Beloveds! Book Deal Breakthrough, my ten week, open-genre intensive that blends magical ritual with insider publishing advice, is officially open for registration, and you know what that means: asking “wait, is this a good fit for where I am in the process?”
Today, I want to the experience of one Book Deal Breakthrough (and Grove!) alum. Odds are high that if you’ve been Terminally Online in the past decade, Claire Willett’s brilliant insights have crossed your feed. And you may have wondered, “hey, I like her sense of humor and politics and general vibe! when am I gonna get to read one of her books?”
The answer — in part thanks to Book Deal Breakthrough — is: probably sooner than you think!
This is a story of how “the internet’s gay Catholic aunt” got her very own book deal breakthrough — aka signed with a literary agent (!!) for a BRAND NEW PROJECT — in ten weeks.
Also also also! Scholarship Applications for Book Deal Breakthrough are now open! I give three fully funded scholarships to writers who are a) low or fixed income and b) LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and/or chronically ill/disabled. Deadline to apply is August 5th, and folks will be notified either way shortly after.
if you aren’t following claire on bluesky, you should be!
Claire and I are longtime mutuals who started sharing more ~intimate online space~ last year with The Grove, a sacred container I run with my wife Meg Jones Wall. “I got so much out of my participation in The Grove last year and have enjoyed so many of Jeanna's other offerings that I was really excited about this one from the beginning — but I was totally unprepared for how transformative it was,” Claire says.
Claire started her cohort of Book Deal Breakthrough coming off a year and a half of querying agents, with over a dozen rejections. (A terribly relatable experience!) The way she describes it, she’d been “mired in a decade-long book project” (a sci-fi trilogy) which was under contract but not to a traditional publisher (aka: the rights were tied up).
“Demoralized” by rejections, she says, “I wanted to be in community with other writers to see if I could figure out what I was doing wrong (was it the book? the query letter? the sample pages? did I just suck?) and get support from other people who have been through the same process.”
During the introductory meditation, I ask everyone in Book Deal Breakthrough to imagine themselves at the end of the program. Claire says, “My first instinct was to limit myself, keeping my aspirations manageable and small (maybe just coming out of it with a stronger query letter would be enough?).
I forced myself to just say what I wanted: an agent, a yes, a career that was moving forward in a big way towards finally being able to at least partially make a living through my art.
I got all those things, but in a way I couldn't have imagined and would never have found on my own.”
To answer Claire’s previous questions:
Was it the book? Sort of — but for reasons that had nothing to do with the writing or the story.
The query letter? No.
Did I just suck? Emphatically not.
I’m not gonna lie — I firmly believe that we get out of something what we put into it. Folks who come into Book Deal Breakthrough with the finish line of a project in sight, ready to professionalize and launch their career or take that next step, will take stratospheric leaps. It starts with an open mind and open heart.
“Jeanna's guidance prompted me to think differently about my writing, my career, and the stories I wanted to tell,” Claire says. “And the practical wisdom from both other cohort members and expert guests helped me clarify my next steps.”
For Claire, that next big step meant putting the sci-fi trilogy to the side: “It turned out that what my heart wanted was to start a new project.”
I want to take a moment here to name how fucking scary this is. Wait, I came into BDB to try to sign an agent for one project, and now I’m setting it to the side and starting something else?!
If Claire’s story ended here, I would STILL count it as an extraordinary win, because so many writers get stuck circling the drain (aka the Sunk Cost Fallacy). Too many artists are out here trying to inject life into projects that are not going to be the thing that breaks their career open.
It takes so much courage to set one project aside and be willing to begin anew.
And that little crack in the windshield — that signal to the universe that “hey, I’m serious and I’m doing this” — can be all we need.
Claire pitched the new book she was developing to an agent — and the unthinkable happened.
She got signed. She got a motherfucking agent.
“After a year and a half of crushing rejections, the new book hooked the interest of one of my dream agents who I hadn't even queried because [at the time], she was closed to applicants. All I had was an outline and an idea, and she was ready to jump on board.”
General wisdom says this doesn’t happen.
And often, it doesn’t.
But luck is just preparation meeting opportunity, and sometimes, all it takes is ~a little bit of magic~ to make the impossible Possible.
“I can't overstate how much Book Deal Breakthrough changed my writing career,” Claire says.
“I had sort of given up on finding any kind of success in trad publishing after getting so many rejections, but between the wisdom of our Q&A experts and the self-reflection we did in our rituals together, it finally clicked for me that I just wasn't thinking expansively enough.
I had assumed [that] any ‘no’ to the sci-fi trilogy was a no to me as a writer, and it really blew everything wide open to discover that wasn't true.”
So much of the work we do in the practical half of Book Deal Breakthrough — Publishing 101, Q&As with expert guests, and the query letter workshop — centers on expectation setting. I am not interested in defending the parts of traditional publishing that are profoundly broken (and much is), but like a good Aquarius rising, I know that in order to break and challenge the system, you first have to understand what it is and how it works.
Also? When you understand WHAT something is and HOW it works… your magic gets a LOT more targeted and potent! AKA: industry clarity means better magic.
Claire summarizes her experience beautifully:
“I can't promise that everyone who takes this workshop will come in saying ‘I want to find an agent’ and then come out of it with an agent at the end, like I did, but I can promise that the exploration of your own writer identity and the endless array of expert resources available are absolutely worth it for anyone.”
Here’s the thing:
None of us make strides in our career by playing small.
We don’t get published by playing it safe and self-eliminating before we’ve even gotten on the field.
We have to take the risk.
Swing big. (And be willing to miss.)
If you truly go all in, something in you — in your life, in your creativity, in your career — WILL unlock. It’s not a matter of if, but when.
The magic 10X’s it. And speeds it the fuck up.
For Claire, that looked like getting an agent for a brand new project that wasn’t a thought in her mind when she first signed up for BDB.
For you — well, we’ll have to find out and see!
The next cohort of Book Deal Breakthrough runs from September 13-November 15. Registration closes mid-August, or when spots fill. Investment is $2250, or 3 monthly payments of $750. Everyone who pays in full will have the opportunity to book a 30-minute 1:1 with me during the program. The program includes:
8 live rituals (schedule and topics here)
9 live Q&As, six of which feature expert industry guests (see below!)
Query letter workshop in the final week
(Traditional) Publishing 101
Witchcraft 101
Recorded instructions for Get an Agent and Get a Book Deal spells
A sugar jar spell that I work on behalf of all participants throughout the container
Book Deal Breakthrough is open genre, and is a great fit for anyone writing Adult or YA (fiction, narrative non-fiction, practical/prescriptive non-fiction).
However, if you are focused on writing in the following genres, Book Deal Breakthrough may not be a good fit:
Poetry
Children’s and Middle Grade (these are essentially their own separate industry with specific conventions, and so the publishing advice for those categories will not be as detailed)
As always, leave a comment if you have any questions! <3
