Journeying into openness with Logan Steiner

On writing, waiting, and unexpected joy

This is the fifth installment of Not Til Now, a series that features never-before-told stories or first-time feats from artists, innovators, or anyone taking creative risks.

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Last year, a dear friend email-intro’d me to a gal who had just started a Substack about journeying into parenthood and becoming an author.

At first glance, I was a little intimidated by this Harvard Law grad whose debut novel was about to be published by HarperCollins. I wondered how much we’d really have in common.

But on second glance, when I started to read her essays, I felt immediately connected to this woman. Not only was I captivated by how she crafted each sentence, but boy, did I melt into her stories, admire her vulnerability, and resonate with her sensitive heart. I could FEEL where she was coming from, even when our experiences were different.

Little did I know that this beautiful human would quickly become one of my favorite writers AND a dear friend. Every time we connect, we discover more things we share.

From husbands named David and grandmas named Dorothy to fears about writing and cravings for dancing, the list keeps growing — as does our desire to be back at a slumber party in 1997 in a deep, 2 a.m. convo.

I think that’s why I love this interview so much. It cuts right to the good stuff.

With that, I’m honored to introduce you to the humble…the wonderful…and oh-so-relatable

Logan Steiner

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Logan is a Denver-based mother, lawyer, and author. Not only is she the writer behind The Creative Sort — a newsletter on creativity and motherhood that I NEVER miss — but her first novel After Anne, was published in 2023 and quickly became a USA TODAY best-seller.

Whether you’re an aspiring author, stuck in a rut, or needing some renewed faith in humanity, I have a feeling that this wise lady will move you.

Here we gooooo:

Brit: You’ve been so open about your book journey in your Substack posts — your shifts in expectations, struggles with comparison, etc. Is there something you haven’t shared about your experience yet that a small part of you feels haunted by?

In other words, is there a part of you that’s dying to come out of hiding in hopes of helping someone while another part of you is afraid of what people will think?

Logan: I’ve been on an interesting journey with openness in the past year and a half, which is new for me. In part because I’ve always been this extra-sensitive soul, I learned to be careful about who I shared with and how much I shared.

When I started my Substack last January, I didn’t really aim to start being more open. I wanted to experiment with putting work out there each week to try to build my resilience muscle. But just as I have a hard time with small talk, I have a hard time writing and not going as deep as I can. And that meant all these vulnerable things started to flow out.

I started talking publicly for the first time about a deeply personal project last May, when my debut novel After Anne came out. At first, I was so self-conscious before every event and interview that I felt like throwing up. But along the way, I discovered this interesting thing:

The more openly I shared, including about my introversion and fear of doing the exact thing I was doing, the more comfortable I felt doing it.

So I kept sharing more of myself each time I spoke about the book.

As for things I haven’t shared yet because I’m afraid of what people will think, I’m always afraid of what people will think of anything I share! I’ve come to accept that as part of the permanent state of being me. The thing I’m learning is not to let fear stop me from being vulnerable.

In the spirit of Not Til Now, I haven’t yet shared just how many rejections I got from publishers along the way. I haven’t counted, and I don’t think I want to. I also have a hard time describing how hard it was to pick myself up after each one of them and to keep going.

You went on quite the book tour! What as your favorite stop and why?

I think I enjoyed each one a little more than the last. My last one was at my mother-in-law’s community center in Naples, Florida.

I enjoyed each one more because I got better each time at channeling my fear into energy. I also got better at tuning out the self-critical chatter in my head and tuning into the people in the room and my interest in what I was talking about.

I’ve also really enjoyed book club visits, especially one I did a few months ago with a group of joyous, interesting, and interested women who have been in the same book club together for decades. They asked questions that made me see the book in new ways.

Did anything surprise you on your book tour?

So much. I’ve had so many moments of, “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I get to be here, doing this! I can’t believe this story is out there in the world!”

I also got hurt all the time — by the devil that is comparison and by small things people said or didn’t say. And I felt fear all the time. After the first couple events, these feelings were so intense, I thought I never wanted to do a book event again. But the hurt and fear weren’t unexpected for me. The joy was sneakier, and it came in unexpected ways.

It wasn’t about audience numbers or sales or tangible things. It came when someone asked a really good question, and I started to understand things about Maud’s story — and about life — that I hadn’t before. Conversations during book events deepened the project for me.

The joy is sneakier, but it’s stickier too. Looking back on the book events, that’s what stands out. The whole process — including the hurt and the fear — has also helped refine my “why.” As I said before, it has opened me up.

