yes, yes. Well, I do believe that fear is one of the biggest problems, as I said a little bit earlier, in relationships. Neediness. “I need, I need, I need.” It creates a very selfish love within us. It’s like a child is born that can’t eat, so they take, take, take, take. When we’re needy, even as an adult, we take, take, take, take. And we have to learn how to feel good within ourselves so that we can be the givers.
There are so many ways we can do that. I think one of the crucial things is to keep your life rich and flowing. Too many times when we get into relationships, we make that the prime focus of our life, which in many ways it should be, but on the other hand, we need to know that we are important in the world and contribute to the world in our own special way, contribute to our family, to our friends, etc. In other words, have a rich life. And if something happens to the relationship–and it can–our life is so rich that, yes, there is a little hole in our heart, but it doesn’t wipe us out, and we know we will always get to the other side of the pain when our life is rich and full. And I think that’s so, so important.
WS: You have some very interesting chapters here, and I am not going to make you give away the entire contents of the book, but I just want to read a couple more titles. “The Secrets of Loving Communication” is a wonderful chapter, and you also have one, “The Key to Never-ending Sex”–that should get people’s attention. I won’t make you give it away now, though.
SJ: Much to my children’s upset, I even talk about my own sex life.
WS: I want to ask you a little bit about that, but I won’t make you give away any more contents of the book. Let’s talk a little bit about you as a writer and writing this book and writing other books. Now, you are the queen of self-help, so you write many, many self-help books. How do you approach writing a self-help book? For example, where do you start?
SJ: Well, most of the books that I have written have come intuitively. It’s like one day you wake up, more or less, and there is the idea for the next book. For example, when things are going bad in the world, Embracing Uncertainty became a very obvious one. But the Fear book really came from my own experiences in life, as did so many of the ideas in my subsequent books.
For ten years, I worked on my own self. I did all the spiritual workshops, and for ten years I just worked on them and worked on them. I was the executive director the Floating Hospital in Manhattan at the time, and I was taking a course on intuition, which I believe to be very important in anybody’s life. So I decided that anything that came into my head I would do. So there I was sitting at my desk, and the idea came into my head, “Go down to the New School of Social Research.” It’s in Manhattan, and I thought they must be giving a great course. So I put on my coat, and I told my secretary that I was going to the New School, and she said “Why?” and I said, “I don’t know.”
So I went down there, and I walked into the lobby, and I found the Department of Human Resources. I went up to that office because it seemed the closest to the kinds of things I am interested in. Nobody was at the front desk. And a voice to my right said, “Can I help you?” And I walked into the office not realizing it was the person in charge of the whole department. And she said, “What can I do for you?” And I looked at her, and I said–I don’t know where this came from–but I said, “I’m here to teach a course on fear.” And I mean, I literally looked around and was thinking to myself, where did that come from? And she looked up at me in shock and said, “Oh, my gosh, I have been searching for somebody to teach a course on fear, and today is the last day to put it into the catalog. Quickly write me a seventy-five-word description of the course.” It was a thirteen-week course. I didn’t know what was even happening, and so I quickly wrote a description, and I called the course “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.” That’s how it all got started.
But this was the most amazing story as far as I am concerned: how if you follow your intuition, you will find what you want to write about. You will find what you need to do. And the rest of the books, and now there are about eighteen that I wrote, kind of followed my intuition. What needs to be written?
And you watch what happens in your life. I wrote a book I’m Okay, You’re a Brat. And it happened because my son walked into the room one day to say that he and his wife were thinking about having a child, and I said, “Oh, dear, Jerry, you’d better really re-think that now. If you have a child, your whole life changes. You lose your freedom. You lose your peace of mind. You lose this, this, and this,” and he started laughing. He said, “You mean, I’m okay, you’re a brat, is that what you are trying to tell me, Mom?” And I went on to say, “Children don’t appreciate… “ But anyway, in that moment, that book was written. Do you know what I mean? It was like, “Aha, this book needs to be written, because people don’t understand the whole picture of what parenting is about.” We have been fed a lot of half-truths, and now I wanted to tell the other truth. So in effect, my son named my book I’m Okay, You’re a Brat, but it was in that instant it was created.
