Bonjour! Writing Happiness: Author Jamie Callan on the Joy of Discovery

Jamie Cat Callan,Paris

Award-winning author and instructor Jamie Cat Callan tells about French secrets to joie de vivre in her latest book Bonjour, Happiness! Elizabeth Bard, author of Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes said, "With warmth and sincerity, Callan shares that most precious of French life lessons — when to say 'enough.'" To research her topic, Jamie traveled throughout France, interviewing hundreds of women to find their secrets to living a well-balanced life. In this guest post, she describes the process.

AMA: What's your background?
JCC: I grew up in Connecticut and taught creative writing at Fairfield University, Wesleyan University and the Educational Center for the Arts. My grandmother was French-American, and inspired me to find the secrets to joie de vivre and true happiness.

AMA: Tell me about the new book.
JCC: Bonjour, Happiness! Five Ways to Find Your Joie de Vivre, American Style goes beyond relationship advice and offers a unique brand of whole-life happiness, sharing French women's secrets to finding joy.

Bonjour, Happiness!

AMA: What are some of the particulars you address in the book?
JCC: I describe my journey throughout France and the U.S., meeting with hundreds of women and talking about struggles with weight and body image, accepting middle age, and for me, coping with a new marriage — at age fifty — and rediscovering my French heritage.

AMA: Sounds like fun research. What did you learn during the process?
JCC: I embraced the beauty, mystery and magic of discovering a new culture, a spiritual journey told from the viewpoint of an innocent abroad, someone searching for inspiration, not just from the French, but particularly from French women. As a middle-aged woman living in youth-obsessed America, I looked for French answers to aging gracefully and finding joy in an imperfect body. I'm not so much interested in finding the fountain of youth as I am in finding the fountain of happiness. As Dove's "real beauty" ad campaign suggests, I learned to find the joy of loving my perfectly imperfect self.

AMA: How did the process of discovery play into the writing process, and life in general?
JCC: This is such an excellent question! French Women Don't Sleep Alone was so successful that by the time I began researching Bonjour I felt much clearer about what I wanted to do with this new book. Also, I had met so many great women on my American (as well as French women) book tour, and a lot of their questions and concerns went into the writing of Bonjour. My language skills had improved along the way, so I was able to connect with and interview a lot more women. The more I got to know and become friends with French women, the more I understood my grandmother and her sense of joie de vivre. It was as if these women were bringing her back to me. I would say this was especially true of my French tutor, Madame M. who is very beautiful, very elegant and in some ways a surrogate grandmere to me.

AMA: What an amazing journey. What was the writing process like?
JCC: Here's something that might surprise your readers. The book proposal for Bonjour, Happiness! was originally for a memoir. I wanted to write about my childhood, my grandmother, my experiences in France. However, my very wise editor at Kensington said she wanted another advice book similar to French Women Don't Sleep Alone, but that this new book could use narrative as well as prescriptive. In the end, I wrote a kind of amalgam of memoir and self-help. I blended the genres into something new—I'm not sure what to call it. Maybe literary self-help? Whatever it is, I'm happy with the outcome and readers are responding positively.

For more information on Jamie's amazing writing journey, visit Bonjour, Happiness! Or see her at Jamie Cat Callan. The book is available on Amazon at Bonjour, Happiness! Five Ways to Find Your Joie de Vivre, American Style.

The Arrogance of Writing: New Author Talks Turkey About His Foray Into Writing

Former Fortune 40 exec Garrett Miller talks about the impetus for his new book, Hire on a WHIM: The Four Qualities that Make for Great Employees, on the qualities every job candidate must have and every hiring manager must look for. Read Garrett's surprising take on what pushed him to write and keep writing — successfully.

AA: With your extensive sales and training background, what got you started writing?

GM: Having time on my hands after a job change and starting a company [Garrett is president and CEO of CoTria, a productivity management firm] led me down a foreign path. I found myself with a very rare commodity — time. With this hopefully brief window of time, I decided I would write, and with excitement I poured the first of many cups of afternoon tea and stared. I had dozens of ideas and years of kinetic energy ready to be unleashed onto the keyboard. Then the doubts began to creep in, and my thoughts began to attack me. On what authority are you going to write? Who would ever read your book? Despite the doubts, I pressed on, knowing the creative process would be better than sitting idle — and to tell you the truth, I did think I had something of value to say.

AA: What was your next hurdle?

GM: Once I was committed to writing, my second obstacle was what I would say, and whether it was new and valuable in the marketplace.

GM: I enjoyed the process of discovering what I would write about. I pulled back my life's camera so that I was looking at my career from a 10,000-foot perspective and asked, "What did you do well, and what did others think you did well?" The answer came quickly — hiring. I hired terrific talent into the company, and others took notice as well. That was a great feeling. So, I had my subject matter; now what would I have to say?

AA: Sounds like the roller coaster all writers go through, but how did you figure that out?

GM: The next step took a few days of hard thinking, and that was figuring out why I hired well and why anyone would care. I began to unpack my experiences and looked for common threads that ran through each of my hires. I still remember sitting alone in a restaurant waiting for my client and just writing down ideas and qualities. I rearranged my thoughts, rewrote them and then boiled them down to four words. Then I played with the words, found synonyms and rearranged them until I had a cleaver acronym — WHIM. It was at this point that my book was born. I had direction and purpose, and a foundation on which to build. Most important was a new-found confidence in my subject matter — that it was new and valuable. Now I could write with confidence.

AA: That's hugely encouraging for any writer — fiction or nonfiction. But the title of this post — which is your title — is the "arrogance" of writing. What do you mean that?

GM: I still found myself amazed at the arrogance needed to write as a "subject matter expert." When I doubted my expertise, I began to bounce my ideas off people I respected. I listened and watched as they heard and processed my ideas. Most of the time a smile would slowly form on their faces as I described my concepts, and then they would give a nod of agreement. What I valued most was when they challenged my ideas and I had to defend them. It was in the successful defense of my subject that I truly grew in confidence. I was energized by these conversations and reconverted to the subject matter expert I needed to be in order to write with assurance.

AA: That's one of the most encouraging things a writer could hear, especially in an age of easy rejection. What advice would you give to other aspiring authors?

GM: Once you set out on this glorious task of writing, be convinced of your subject and the creative process of writing. If you begin to lose your swagger, call on your friends and respected colleagues. Be reinvigorated through lively discussion and debate about your subject matter, and then return, born anew.

Garrett Miller is a feature author, productivity expert and instructor. His Hire on a WHIM is a must-read for job seekers and hiring personnel. Read more about the book at the Editor's Bookshelf. The book is also available at Amazon, at Hire on a WHIM: The Four Qualities that Make for Great Employees.