Number 6: Meet someone you truly admire, ask their best advice

So.

I met Diana Gabaldon! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) The parenthesis indicate how I felt inside when anticipating her arrival onstage... and when I saw her, she was every bit as fresh faced and genuine as I expected. After all, she is my FAVORITE AUTHOR!!!

I have never attended a book signing, or even really made an effort to do so. Which I should consider odd because of my deep love for all things 'book'. I have discovered that I very much like them, and will continue to seek them out! I will be forever grateful to the young lady at Chapters who tipped me off that Diana G. would be in town. (THANK YOU!).

She arrived in a funky gypsy type dress that speaks to an inner spirituality that radiates in a bright aura around her face. Approaching the microphone she made a light joke about her height, or lack thereof, and promptly re-adjusted the microphone with a laugh. She wasn't affected by the shackles of propriety that we all put on ourselves, no stuffy suits or airs or importance, she just went up there... 100% Diana.

I was already enchanted..

She spoke of her journey from biology professor to world renowned and award winning author... I won't go into the details but I will mention that she had us all hanging on her every word, and it was a packed house at McNally Robinson! She basically decided to write a novel as an experiment. Having much experience writing other things, mainly science based (and comic books!) doing a novel felt like a challenge she seemed to feel she had to do. With a 'now or never' attitude, she told NO ONE that she was attempting this. Alas... she wrote snippets of almost the whole first book, with some prompting by friends on a literary forum she sent it to an agent. Within days of submitting the manuscript to 5 potential publishers, her agent had 3 offers on the table.

Alas. A novelist was born!!!!!!

There is a lot more to the story, believe me! She has spun tales of wonder that have captivated audiences in numerous languages for years. With more projects on the table we can only expect more from her :D She has podcasts along with the books you can check out, plus many websites with a large fan following.

I love her because she is intelligent, but not egotistical... beautiful, but not 'affected'... sweet, genuine and confident...and overall can tell a great story full of layered details, passion, excitement and true history... as Janine says, you 'FEEL' Scottish when you read them, and she is right!!

SO! The piece of advice. Turns out I didn't have to outright ask her because she gave a wonderful piece of advice to all of us, maybe without even knowing she did.

When she was talking about how she started writing the book, she didn't tell anyone. She mentioned that was because she didn't want people to talk her out of it. Alas! There it is. Just do what you want, and who cares what everyone else thinks! Something I already knew for sure, but it is kind of amazing to discover that Diana herself subscribes to this very notion.