So I have just always tried to follow my intuition, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful way to go through life, actually, to learn how to hone in to what your higher self, what your inner intelligence tells you to do. That’s what I do, and then I go around researching, and you always carry around a recorder or [keep] a little notebook by your bed, because ideas come up in the middle of the night, and then you take it from there. So it’s a beautiful process. I love to write.
WS: That’s wonderful. I love that story.
SJ: Yes. I was shocked. She was shocked, as well. Her name was Ruth Van Doren, and we subsequently used to laugh about that all the time. How did that happen? Talk about energy and sending your desires out into the world. Wow. It’s just amazing.
WS: Are there unique considerations having to do with self-help writing or with self-help marketing?
SJ: I don’t understand your question. Say it again.
WS: Okay. Well, obviously, all writers have a lot in common because we all market our books, and we all have certain ways that we work that we all have to do. We all have to meet deadlines, we all have to know that there is an audience for the book, we all have to write proposals if it’s non-fiction, etc. But with self-help writing, I guess I am trying to figure out what is it about self-help writing that is different, that presents special challenges for the writer that’s different from the challenges, let’s say, maybe some other writers go through? I am not sure there is anything. I am just exploring here.
SJ: Well, in a way, I almost find that a self-help book is easier, for example, than fiction. I think all of us yearn to better ourselves, to enjoy our lives more, to feel more fulfilled, to reach our dreams, and if you write in a very heart-felt way, you can really touch people magnificently. And so, to me, self-help books are easier to market, but you know what? Don’t write with marketing in mind. Write the book that makes you happy, that you feel will help other people or tell a story that you want to tell, but let it be not driven by marketing. Have it come from your own heart and your own love. Let it give you joy as you write it or a sense of satisfaction in some way. And then say, well, maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but I feel it’s an important story or important book or whatever you are writing.
WS: When you get ideas for books, do you reject any ideas, and if so, why do you reject those ideas?
SJ: Let’s see. I don’t think I have ever rejected any of the ideas that seemed totally right for me to write about. I would reject anti-male books. I love men, and for many years between my marriages, I was a male-basher, and I see a lot of that around. I see male bashing around, and boy, if you really want to hurt your heart, hurt your soul, it’s to be negative in your writing, even in a funny way. You know what I am saying? I would reject that kind of writing.
I was just recently in New Zealand promoting the Feel the Fear Guide to Lasting Love, and right then and there, I said, “Okay, from now on”–there were about a thousand people in the audience–I said, “From now on, no more male bashing, no more gender bashing, no more males putting down women or women putting down men.” So that I would reject. Anything to do with that, because I don’t think that you can approach the world with hate in your heart. I lived that way for a while between my marriages, as I suggested earlier, but I certainly wouldn’t want to live that way any more, and I realized it was all because of my own inability to take responsibility for my life, and when I turned that around, oh boy, then I really learned how to love.
WS: Your books are so full of good advice, which is very hard to follow, because it takes a lot of discipline. Obviously, anybody who tries to help people change is fighting some sort of a battle, because it is so hard to get people to change. What is it like for you to try to help people change?
SJ: I really don’t try to help people change. I put out what I think is healthy for them, and they can take it or leave it. Again, you can’t hang onto the outcome. You’re so cute when you say it’s hard to follow, and you are right. It’s hard to implement because you forget, and I am looking at my desk right now, and I have my laughing Buddha on the desk to remind me to lighten up. I have my affirmation, “It’s all happening for a good reason, whatever is happening, I am going to learn from it, I’ll grow from it.” I have reminders all over the place, and I have been doing this for, oh, my gosh, thirty-some years, and the truth of the matter is, it’s a lifelong process. And as new things come up, we have to remember to pull out the bag of tools that we have learned over the years to help us get through a difficult situation. And it always helps us when we know those tools. It’s only when we forget to pull out that bag of tools that we suffer longer than we need to.
