Narrative Vacation

To all the women out there who want to write a romance novel. 

It’s time to pull that dream into focus. 

And if you’ve been putting off picking up a good book until you have time, let this inspire you to start now. 

Excerpt from Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

I spent the last month reading romance novels. 

I finished 15 in 30 days. 

That wasn’t a goal I set - to read the equivalent of 2 books a day. 

I just started while on vacation and kept going. 

The only “goal” I set was to read one fiction book on my beach vacation in early August, putting off my usual non-fiction leadership and personal development TBR list. 

I wanted something light, crisp and refreshing. I didn’t want to have to think too hard, but I wanted to get lost in the story and feel good about the ending.

The world feels a little too dark right now. And even though I LOVE a good dystopian narrative, I just can’t. 

I started with a recommendation from my avid-reader and book club leader mom, Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. 

Then I did a little homework by reading past newsletters from my dear friend and yoga teacher, Naomi Gottlieb-Miller, who includes a good read she’s just finished in her weekly Love Notes. 

My trusty old Kindle Paperwhite and the Libby app at my local public library were quickly filled with borrows and holds.  

On the other side of this month-long voyage into entertaining rom-coms, I’m reminded of my high school summer break, when my dad wanted to motivate me to read more. He offered a bet – my favorite kind of motivation at the time – with a penny a page for every page read. I read hundreds and hundreds of pages. Joyfully. It stopped becoming about the pennies – although those certainly added up – and shifted to escape into storytelling, relationships, fun. Goodness, would those pennies add up right now with the thousands of pages I just finished reading. 

This month also made me think a lot about the ongoing struggle many women I know – moms, especially – feel about reading. I have been one of those women, too, who all but stopped reading for pleasure during my early career, and then blamed it on having babies that stole my nighttime hours and made me so incredibly exhausted. 

But last year, I shifted out of that annoying narrative and started reading leadership and personal development books by the dozen. Books like this have always been some of my favorites, but I’ll be honest – up until the last two years, I didn’t know where they fit in my life. I felt so stuck in my career for so long that the development tips and tricks just left me feeling deflated. 

It wasn’t until I made a major shift for myself – to pull my own dreams into focus – that I started to assemble the knowledge into my own useful frameworks. 

But this post isn’t about the merits of non-fiction self-help volumes that take up space on my TBR. 

It’s about what I discovered when I let myself “vacation” with a couple of good fiction books.

There are 3 things I’m taking away from this narrative-fueled vacation that I want to share with you. 

1

All of these rom-coms are based on the Inner Critic controlling the show. 

I hear from Inner Critics all the time – both in my own head and in the conversations I have with women everyday. I’m trained in how to spot the nagging voice – how to listen for the unhelpful refrains and even the sneaky, lurking ones that don’t show up until we’re hot on the trail of what we want most. 

But immersing in these stories with a front row seat to a writer’s perfectly sculpted Inner Critic really drove the point home.   

Inner Critic Voices are freaking loud in all of us. Full Stop. 

The sooner you start to recognize the voice(s) for what it is, the sooner you can focus on what you really want. 

Just like writers weaving tales along the clothesline of critical story points – good girl works hard in a system not built for her strengths and smarts, boy’s intrigued (and often a little scared) of girl, something something something happens, and the good girl finally gives in to getting both the work dreams she wants most and the guy – you can become the hero in your own story when you quiet your inner critic.  

2

I talk to a lot of women who write - or really want to write - romance novels in their spare time. 

I think that might be what sparked me to explore this summer fiction escapade. 

I wanted to discover the magic that is inspiring these women to cut sleep short to bang out as many words as possible. To explore characters and go on adventures they aren’t ready to meet in the real world. To see the big picture in the way I imagine they see it. 

Not as an alternative to their life as they know it now, but as an artistic wrapper to make life more fun, vibrant, theirs. 

