I say no.

I say no because I have no idea how to do a book about my life. I’m sure I have no idea because I already have had a six-figure book deal to write about my life that I’m not delivering on, and the editor has dumped me. (Read: Phone calls to collect on the large advance I’ve already spent.) So my qualifications to tell you advice about how to write about one's life are questionable. But whatever; I have never stood on ceremony over qualifications.

Maybe the problem is that my life story needs a redemptive moment. This is what my agent-who-is-no-longer-my-agent tells me.  And this is a warning to any agent who thinks they might want to be my agent: My past agent dumped me because (even though I did deliver on my first book deal) I am terrible at writing book proposals and I am terrible at following publishing industry rules. And her number one rule is that if you write about your life there must be a redemptive moment because people like that. “That’s what sells,” is my not-my-agent’s way of saying “That’s what people like to read.”

So, okay. I try to see that. I mean, I’ve read plenty of memoirs – Girl, Interrupted, Smashed, Darkness Visible—all good books. All very redemptive at the end, for sure. But I’ve also read Anna Karenina. Well, I haven’t, but I’m able to spoil the ending for you right now anyway (skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want the spoiler). She gets hit by a train. I think she kills herself.

That seems redemptive to me. I mean, at least she doesn’t have to wake up to her same problems every day.

I have told this to my not-agent. She said that people do not want to read about my fascination with suicide. It’s true. I am fascinated by suicide: Why don’t more people kill themselves? Life is very hard. And there is no sane reason to believe it will, at some point, get easier. So why do we keep going? I don’t know. This fascinates me.

(Here is a great book of suicide letters. And here’s a tidbit for all you productivity gurus:  People in their 20’s who kill themselves write suicide notes about how much they love the people who will be most hurt by the suicide: their parents, a boyfriend maybe. People in their 30’s and 40’s write suicide notes that are informational to-do lists: Where the cat food is, when the kid’s homework is due, how to find the keys to the safety deposit box.

Both types of letters are great examples of how people have totally lost perspective when they kill themselves. This baffles me, since I also feel that we have totally lost our perspective by choosing to not kill ourselves.)

Okay. So I told my not-my-agent that my proposal for a memoir is redemptive because the reader will see that I did not kill myself before I got to the date of the national book tour.

That did not work for her.

So I said my book is redemptive because I had an insane childhood and look, now I’m not living on the street.

My agent told me that my life is too precarious for my surviving childhood to be redemptive. She told me I could write about keeping my marriage together even though we both have Aspergers Syndrome, but before I could write the proposal (and convince my ex that this would be okay to write) we divorced.

What about writing about the divorce?

She said divorce is not redemptive. I’m pretty sure that’s when she told me to get a new agent.

Okay. So back to me telling you how to write about yourself. I say, forget about redemption. It’s false. I read The Glass Castle, and I think it’s nice Jeanette Wallis got out of her hell-hole family, but really, I want to know what her fights with her husband are like on her zillion-dollar Hamptons estate.

I think you should write the truth. Be real. If you obsess about redemption instead of the truth, you’ll be like me, writing nothing, because life is not redemptive. Life isn’t like that. Just write your own messy life, and let it spill out.

But, wait. Here’s the problem with that. Your life is boring. I’m sorry to tell you this. But actually all our lives are boring. Which is another strike against obsessing over redemption: it doesn’t make your life interesting, but good writing always makes life interesting.

So you need to tell something true to make people want to read, but you need to be interesting doing it.

Do you want to know what interesting is? How many articles and stories and blog posts have you read about getting fired? Six million, right? Everyone wants to tell their story. Most suck. But here’s a great one: The CEO of Sun wrote a tweet to announce his resignation. It’s interesting because of the media he chose, it’s interesting because of the timing, and it’s interesting because it’s a haiku:

Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more

The bar is high if you want to be interesting. What can you do? Here's what I do:

1. Assume you are not all that interesting. The reader does not want a peek into your life. Not enough people care. Do you know how I know? Because porn is boring. Sure, if you’re using it for masturbation, it’s interesting, because then it’s giving you something. But if not, what are you doing watching? Who cares about someone else’s sex life? And you can be sure that the peek into your life is never going to be as interesting as a porn movie. So forget writing a blog post merely to give someone a peek.