So the tools are very easy. I mean, it’s real easy to go around singing to yourself all day, “I’m powerful and loving, and I have nothing to fear.” But to remember to do it, that’s the other thing. I had a student once who had a Rolodex in her car of affirmations after she took a course with me, and she would get in her car, and there was the Rolodex, and the whole trip she would say positive things, and boy, did she change. It was rather remarkable. So the tools aren’t hard. It’s a lifelong process, and when you are ready to do it, you’ll do it. If you’re not ready to do it, you won’t do it, but everybody will find their own way in the end, I suspect. So I just put out there what has been so helpful to me and hope that other people will benefit from it.
And obviously, people are connecting to what I found valuable in the work, because I get mail from people all over the world. It’s so exciting to say “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” They have learned a lot, and that’s just fabulous as far as I am concerned, but I didn’t write it for that reason. I wrote it because I felt there were things in there that needed to be said.
WS: I think a lot of writers would like to feel the way that you do. They just have something to say, and they want to do it just for that reason, and people are going to appreciate it. I think that’s what a lot of us really want.
SJ: Yes.
WS: It’s so great if you can actually make that happen.
SJ: Well, fill it with love, and it will happen much quicker, if you are writing self-help books, at least. When you are writing other kinds of books, I am sure they have different formulas that bring people a sense of wonder or thinking in a way that they have never thought before, or healing in some way. I know some stories are very difficult to tell, but if we in the end give the reader something that enriches their life, good or bad, then we have done a lot.
WS: Well, I know that you get a lot of feedback and that you interact a lot with readers and you also give workshops. And I know also, I was at one of your book talks, and there was a woman who asked you for help becoming a motivational speaker. I just wonder, how do you handle requests from people for a lot of personal attention?
SJ: Well, I think that I just tell them what I would do in their case. If they’re asking me about something that is quite serious in their life, they are having real problems emotionally, etc., I always to tell them to seek help because an email isn’t going to do it. But I enjoy the exchange and always put it in the context that this is what I would do, but you may choose something different. There is no one solution to anything.
And I think the Web side is an exciting thing. It’s something [inaudible] control as a writer. If you put a book out there, you are just open to the whole world, which in the beginning I did. My address was in my first book, and I realized, “Hey, I can’t do this” because I was getting boxes of mail, and you feel compelled to read it all or to answer if somebody is in trouble or whatever. So I had to take it out my book, my address out of my book. People do reach me through my Web site, mostly to say “Thank you, Susan, I have gotten a lot out of your work,” but I handle it. I don’t know. It’s very rare that a situation comes up where I find it impossible to answer, and as I said, if I think that something serious is going on, I tell them to please seek help where you are, and that’s just the safest way of handling it for them and for me.
WS: We mentioned something before about you including personal information in your book, not just this book but other books, and I was just wondering about that. Some of the information in this book was very personal.
SJ: I would say, yes.
WS: Does this ever make you feel uncomfortable, or does it make the people that you talk about uncomfortable?
SJ: I really don’t feel uncomfortable telling people about myself because I realize that underneath it all, we are pretty much all the same. We all want to be loved, we all make mistakes, we all have problems throughout our life, and I am no different than anybody else. I feel very, very comfortable. My husband feels very, very comfortable, as well, when I talk about our relationship. He’s very proud of what I’m doing and proud to be a part of it all, and he is usually with me at all my talks and is there totally to support me, and it’s just a wonderful, wonderful feeling. I wrote about my children in some of my books, such as I’m Okay, You’re a Brat, and I showed them what I was going to be publishing, and they gave their approval. If there was something that they were a little bit uncomfortable about, I changed it or took it out, not to embarrass them in any way. When I use examples, I always, always, always change the names of the people that I am dealing with. Even when people say “You can use my name,” I don’t. I just think that people’s privacy should be respected. So it’s really not a problem in my case. Another person writing may have a problem in that their mate might not like what they are saying or whatever. The trick is to just find a way to tell your truth and also not hurt anybody in your life.
