CHAPTER ONE: Meet Clara or Persuading people sucks “The challenge is not to eliminate conflict but to transform it. It is to change the way we deal with our differences” Roger Fisher, Getting to Yes Welcome to WidgetCo, which makes widgets their customers love. The software company has grown at…

Who doesn’t love being carried away by a story? Cloud Cuckoo Land, which instantly became one of my favorite novels when I read it in October, is a layered, moving story about the power of stories: “ ‘I know why those librarians read the old stories to you,’ Rex says…

Is it a smashed-up Barbie doll head?? I have mixed feelings about writing fiction. First, I have no formal training, other than a class I took as an undergraduate in college 40 years ago. Second, I understand non-fiction, which is journalism adjacent. Having been a PR person for decades, I…

Here’s a long, circuitous story with no clear ending. It’s about becoming “a writer.” In 2008, one of my BFFs took me for a birthday tarot reading with a guy named Howard, who studied the cards he laid out for me and said, “Your job is soul-destroying.” “Why yes, Howard,”…

Here’s to walking toward what scares you . . . “You should rewrite this as a novel.” That’s what my father-in-law said when he read a very early draft of my memoir in 2009. I dismissed that idea out of hand, because fiction — that realm of Toni Morrison and…

Sometimes, lipstick is everything A few weeks ago I was sitting in the foggy morning light in my pale blue bedroom, meditating, when a declaration bubbled into my head. ‘I’m going to wear red lipstick every day when the pandemic is over.’ ‘Yes,’ I thought, even though one is not…

There’s a dangerous power in surfaces . . . Well here we are — it’s 2021. To borrow from the guys at Pod Save America, I feel nauseously optimistic. There are so many daunting challenges to solve, and I believe we can face them. In 2018, at the United State…

Windows, nails, and resilience — I climb the stepladder and manage to unhook the window frame’s dual locks, the pads of my thumbs turning white with effort. When I pull the window out of its casing there’s a huff of dust, a squeal of rubber, a rush of air, a broken spider web glinting against…

Sometimes it takes a pandemic to learn how to take care of yourself — I woke up the day before San Francisco’s lockdown flooded with cold panic. Fifty-seven, single and self-employed as a communications coach, ninety percent of my upcoming engagements had been canceled. What was coming next?? I heard a sing-song voice ringing in my head. “La cigale ayant chanté tout l’été …