My friend Karen Burns has just launched her illustrated career advice book called The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use. I’m so excited for her! It’s great to see a friend living their dream life.

As the Publisher Weekly wrote in its review:

“Burns is encouraging and funny, but also a hard-nosed pragmatist who isn’t about to do the work for you-but neither is she going to waste your time with pages of condescending instruction. Instead, her snappy chapters provide perspective and action points for a cascade of work conditions, indexed helpfully in multiple appendices.”

I’m a huge admirer of Karen’s focus to make this book happen. She says that she always felt she was a writer (she’s an editor and several of the 59 — yes, you read that correctly — jobs she writes about in her book were writing related), but now with the book launch, she feels like an author!

The book sprung from a humor writing class assignment. “I had a sense that I had had 30 or 35 jobs, I knew it was a lot. Then I felt compelled to write down every job I could remember. It became like a game,” she recalls. “When I came up with 59 someone said, that’s enough for a book!”

Karen proclaims that she’s most happy when she’s writing. She decribes the year she had to write the book after getting her book deal as “heaven.” “My husband would walk by and ask what I was doing and I would happily reply, ‘I’m writing a book.’”

Taking advantage of a midlife creativity surge
Karen, who humbly admits she has trouble seeing herself as an expert, created her Working Girl persona to actually dole out her practical wisdom with a humorous tone. Her Working Girl illustrations also give the book it’s creative edge over other advice books.

“Humor was a natural way for me to approach the material because when I reflect on past jobs it’s better to laugh than to cry,” she says.

As for the illustrations? She got interested in art as she was going through menopause. Prior to that she would never have dreamed that she could draw. “Before this it was not within my reach at all, but in my 50s I began to look at the world in a different way.”

How to retain your fire when it rains on your parade
Through all the different versions of the book, and her hunt for the perfect literary agent she she retained her focus, not that it was always easy.

“I would get a rejection, get depressed and upset…go Waah! At those times I would ask myself: Is this still an adventure? Is this still fun? Am I learning something? For four and a half years the answer was always ‘Yes!’ And I never gave up. I had too much pride because I’d already told many people about it,” she states laughing.

Ideal gift for women in their 20s and 30s
Karen always thought about the reader’ perspective. She would wonder: “Is the reader bored? What do they want to know? What do they care about? What are they afraid of?” This has resulted in an insightful and helpful book that is easy to read for women of all ages. It’s very engaging for the primary audience of young women in the early years of their career, as well as for the older women who “get a sense of recognition” from the job stories.

“Women in their 40s and 50s are giving it to their nieces and daughters. It’s my gift to the world and now it’s becoming a present people can give to their loved one,” Karen says with satisfaction.

Dream life vision becomes dream life manifestation.
“Writing has always been a creative need, a drive. As I’ve gotten older, it has only grown.” We should all transform our creative urges with so much enjoyment of the process and with such authentic flair!

The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use Check out Karen’s book!