WS: You say that as if it’s so easy.
SJ: Hey, listen, life is not easy. I never said it was easy. It would be boring if it were easy, I mean, if you think about it. I know, that’s the truth. I was the executive director of the Floating Hospital for ten years in New York after I got my doctorate in psychology, and in the beginning, it was so scary. For about two years, I didn’t sleep at night, but after about eight years, it became too easy. Do you know what I am saying? And I even had Elizabeth Taylor come to one of my events to sponsor it, and I didn’t ever get excited, and I thought to myself, “You know, I think I have been here too long,” because the excitement is from the newness of things, very often, so I realized. And by the tenth year, I did leave, and I went on to become a writer, and then a lot of fear comes up with that one. But the point is, as you keep working at it and doing it, you feel so much more powerful as opposed to lying in bed with a blanket over your head. So I think that, do things that challenge you. It’s wonderful. It’s just wonderful.
WS: You just mentioned having fears about writing. Is that something that you feel comfortable talking about?
SJ: Oh, sure. I don’t have fear about writing so much. Actually, I have to tell you a story. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, which, as you mentioned, along with other books, are in a hundred countries, thirty-six languages, was my first book, and I could not find a publisher. And I had four agents over time, and publisher, publisher, publisher. And one publisher actually said, “Lady Di could be bicycling nude giving this book away, and nobody would read it.”
WS: That’s terrible.
SJ: So I put it in a drawer. Three years later, I pulled it out, and I said, “You know, this is good, this is good. I am going to try again.” And I did, and, of course, it did get published, and it has sold millions and millions of copies. It’s difficult and fearful, and sometimes it was fearful. I was disappointed all the time, of course, when it kept getting rejected and rejected and rejected, but if you love your stuff, don’t give up on it. You just check off the last person who said no and go on to the next one until you find a way that pleases you. I know a lot of people are self-publishing today if they can’t find a publisher, so that’s a very good thing. You can always find a way to get your stuff out there. But finally, the book did get sold, and it did become a very big success, thankfully.
WS: How long did it take you?
SJ: Oh, gosh, I would say four or five years.
WS: Wow.
SJ: Yeah, because I tried for three years, and then I finally did find a publisher, and I wrote it that year, because the original was really the proposal, not the entire manuscript. And then by the time it came out, it was a good five years. But you know, some people can sell their books right away. Others it takes a bit longer. And again, some people, when they can’t sell it to a publisher, will just self-publish it. There’s always a way, there’s always a way. And it’s almost in a way easier with the Internet today to get your ideas and your work out there.
WS: Do you think that publisher is kicking himself now?
SJ: I would think so.
WS: So for all our listeners out there who are writers, publishers are not infallible.
SJ: Well, this is the thing. When you send a proposal in, it’s one person giving their opinion. If a different editor there had gotten it, you might have gotten a different response. It’s just a matter of playing around and just hoping you will find exactly what you need to find or wondering if you’ll find a publisher that will like it. But again, knowing if not, you’ll find another way, and that’s what’s so key. That takes away all your fear.
WS: Now, you mentioned self-publishing, but you and Mark, your husband, have just started your own publishing company.
SJ: Yeah. That’s not self-publishing. This is a publishing company. It’s so funny. Mark said, “Should we retire, or should we start a publishing empire?” So we decided that we would start a publishing company, and we have, and it’s very exciting. It’s very new. Basically, it’s only two years old, but it’s really bringing us a lot of work and a lot of pleasure.
WS: That’s the Jeffers Press, right?
SJ: Jeffers Press. Yeah. You can check that out on the Web site at JeffersPress.com.
