On Writing

Writing has been a blaring insecurity of mine for years. As a child, my brain processed thoughts at what felt like light speed, ideas ricocheting around my mind like golden snitches darting across a Quidditch pitch. I could lose a thought as quickly as I had it because I was already chasing the next one. Much like the golden snitch, my thoughts were elusive and fleeting, and I was perpetually the seeker on the hunt to capture them before they vanished. This mental velocity affected not just my writing, but my speech. My sentences tumbled out as if someone had pressed the 50x speed button on a podcast. The constant refrain of my childhood acting lessons became “Enunciate! “Slow down!” No one understood what was happening in my brain. I couldn’t slow down because that meant losing the germ of an idea, losing the thread, losing whatever I was working so hard to grasp.

In my writing, translating what was happening in my brain to the page felt like an impossible chore. My ideas would emerge like the three types of balls in Quidditch. Each a kernel of an idea, alone, fragmented, colliding into one another with no clear lines of synapse connection. This led the world around me to feed me a story, a story I believed for a really long time: that I was absolutely, fundamentally not a writer. I was never going to be a good writer. Only good enough to get decent grades.

Then in 2018, I started public speaking. I had a burning desire coupled with a clear vision for a keynote talk. It was a data driven analysis of inequity in both Venture Capital and Hollywood. The presentation would weave together my brutal fundraising experiences with staggering statistics showing how women are tragically overlooked for investment. Sadly, the number one mechanism for building generation wealth was built for one type of person and I will not stand for it. We are leaving mountains of innovation (and profit) on the table by largely ignoring what women bring to the table. The talk was bigger than me. It demanded to be shared somehow, some way.

When the head of UCLA Anderson School’s conference called asking what I had in mind, I heard myself responding before I could think:

“I have this idea for a 15 minute keynote on my fundraising journey coupled with data that clearly points to women founders as spectacular investments. We only receive 2% of venture capital, and that number has barely changed year over year and yet female founders get higher returns on investment across the board. We’re leaving exorbitant amounts of money on the table and the system needs to change. There’s only one catch... I haven’t written the talk yet.”

“Can you write it in two weeks?”

“FUCK YES.”

As soon as I hung up, reality hit. Sure, I had an idea and some glaring statistics but between me and that keynote stage lay an immense mountain of research, synthesis, and my old nemesis: writing. What the hell had I just agreed to?

I called one of my investors, a former Facebook communications expert who had handled Mark Zuckerberg’s messaging in the early days of the company. She was battle-tested. If she could help Zuck navigate the world stage, she could certainly help me conquer UCLA. She and her colleague spent two weeks with me, editing my talk and drilling it in my living room until the speech lived in my bones. They showed me how to let my personal story illuminate the broader data, how to make my scattered thoughts coalesce into a really powerful delivery.

The talk debuted to a standing ovation. Bigger stages followed. Twitter shares. Men’s rights activists trolled me (a badge of honor!). A speaking agent called. Success by any measure. I know that I’m an excellent speaker but deep down, I knew how much help I’d enlisted to achieve this milestone. I was still not a writer, just resourceful and diligent with a talent for speaking. For the next three years, I built a speaking career, writing new talks but always relying on wise eyes to help me edit, to make sure they were good enough to be released into the public sphere. I had urgent things to say about inequality, innovation, heartbreak and spirituality, but I didn’t believe I was skilled enough to say them alone. I was a speaker who happened to write, not a writer who happened to speak.

Barcelona changed everything. Between a mini European DJ tour, I wandered the city solo, seeking out Gaudí after Gaudi. A wander in a new place always gets me. Solo travel has become so important to my creative process. The openness you feel in a new city coupled with a quiet brain always clears the way for something new. And like clockwork, it did. I felt it, my brain tapping. Sentences forming, swirling. I saw a book. A book is coming through?!

Hi friend, you have something to write, to say, to do.

A BOOK?! I argued back silently. I’m not a writer. You must be absolutely, positively mad.

The tapping persisted all day. I returned to my hotel room that evening, laptop reluctantly in hand, and began to write. Not because I believed I could but because I’ve learned the hard way to never ignore the brain tapping.

