Q&A with 2012 Featured Author Caroline Adams Miller

Caroline Miller, an internationally known coach and motivational speaker, is the author of “Creating Your Best Life.”  The book is the outgrowth of her capstone project in the University of Pennsylvania’s Masters in Applied Positive Psychology program. It breaks new ground by giving the mass market audience an evidence-based, engaging guide on how to set and accomplish your goals with research-tested tools.

What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
If you have a story to tell, you do. Many people don’t wonder if they are writers, so those who do wonder, are writers who need to find a way to write, so that’s one answer. The other thing I would say is that you must find enough willpower to push away other temptations and have the discipline to write. In my book “Creating Your Best Life,” I have a chapter about willpower because it is the actual “muscle” of all goal accomplishment, but it’s also one of the most important ones in getting a book out of your head and into the hands of those who need it. I found it helpful to work in “unprimed” locations (places that my mind didn’t associate with activities other than writing), so I found myself doing lots and lots of Priceline weekends while writing “Creating” so that I could check into a local hotel on a Friday night and then have 48 hours of uninterrupted writing and editing time. If I had a great writing day, my family would join me for dinner or I would be able to sneak away to see a child’s sporting event, but my productivity is off the charts when I write in a location that isn’t associated with anything other than what I want to do there. By the way, you can get just about any three-star hotel in the Maryland suburbs for about $43/night, bringing my writing weekends to about $100 in total costs.

What are you reading right now?
“Willpower” by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney. It’s fascinating from a sociological and psychological perspective, plus you can apply the knowledge immediately to change your own habits and life.

What’s your favorite opening line from a book?
“In September of 1983, an art dealer by the name of Gianfranco Becchina approached the J. Paul Getty Museum in California.”  From “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. It sucked me right in and the story made a memorable point about why some hunches are more valuable than laborious decision-making processes.