WS: What have you found surprising about being a publisher?
SJ: Well, as I said, how much work it involves. It’s really an enormous amount of work because of the deadlines, about how soon you have to have so much material before the book actually comes out, but the great thing I learned was how great it is to publish other people’s work. Again, after eighteen books, when a new book of mine comes out, it’s like, “Oh, that’s nice. That’s really nice.” But it isn’t that original “Oh, my gosh, look at this.”
We published a book called Shortcut to a Miracle by two people in Chicago, and at their launch party, we got in a plane and went there to help them launch the book. It’s Michael Rann and Elizabeth Arrott. And it was so exciting to see their joy. Do you know what I’m saying? And there they were signing their own books and making the talk about their book. I was more excited about their book coming out than when my own books come out, and that to me is what’s so wonderful about being a publisher–getting other people’s work to come forward. It’s just gorgeous.
We will be coming out with a fantastic story about a young girl who at the age of twelve became an alcoholic and drug addict, and half of each chapter is written by the girl, who is now, of course, an adult, and half of it is written by the mother, who is watching it all happen and how it affected her. It’s one of the most moving books that I have ever read. I will be so proud to put that book out there, because I know it will help a lot of people. So it’s a wonderful thing to bring other people’s books to fruition. It’s just unbelievable. That’s one of the great things about becoming a publisher.
WS: Are you trying to do publishing in a way that is different from other publishers. I mean, other than the content that you are producing? Is your approach to the business of publishing or some aspect of marketing or your relationship with authors or anything like that, is there something about that that you can point to that you think you are trying to do differently?
SJ: Well, we certainly want to honor the author’s wishes. We send them every change in the cover, every change in the book just to make sure that they are okay with it all, but I don’t know that it’s that different from most publishers. I have always had wonderful experiences with my publishers, Random House and St. Martin’s Press and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. I have had wonderful experiences with the various editors that I have worked with, so in a way, I have learned from them how to make an author feel good. That’s what we would like to do. So that’s what we’re doing.
I really have been very fortunate to have great experiences with the publishers in terms of the people I have worked with editing-wise. I think it’s a problem now relative to marketing, etc. A lot of authors are finding that they are not getting enough help from publishers relative to the marketing end of it, and I understand that. I mean, it’s a very expensive project to do marketing. It’s harder to do marketing today, and I think as a writer, you should determine that you are going to take that upon yourself, either to really learn the Internet so that you could get word of the book out through the Internet or creating your own speaking agenda so you can get out there and talk about the book, etc., etc., etc. Learn about marketing yourself, [don’t] depend on publishers to do that, because the publishing world is going that way. Even if you get with a big publisher, very often you won’t get much help in terms of the marketing.
WS: Susan, is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you would like to add?
SJ: I think that what I have to say is to never give up, never give up. And you know, as I wrote in this book, it’s so wonderful to keep your love in your heart, but that should be part of your process in life, about all things in your life, about your writing, about any jobs you might be in, about contributing to the world in your own special way, just learning to know that you have reason and purpose in this world. I think that’s what’s so, so important, and I think basically that’s the message of most of what I write about. It’s just moving along knowing you have so much to give, so much to contribute that every word you speak affects the world around you. That’s an important lesson.
WS: Thank you so much, Susan. We here at The Writing Show say that we provide information and inspiration for writers, and you certainly have provided both, but inspiration–wonderful. Thank you so much for being with us on Valentine’s Day, Susan.
SJ: And I send my love to everybody on Valentine’s Day and every day of the year. By the way, on my Web site, there is a Valentine’s article, so go read that and take that one with you throughout the year.
WS: That’s SusanJeffers.com.
SJ: That’s right.
WS: Be sure to let us know what you think of Susan’s interview or any of our interviews, for that matter. Write to The Writing Show. I will be reading listener comments on the air. Email me at paula at writing show dot com. And by the way, if you have experience with online writing communities and would like to share it for an upcoming show, please let me know.