2. Cut fifteen percent of everything you write. Because no one is so interesting that they can’t cut words.

3. Write to give the reader something they want. I try to focus on this with every post I write. But in fact, this is advice about how to do anything in your life: Help people as much as you can. Give people what they need, and if you focus on that, the rest will fall into place. This is true of how to network, how to parent, how to manage people and also how to write about your life.

So really, the world is full of ways to give to each other, and we’re all just looking for the best way. And this, in the end, is probably why we don’t kill ourselves.

Comment on: How to write about your life

And, in an effort to be a good citizen, I spoke at the Rotary Club in Madison, (where they sang God Bless America after lunch). The topic was how to recruit and retain young people. My speaker's bureau liked the video so much that they put a clip of it on their site, here.

Finally, thanks to Steven Grant's suggestion, you can buy Brazen Careerist t-shirts. Workplace fashion will never be the same…

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I said, "Because it's my job. My boss wants me to."

I said this to my son even though I don't actually have a boss. But how can I tell him that I am generating this trip on my own? It's too awful to admit. Still, I am blindsided:

He says, "Doesn't your boss know you love us?"

I tell myself to ignore it. I tell myself there are nine million stories of kids saying the most heart wrenching thing they can say to their mom as she leaves for the office.

I get to the airport and I tell myself everything is fine while I bite all my nails. Then I wait at the gate while I sip diet Coke hoping I didn't eat so many Ho-Hos with the kids that I don't fit into my mommy's-working-now clothes. I am at the wrong gate. I read the seat number instead of the gate. I make the flight with seconds to spare.

I try to calm myself down on the plane. I tell myself that there is no way to support the family as a writer if I'm not going to promote my book. I tell myself my kids are lucky that I'm with them every day from 1pm to 8pm. I tell myself I'm lucky to be making a living as a writer.

I get to Chicago to switch planes. I tell myself that I am in better shape and that I don't have to worry about falling apart on local television because I am not falling apart now. I have a sandwich as a sign of body confidence. Or at least waist confidence; it's all about the button.

Read the rest here

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Inkwood Books
216 South Armenia Avenue
Tampa, FL 33609-3310
(813) 253-2638

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I have actually already gone to one city, as a pre-publication test run: Cleveland. And I met up with a bunch of people including Cheezhead blogger Joel Cheesman, who recorded an interview that you can listen to here.

I'm looking forward to meeting a lot more people in person as the tour continues.

June 4, Atlanta
A Cappella Books
484-C Moreland Ave NE.
Atlanta, GA 30307
404-681-5128

June 7, New York City
Tequila Jack's
1668 Third Ave
Between East 93rd and 94th
(212) 426-1416

June 11, Boston
Location TBD

June 18, Tampa
Inkwood Books
216 South Armenia Avenue
Tampa, FL 33609-3310
(813) 253-2638

June 21, San Francisco
Location TBD

Comment on: Book tour dates: Atlanta, NYC, Boston, Tampa, San Francisco

Here's the home site: http://www.penelopetrunk.com/.

And here are the latest reviews:

Bob Sutton at Bob Sutton 
This book made me think, it made me squirm, and it also made realize that too many of my assumptions about how to get a job — or in my case, how to advise Stanford students who are looking for jobs — are wrong or half-wrong. 

Richard Florida at Creativity Exchange
A terrific guide to managing your career in today's horizontal labor market. I devoured it in an afternoon.

Brendon Connelly at Slacker Manager 
There's a lot to love in this book. It's an easy and fun read-especially when you see yourself in the pages.

David Maister at davidmaister.com
She writes so well that even if you're not in her target audience (Generation X or Y), or currently in the market for career advice, she's nevertheless worth making a daily habit.

Curt Rosengren at Occupational Adventure
She's whip smart, no-nonsense, and always has great ideas to share.

Steven Rothberg at CollegeRecruiter.com
Penelope Trunk is one of this generation's greatest career writers.

Maura Welch at Boston.com 
A hot new book that lays down the new rules for career success in her always smart, no-nonsense manner. It's a great read and I highly recommend it.

David Rothacker at Rothacker Reviews 
As a Boomer manager, I feel as if Brazen Careerist is my own personal undercover spy, infiltrating the Gen X and Y'ers' world.

