Maybe it’s taking this long for a reason
Before Still Alice became a New York Times bestseller and an Academy Award-winning film, Lisa Genova couldn’t get anyone to publish it.
The Harvard-trained neuroscientist sent 100 queries to literary agents. Four asked to read the manuscript. None ultimately offered to represent her.
Some thought a novel about Alzheimer’s would be too depressing.
One suggested she write nonfiction instead.
So she self-published.
She sold books from the trunk of her car. She arranged readings and signings at bookstores, coffee shops, Alzheimer’s facilities, conferences and book clubs. She built an audience one reader at a time.
Eventually, word of mouth grew. Press followed. An introduction led to an agent who loved the book. Within a week of signing with her, Still Alice sold at auction to Simon & Schuster for six figures. Years later, Julianne Moore would win an Oscar for playing Alice in the film.
I love stories like Lisa’s because they remind us that the gatekeepers don’t always know.
Agents don’t always know. Publishers don’t always know. Producers and networks don’t always know. None of us really knows what will hit.
Which means perhaps our job isn’t to contort ourselves trying to predict the market.
Maybe our job is to create the thing we’re deeply curious about. To bring our own perspective to it. To make something we believe deserves to exist—and then give it every chance we can to find its way into the world.
But there’s an even bigger lesson hiding in her story.
Something that echoes in an interview I heard with Jelly Roll recently.
Long before the record labels came calling, he had built an enormous career independently. He’d made mistakes. Taken bad deals. Learned how the money worked. Built an audience. Sold tickets. Figured out the business by being in it.
So by the time the labels wanted him, he wasn’t simply grateful someone had finally picked him.
He knew what he had. And he knew what a good deal looked like.
On SmartLess, he called the record deal he eventually signed “the deal I dreamed of.”
The waiting hadn’t been wasted. It had prepared him.
And I’ve been thinking about that in my own life lately. Because for the first time ever, I feel…patient.
Patient about my dreams. Patient with the things I want for my work, my family and my life. Patient that when the opportunities arrive, the timing will be right.
That’s not the same as passive. I’m not sitting around waiting for someone to knock on the door.
Lisa certainly didn’t.
Neither did Jelly Roll.
But there’s a difference between moving toward what you want and believing it has to happen RIGHT NOW.
Maybe there’s something happening in the meantime that we can’t see yet.
Maybe we’re learning something we’ll need later.
Maybe we’re meeting someone who will matter.
Maybe the journey is cumulative. Maybe it compounds.
And maybe some things take time because time is part of what makes them possible.
So that’s what I’m wishing for you this week.
Not that everything you want happens immediately.
But that you can find some peace in the waiting.
That you keep creating, keep moving, keep believing—and trust that what is happening along the way may be every bit as important as whatever is waiting for you at the destination.
Maybe even more so.
Cat xo