Selena Coppock | The Genesis of My Book, or...

How I came up with idea for THE NEW RULES FOR BLONDES, what went into writing this. 

The story of how my book came to be is one about being prolific and writing what you love to write, plus luck.  My friend and college roommate, Elizabeth Evans Draper, is a literary agent and a gorgeous blonde.  One night a few years ago, she and an Editor from It Books (HarperCollins), Stephanie Meyers (who is also a bold blonde), were having drinks and talking blondeness.  They cooked up the idea of THE NEW RULES FOR BLONDES—a fun, lady guide to blondeness that is both informational and hysterical.  Elizabeth didn't have any authors like that on her docket, but she mentioned my name, as I was/am a storyteller and standup comedian and I regularly blog about assorted pop culture trivialities and my hair.  I'm a bit hair obsessed, you could say.  Elizabeth sent Stephanie a link to my blog (where I religiously write recaps of The Bachelor and spout off assorted opinions and thoughts) and Stephanie loved my style and voice.  We all met for drinks and talked about the concept.  I went home and started cranking on a book proposal (which is no easy feat—it's about 70 pages of content that includes sample chapters, comparative analysis, marketing and promotion plans, and much more).  Over the course of about a year and a half, I worked with my agent to create three different versions of the proposal for THE NEW RULES FOR BLONDES.  Finally, Elizabeth thought we had a winner with proposal number three, so she sent that along to Stephanie at It Books.  Stephanie and her team liked it but asked me to do some tinkering with the table of contents and submit an additional sample chapter.  So I cranked that out in the course of one work week (while I was working 40 hours at my regular job plus performing most nights) and sent it along.  The team loved the additional content and decided to buy the book—yahoo!  Once things were official, my mind was put at ease and I felt like all my hard work and writing and rewriting on the proposal was worth the effort. 

Stephanie Meyers left It Books to take an great job as a Senior Editor at Mental Floss, so my book was without an editor for a few months, which was quite stressful, to be honest.  Thankfully, the wonderful team at It Books had faith in the project and assigned me to a wonderful blonde Associate Editor, Amanda Bergeron. 

I had 8 months to write the full manuscript (70,000 words) and I did so while working 40+ hours per week at my "normal" job plus performing standup and storytelling most nights.  I set aside weekends as my book writing time—it was the only time I had.  I finally learned how to set boundaries and simply say, "Sorry, everyone, for the next 8 months I'm spending every moment of every weekend writing my book—see ya when I'm done!"  I was extremely proud of myself for setting those boundaries and simply buckling down to crank out the book during my weekend days. 

Tell us what you think about the idea and you could win a copy of NEW RULES FOR BLONDES