As a coach, I speak to women about their deepest dreams. Even when they aren’t at the surface yet, I love helping women articulate work or passions that they don’t often feel like they can say out loud, even to themselves. It’s truly one of my favorite parts.  

Life and work don’t have to be routine and without inspiration. We get to be the comptrollers of our own time and how we spend it.

If you want to be a writer or a painter or a trapeze artist, take the smallest step possible to do that. And that smallest step might be to read 15 books in a month, or to take a virtual tour of the Louve or take over the monkey bars the next time you’re at the playground with your kids. See how it feels to “take a moment for yourself everyday.” And then step up from there. 

3 

My favorite way to help someone add more of what they want to their regular routine is to ask them to think of an experience, usually a peak one or something that has a relevant theme. 

In this case, I loved my summer, for a lot of reasons. And one thing I loved most – just for me – was carving out little pockets of time for me to escape into a book.

So I’m bringing this one small piece forward. 

Like most things, I’ve realized I can’t expect my kids to love reading if they never see me read for pleasure and not just “work.” 

I’m no longer going to keep narrative books off my TBR at the expense of thought-provoking development books. I have room for both. 

One last favorite thing – I love reading the Acknowledgements page. Although these authors found the grit to get up each day and log the hours crafting and writing storylines I wanted to read, they also acknowledge the help they received along the way. 

Help is interesting. Sometimes it’s offered freely by those around who truly see us. But often, when the dream is locked away tightly within us, we need to do the hard work to ask for help. 

If you have a dream deep in your heart that you haven’t heard yourself say out loud, I’m here to help you bring it out. 

You don’t even have to know what you’re asking for – because sometimes naming the exact thing is untouchable, but reaching out is all the spark you need to kindle the flame.

•••

Below are the top 3 reads that impacted me the most, enriching themes that show up regularly in my own life and work. 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus 

This book was the perfect transition into my retreat to fiction, keeping me entwined in the world where women are constantly trying to excel in a system not designed for them. Elizabeth Zott is the smartest Person [also, Woman] in the room and living/working within a system that isn’t built for her to succeed. She toils through the double bind women face – the barbed wire tightrope of likability and competence – with monumental effort, staying true to herself as much as possible. 

If that wasn’t enough to love this book, then this neighborly advice certainly pushes it across the finish line –

“Take a moment for yourself. Every day. A moment where you are your own priority. Just you. Not your baby, not your work, not your dead Mr. Evans, not your filthy house, not anything. Just you. Elizabeth Zott. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you seek, reconnect with it in that moment.” 

Booked on a Feeling byJayci Lee 

A very traditional rom-com, what showed up for me in Booked on a Feeling where the huge themes of burnout and self-discovery. I’ve spoken a lot about burnout and how overcoming my own overwhelm was the key that unlocked my self-discovery about what I actually want most. The same was true for Lizzy Chung, who needed to physically remove herself from the constant pressure of her partner-track law firm to check in with her own lost, but not forgotten, dreams. 

The good girl/good student narrative that leads to a good job, handling everyone else’s fires first and dropping the ball on ourselves shows up for so many of us, and here the romance was sweetly secondary. 

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Feeling the need to contort ourselves to be likeable for each and every person we encounter is the big theme for main character, Elise Hannaway, and is totally relatable for so many women I meet. We often fall back on our Inner Critic-as-guide voice to tell us that if we’re too much ourselves, and not enough what the other person wants us to be, that we’ll lose our ground. Instead, we lose ourselves. Taking time to form your opinion about “anything” is a huge first step. 

I love the scene from Runaway Bride when Julia Roberts’ character decides to figure out how she actually likes her eggs cooked rather than just eating whatever her latest beau thinks is best. With half a dozen plates in front of her, she samples each cooked egg, claiming her favorite. And in Love, Theoretically, Ali Hazelwood explores this in a much more, ahem, visceral rated-R way.

The point in either fictional exploration? If you can’t name for yourself what you actually want, no one else can really name it for you.   

What favorite fiction books of yours should I add to my TBR next?