Jeri Dansky Jeri's Organizing and Decluttering News 
I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Debra Owen at 8 hours & a lunch
Whether you're facing a quarter-life crisis, or a mid-life one, this is worth a read.

Comment on: Brazen Careerist book: The latest reviews and my new web site

Buy it there now. Or buy the book in local book stores starting on May 25.

Here is tip #25 from the book: Don't Use Adverbs

If you want people to pay attention to what you have to say, write short. This is true in all of life, but most true at work. Most of the writing we do at work is in the format of an email, proposal or presentation – all documents that your audience wants to get through quickly. The faster and more concisely you get to your point, the more likely your reader will stick with you and understand your message. "If today the president got up and addressed the nation in 270 words, it'd be a top news story. People will pay more attention because you're so brief," writes Janice Obuchowski in the Harvard Management Update.

We sound most authentic when we talk, and verbally, short, simple sentence construction comes naturally to us. When we write, authenticity gets buried under poor word choice. For example, people who use complicated words are seen as not as smart as people who write with a more basic vocabulary. "It's important to point out that this research is not about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly," says Daniel Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at Princeton University.

Writing short is not easy. Take the 270-word Gettysburg Address, for example. "Lincoln didn't just suddenly master elegant language. He wrote wonderful, down to earth language that was very concrete. But he rigorously trained himself to do that," says Bryan Garner, editor of the Dictionary of Modern American Usage.

Here are some self-editing tricks for writing shorter:

1. Write lists.
People love reading lists. They are faster and easier to read than unformatted writing, and they are more fun. If you can't list your ideas then you aren't organized enough to send them to someone else.

2. Think on your own time.
Most of us think while we write. But people don't want to read your thinking process; they want to see the final result. Find your main point in each paragraph and delete everything else. If someone is dying to know your logic, they'll ask. 

3. Keep paragraphs short.
Your idea gets lost in a paragraph that's more than four or five lines. Two lines is the best length if you really need your reader to digest each word.

4. Write like you talk.
Each of us has the gift of rhythm when it comes to sentences, which includes a natural economy of language. But you must practice writing in order to transfer your verbal gifts to the page. Start by avoiding words you never say. For example, you would never say "in conclusion" when you are speaking to someone so don't use it when you write.

5. Delete.
When you're finished, you're not finished: cut 10% of the words. I do this with every column I write. Sometimes, in fact, I realize that I can cut 25% of the words, and then my word count isn't high enough to be a column and I have to think of more things to say. Luckily, you don't have to write for publication, so you can celebrate if you cut more than 10%. Note: It is cheating to do this step before you really think you're done.

6. Avoid telltale signs of a rube.
Passive voice. Almost no one ever speaks this way. And on top of that, when you write it you give away that you are unclear about who is doing what because the nature of the passive voice is to obscure the person taking the action. Check yourself: search for all instances of "by" in your document. If you have a noun directly following "by" then it's probably passive voice. Change it.

7. Avoid adjectives and adverbs.
The fastest way to a point is to let the facts speak for themselves. Adjectives and adverbs are your interpretation of the facts. If you present the right facts, you won't need to throw in your interpretation.  For example, you can say, "Susie's project is going slowly." Or you can say, "Susie's project is behind schedule." If you use the first sentence, you'll have to use the second sentence, too, but the second sentence encompasses the first.  So as you cut your adjectives and adverbs, you might even be able to cut all the sentences that contain them.

… I just checked to see if I have modifiers in this section. I do. But I think I use them well. You will think this, too, about your own modifiers, when you go back over your writing. But I have an editor, and you don't, and I usually use a modifier to be funny, and you do not need to be funny in professional emails. So get rid of your adverbs and adjectives, really.

Comment on: Book excerpt: How to write so people pay attention

Myth #9: Create the shiny brand of you!  
There is no magic formula to having a great career except to be you. Really you. Know who you are and have the humility to understand that self-knowledge is a never-ending journey. Figure out how to do what you love, and you'll be great at it. Offer your true, good-natured self to other people and you'll have a great network. Those who stand out as leaders have a notable authenticity that enables them to make genuinely meaningful connections with a wide range of people. Authenticity is a tool for changing the world by doing good.

Go to Guy Kawasaki's blog, How to Change the World, for the whole list.

Comment on: Guy Kawasaki redux: The 9 biggest myths of the workplace