One of my favorite poets Mark Nepo writes: “What is opened in us is always more important than what has opened us.” The opening, the softening, the deepening that writing and reading can bring — those are the reasons to do it.

Did you have any stops where not many people showed? Or no books were purchased? (I’m asking that last one selfishly. I recently sold books at a moms night out thing and not one book was bought. I left crying, but later realized that life surely goes on and it just wasn’t the right context or setup.)

YES.

One event was almost entirely made up of my husband David’s coworkers. A few events were light on attendees. And I never directly asked the bookstores about books purchased because I knew it wouldn’t help me to know.

One takeaway is that the numbers don’t stick. They may burn inside for a day or two, but what sticks in my mind are the feelings I had during the events.

Another takeaway is that we are not looking for everyone in the world to love our books. We are looking for our readers — those who understand what we are trying to do. Each time I’ve come across one of those people, it has felt like a little miracle.

During one of our much-needed, gotta-keep-each-other-going chats, you told me a stat about book sales that was a little heartbreaking and encouraging all at once. What was it again?

The average book only sells (if I’m remembering right) 500 copies. And the average traditionally published book sells around 3,000. Most people think it’s a whole lot more than that.

Every sale still means so much to me. It means someone is choosing to invest a lot of time in a story I wrote — after years of thinking it might only ever be read by people close to me and editors at publishing houses who said no.

Remind me how long the whole process of publishing your book took?

Eight years from start of research to publication. A lot of which was spent waiting.

What helped you in the anguish of waiting?

Other people. Above all, David, my parents, and my agent Abby Saul. I wish I could say I never lost hope, but that wouldn’t be true. When I lost it, other people picked it up and carried it for me. The book never would have been published without them.

Speaking of anguish, you’ve experienced immense loss in this life that you’ve shared about in your newsletters. What helped you in those times?

Oh my goodness, the same answer.

Also, I turn to words from other writers — a little storage bank I keep of quotes that make me feel less alone in my pain. This is part of why I write, hoping that I can give even one person an ounce of the comfort I’ve found in books.

If you had to literally paint a picture that described what grief is, what would that look like?

Violent waves moving across an ocean, with countless tiny humans on rafts trying to stay aboard and afloat. And a single sun above their heads, warming their shoulders even when they cannot bring themselves to look up.

Deciding to become a mom was not a fast decision for you. Once you did decide to pursue it, how long did it take you?

It was a 17-year decision for me and David. It took about a year to get pregnant, but that was using a genetically tested embryo that we had frozen seven years earlier after tests showed I was a likely candidate for early menopause. It might have taken much longer if we didn’t have that embryo.

What “firsts” have you experienced lately?

My first time writing a sophomore novel. It’s intimidating, especially because I’m writing a different kind of book than After Anne — it’s contemporary fiction. But I’m in the flow of it and having a lot of fun.

It took a while for the writing of After Anne to get fun.

At first the self-critical and get-it-all-right voice was so loud, it drowned out the enjoyment of the thing I had always dreamed of doing. But I found the fun eventually. The fun is coming easier this time.

When was the last time you laughed til you cried?

With my daughter at dinner the other night. She’s starting to really understand pretending, and she thinks it is the funniest thing to point to me or David and call us by someone else’s name, then have us do it back.

So she will point to me and say, “You’re so silly, dada!” And I’ll point to her and say, “You’re so silly, mama!”

It gets us all laughing so hard.

What unexpected or unusual advice would you give to an aspiring author?

Slow your roll!

This certainly isn’t advice for everyone. But for me, I’m so glad I didn’t rush myself to try to churn out a novel as quickly as I could out of undergrad. And I’m so glad I didn’t rush to try to get After Anne out in the world as quickly as I could.

Books have their own timelines, and this one needed to be slow.

Each time I dove back in after time away — sometimes a year or more — I understood more about Maud and the story I wanted to tell. I always think of Mary Oliver here:

“Things take the time they take. Don’t worry.”

I also find myself returning to this pair of quotes, which capture so much of the creative process for me:

“Talent is a long patience.”
—Gustauve Flaubert

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
—Winston Churchill

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Do you have goosebumps or do you have goosebumps?

If you’re in a season of waiting, I hope this brought you comfort and encouragement. And if you’re in any mode of creating, I hope it helped you feel less alone!

To keep up with Logan, you can subscribe to her newsletter, follow her on Instagram, or find more info on her website.

To the journey,