What 20 Years Without Cancer Does to a Writing Career
By: Jennie Nash
Tags: Writers On Writing, Cancer Survival, Writing, Books And Authors, Cancer

Jennie and her husband, Rob

At the end of 1999, at the age of 35, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My kids were 3 and 6 years old. I had published my first book — a collection of essays about getting married — and was taking magazine writing assignments on topics ranging from when to call 911 (for Glamour) to a piece on how to shop LA’s antique markets (for Home & Garden) to an interview with Sarah Jessica Parker after she appeared in LA Story (for Us). I knew I wanted to write another book, and cancer was the story that happened to grab me.

I was diagnosed because a dear friend of mine from high school was dying from lung cancer. I was so freaked out by what was happening to her — she too had two little kids — that I conjured up a doomsday scenario of having cancer myself, went to a doctor who had the grace to actually listen to me, and ended up finding cancer early enough to do something about it. While I was undergoing treatment — a lumpectomy and a mastectomy and a reconstructive surgery that landed me in the ICU and 6 weeks of wound care — my friend died. The story I wanted to write was about gratitude and dumb luck — about being able to learn and grow and live on when my friend couldn’t. The book I wrote was called The Victoria’s Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer.

Cancer Girl

I spent three years promoting that book. Ford Motor Company, a national sponsor of Komen Race for the Cure, ended up printing 100,000 copies of a specially branded version of the book, and sending me out to go on TV, radio, and stages all over the country to talk about — well, being able to learn and grow and live on when not everyone can. I was, in other words, launched into a world where I was not just writing, but using my story to teach and to inspire. The main message in my speech was that telling our stories can help and can heal. I meant not only the stories we can write but also the ones we tell by how we live.

I always made people cry. How could I not? I was this young mother talking about how her high school friend had died, and how lucky I was to be there with the people on that day to tell my story.

I loved having an impact on people, but also had a dread that I would end up being “cancer girl,” as I called it in my mind. I feared an entire career built around cancer, and I didn’t want that. It might have been the dream for some people, but it wasn’t the dream for me.

Photos by Abby Mathews

Becoming a Book Coach

I left the cancer world behind and turned back to writing — first with a book called Raising a Reader, about desperately wanting my kids to be readers. It was a misguided project — the title made people think it was a how-to, but it wasn’t a how-to. Or was it?? My next book was a novel called The Last Beach Bungalow about a cancer survivor who falls in love with a house — I was obviously drawn back to cancer for that one. Two other novels followed.

My books were all published by Big 5 publishers, and I was building a solid mid-list writing career, but I still kept wishing to make the kind of impact I made when I was talking to cancer survivors. I liked writing, but I loved inspiring people, lifting them up, and helping them find their voice and their story. I missed that.

While teaching at the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program, I stumbled upon book coaching. (For the story of how that happened, with Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story, see this post I just wrote for Writer Unboxed.) The rest, as they say, is history. I am now CEO of a book coaching company and am on a mission to train book coaches to help writers find their voice and their story. People often ask me when I am going to write again — they mean stories, not books like my new one on running a book coaching business — and I answer that I’m not sure. I sometimes feel the itch or the yearning to write a novel or memoir, but I also deeply love what I do and don’t have the compulsion to turn away from it right now.

Photos by Abby Mathews

Inspiring People to Write

I have come full circle. I spend a lot of time teaching, giving workshops and webinars and speeches, and helping people see their own potential. I also often make people cry because they are digging deep, touching close to what matters most to them, and finally being SEEN as the thought leaders and storytellers they want to be. It’s the good kind of crying, the deep, cathartic, soulful, I-just-made-a-breakthrough kind of crying.

I always celebrate the day when I got clean margins — the day I was cancer-free — and not the day when I was diagnosed with cancer. The 20th anniversary of that day was just a few days ago. I actually almost forgot about it this year. Cancer feels like it happened in a whole different lifetime. But my husband remembered it because he’s the best. And we snapped a photo at sunset on a beach walk in our new hometown to celebrate that we are here.

It prompted me to think about what these 20 years have meant to me. While I always think about the deep and abiding blessings of being a wife and a mother, I thought this time about the blessing of having lived long enough to find the work I know I was meant to do. I’m no longer a writer, exactly, although I write constantly — I’m writing right now! I do it, though, to inspire other people to write.