UNREALISTIC EXPECTATION #4: “THIS BOOK WILL TRANSFORM MY LIFE.” People have a lot of fantasies about what a book will do for them, and almost all of them are not going to happen. I think this is summed up perfectly by Hugh Macleod, the renowned cartoonist and author: A successful book agent I know tells me that at least half the people he meets who are writing their first book, are doing so not because they have anything particularly interesting to say, but because the idea of ‘the writer’s life’ appeals to them. Tweed jackets, smoking a pipe, sitting out in the gazebo and getting sloshed on Mint Juleps, pensively typing away at an old black Remington. Bantering wittily at all the right parties. Or whatever. Anybody who wants to write books for this reason deserves to suffer. And happily, many of them do. Doesn’t this seem like so many other things? We all say we want to be rich, lose weight, start a business, etc. But it’s the idea of being rich or skinny or an entrepreneur that’s more appealing than actually putting in the work to do it. The idea sounds glamorous, and we want glamour. Here’s the thing: we don’t get glamour by “living the writer’s life,” or by wearing the best gym clothes, or playing the “startup game.” Glamour is the result of hard work and doing something that other people find valuable. Notice what’s missing when people say that? Actual writing. REALISTIC EXPECTATION: “THIS BOOK WILL OPEN DOORS AND CREATE NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR ME.” One of the things we’ve seen consistently is that books provide authors all kinds of opportunities—both ones they anticipated and ones they did not. 370 · ThE SCriBE METhOD