Listening to that call, I signed up for a writing sherpa which happened to coincide with the dissolution of my company. Julie, a therapist-turned-author has written over a dozen books and she believes in giving back. She has a protocol to support writers who can’t fully afford traditional guidance, this part of her ethos spoke to me. We share a similar life philosophy, the same core values, and I found myself wondering if she could help me uncover this book, figure her out.

“I’m not a writer,” I confessed in our first session. “But I have to write this book because it channeled through… it tapped.“

“You are a writer,” Julie insisted with the quiet certainty of someone who had shepherded dozens of voices into the written form. I didn’t take this affirmation fully to heart. After all, I was paying her to help me write.

Our structure was both simple and terrifying. We’d meet three times a month for thirty minutes to review five pages each time. Five pages, three times a month. The math felt diabolical. Impossible. In the beginning, I could barely manage one page in a sitting, let alone five. The voice in my head chanted, “I’m not cut out for this.” But as so many women have done before me, I persisted.

What started as torture slowly transformed into a practice. I wrote and wrote but I couldn’t zero in on the framework of my book. I stalled. Life had its own plans, my heart got broken in spectacular fashion, so naturally, I pivoted to poetry. Something raw and hungry demanded to be written, but then that stalled too. Eventually, I returned to the book with clearer vision. The framework revealed itself. I began crafting my book proposal.

Who is this girl? I caught myself thinking, staring at tens of pages I had actually written.

Somewhere in the rhythm of commitment, to Julie, to the practice, to showing up, something shifted. Writing had become easier. It changed from feeling like an amateur against a professional to sharing slow mornings and a coffee with an old friend. The blank page no longer terrified me. Five pages felt achievable, almost routine. And then, miracle of miracles, I found flow. Not once, but repeatedly. Mornings when thoughts poured through my fingers, when the racing mind that had once been my curse became a dance I understood.

Dare I say, I’m proud of myself? I had taken a really scary story and I gave it space. Space to breathe, to not be defined, to germinate, to explore. Through that space,I found that I am… a writer?

I had finally harnessed my mental Quidditch pitch. I understood how it worked, what it needed, why it had always felt like a vast stadium where golden snitches were out of reach. I could still see the swirling ideas, the winged thoughts careening across my mental sky, but now I learned how to capture them. The fleeting snitch was in grasp and I could pin it to the page before it disappeared. Point for Gryffindor!

My process was still a puzzle, but no longer an unsolvable one. Now, I could see the jigsaw pieces scattered across the board, and I understood that it was simply my job to put them together. My non-linear thinking pattern finally made sense. It just needed a skilled seeker to corral the thoughts toward a common goal.

Four months ago, I hit publish on my first Substack post. No consultation. No editing requests. No frantic emails to wise eyes asking if it was good enough because I felt it was. Without expectation or a need for validation, I posted it into the world.

Growth happens in the small moments, in a quiet night at home, in solitude, in the mirror, in standing a little taller, speaking a little louder. My understanding of myself as a writer had grown bit by bit, not through external validation but in more and more self trust. Each page written, each session with Julie, each moment I chose to show up to the blank page, they built upon each other and morphed into an unshakeable belief. I had slayed my story dragon. The old narrative that had held me captive for decades was fading away like an unimportant memory, no longer holding any power.

I can write. I am a writer. I am not terrible at this thing. And I’ll just keep getting better.

Then came the messages that felt like small god winks landing in my inbox.

My dearest friend in the literary world wrote: Just had to tell you how beautifully written this post is – it’s just gorgeous! I cried! Super impressed with how far you’ve come as a writer!!

An old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years reached out: Dropping a note to say this is REALLY GOOD - you’re a really great writer. Keep going.

Another followed: Read this and LOVE it! Keep on.

They were proof. Evidence that the long, terrifying path to writer had been valid. That trusting the process was worth it.

Today, my book proposal sits at 85 pages, with another 120 pages in limbo. One more major revision ahead of me before we take it out to find it a home. How did I write so much?

The book may not sell but that’s not the point. I’ve already cultivated something deeper and bigger: the belief that there will always be another book.

You are never too old to reclaim your gifts or too late to invest in yourself, to attempt to master a craft that terrifies you, to rewrite an old, flawed story, or to find the right teachers. You are never too old to express yourself more fully, to trust the voice that’s been waiting patiently inside you.