I've got some news

Here's how it happened.

Back in April, I shared that I was getting ready to send a book proposal out into the world. After months of honing that document, on May 1st (the feast of St. Joseph the Worker and the first day of Mary’s month, for my fellow Catholics out there) my agent officially submitted it to the six publishers/imprints that we thought would be the best fit.

After a few weeks of anxious waiting, we began to hear back. A couple of big five imprints turned me down because I didn’t have a big enough platform (though one of those editors was incredibly kind and supportive, telling us how much she loved the proposal and wanted to help promote my work). Another wasn’t concerned about platform but wasn’t sure if my framing was simple and clear enough to reach a large audience (feedback that I honestly think was spot-on). Finally, miracle of miracles, we got our first offer: from one of the best Christian publishers out there. The editor there loved the proposal and didn’t want me to change a thing.

As all this was happening, my agent and I were also having conversations with Matt, the editor who had initially inspired me to put this book together. He was passionate about the project, but like that other insightful editor, thought the framing still wasn’t quite right.

To get a book offer, convincing an acquisitions editor that your book is worth taking a gamble on is a necessary first step, but it’s not sufficient. That editor also needs to convince the rest of his or her team that this is actually a good business investment. That’s why a book proposal includes not just a high level pitch, detailed outline, and sample chapters, but also information about your platform, the people you could ask to endorse your book, the networks you could draw on to help market and promote it, etc. And, of course, you have to explain exactly who your audience is—what felt need drives them to pick up the book and buy it, and what they’ll get out of it when they do. That’s part of where my initial proposal went wrong.

My project focuses on the embodied experience of being a woman, and the most uniquely female experience of all is becoming a mother. A key part of my argument is that we need to attend carefully to pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood, because they have something important to tell us about what it means to be a human being—something that our culture often gets wrong, with disastrous results. Although I argue that these are truths that we all need to hear, the title I initially proposed—Listen to Your Motherhood—ran the risk of pigeonholing the book as being just for moms.

I was also trying to do too much in one book. The structure I proposed was divided into three main sections, each answering a different question: Who Am I? (which focused on philosophical anthropology), What Should I Do? (which focused on ethics/practical questions of discernment), and How Should We Live Together? (which focused on political questions about social justice and put forth a theory of how mothers can act as a powerful force for social change, through both building strong families and rebuilding the institutions of civil society).

As we had more conversations, I realized that I needed to restructure the book if I wanted it to do more than preach to the choir. I wanted to start with female fertility and draw out the deep truths that are incarnated in those intensely bodily experiences. But, as Matt pointed out, this starting point takes too much for granted. If I want to reach a broad audience, I needed to back way up.

First, I needed to explain why life feels so hard for modern women. I need to tell the story of how our culture got to a place where we feel forced to choose between two deeply lacking visions of what it means to be a woman: the 1950s housewife model of “traditional” gender roles, which dominates much of evangelical circles via complementarian theology; and the post-1960s feminist ideal of the empowered woman, who uses birth control and abortion to preserve the illusion of radical autonomy and compete in the sexual and economic marketplace on the same terms as (the worst of) men. I had to explain how this latter model, which is ascendent in our day, taught women to regard their bodies as their enemies—and how its acceptance of the primacy of the mind over the body perversely contributed to the rise of sex-surrealist gender ideology, which trafficks in the same false stereotypes as the old restrictive “traditional gender roles,” equating certain personality traits with maleness and femaleness.

Then, I had to explicitly make the argument that you can trust your body. Your fertility is not a threat to your status as an autonomous human being. It’s a core part of who you are, and it reveals that total autonomy is an illusion (for both women and men). Rejecting your body or trying to control and reshape it through technology cannot make you happy.

It’s profoundly counter-cultural to argue that the physical world actually holds independent meaning that is not imposed upon it by the will, language, or social structures of human beings. So I needed to make that argument explicitly, too. Only then could I make the more sophisticated arguments I wanted to make about what it means to be a human being—a union of body and soul—and, more specifically, what it means to be a male or a female human being.

As crazy as it may sound in our political climate, I believe that the Catholic philosophical tradition offers the fullest and most freeing account of womanhood. We are not deficient men, nor are we are uniquely pure, angelic, and free of sinful carnal desires. We are human beings with rational, human souls, capable of as much intelligence, willfulness, virtue, and sin as men are. But those souls are inextricably intertwined with bodies. Every body has a sex, and our sex shapes our experiences on a fundamental level. We can be realistic about the ways that men and women differ without falling into simplistic caricatures.

That’s what I want to do in this book. So, back in late May, I spent a couple of intense weeks coming up with new documents in collaboration with Matt and Keely (my agent), reshaping the proposal to be more of a “big idea” book making an argument about the state of feminism in our culture and offering a way forward based on Catholic Social Teaching. Once we were happy with those documents, Matt brought them to his team… and they agreed to make me an offer.

It took a while for the formal contract to come through and get signed, and then a while longer to come up with a title we were happy with for the announcement, so the deal was just publicly announced in September.

Here’s the Publisher’s Weekly announcement:

And the deal report from Publishers Marketplace:

I’m really so, so excited about signing with Image. It’s the perfect home for this project. Because it’s the Catholic imprint of Penguin Random House, they’ll promote my book in both the general and Catholic/Christian markets. On a more personal level, I have always longed for more collaboration and challenging feedback in my writing career. I want someone to push me to make my writing better than it is, to help me make this the best book it can be. Already, Matt’s feedback has played a pivotal role in shaping this project, and I can’t wait to keep working with him.

After an intense May, I took the summer mainly off from book work (other than some reading and research) and focused on family time, Fairer Disputations, and Public Discourse work. But now that the school year has started again, and I’ve finally got some regular childcare (my little one just started nursery school four mornings a week), I’m deep into the work now. The full manuscript is due on May 1, so I’m aiming for a chapter a month. So far so good: I polished off the draft of Chapter One last weekend.

That chapter is a deep dive into the construction of contemporary gender roles during the Victorian era in response to the Industrial Revolution, and I had so much fun learning about the history of textile production. I know, I know - it sounds boring but is actually super fascinating. My friend Holly, who’s a fiber artist, lent me some amazing books that illuminate the ways women contributed to the family economy before spinning and weaving were moved into factories. If you’re interested in this at all, I highly recommend the book Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

Now I’m onto chapter two, about the history of the feminist movement and the lead-up to its embrace of the sexual revolution. I just got this book in the mail and am excited to dive in (especially since I know one of the authors from college!). These historical chapters are definitely out of my comfort zone, but it’s honestly really fun to get to spend so much time reading piles of books and pulling things together to tell a story that’s detailed and accurate but still compelling and clear. It feels a little bit like being back in grad school… except that (I hope!!) more than one person will read what I write.

I will admit that it’s tricky to balance all of my different hats, though. After I drop Rosie off at school or put her down for a nap, there are so many different tasks/ways I could spend my time: FD, PD, book research and writing, other writing projects, this Substack… not to mention cleaning, cooking (the crockpot has been my BFF this season), working out, etc. Still, even if I’m sometimes overcome with decision fatigue, I’m lucky that my professional and personal commitments and so intertwined and integrated. The

Fairer Disputations

essay for today, for example, is a great piece by

Helen Roy

that talks about birth and gets at the truth that human beings are created for community. And I just sent off an email soliciting an essay for PD about the rise in young men’s church participation, focusing on how traditional-leaning churches can continue to appeal to men looking for a fuller vision of masculinity without falling into chauvinism.

On that note, I’m off to do some editing! Thanks for reading.