From Unknown to Bestseller: Susan Cain's 'Quiet' Revolution

Episode Notes:

1. From Corporate Law to Bestselling Author

Early Aspirations and Detours

Susan’s writing ambitions began remarkably early: “I knew from the time I was four years old that I wanted to be a writer,” she says. However, her path wasn’t direct. In college, she took fiction writing classes but concluded she “wasn’t really that good at this.” With practical concerns about supporting herself, she pursued law instead.

For seven years, Susan worked as a corporate attorney with ambitions of making partner. When that didn’t materialize, what initially seemed like a setback became transformative: “I found out that I wasn’t going to make partner. And then I left the firm three hours later. I literally just packed my bags and left. I was simultaneously crying and seeing it as my get out of jail free card.”

Within a week, she enrolled in a creative nonfiction class, experiencing an immediate reconnection with her original passion: “This is it. This is what I’ve always wanted to do.”

The Transition Period

During her transition to writing, Susan supported herself through consulting work, leveraging her legal background to conduct negotiation training. This financial stability was crucial to her creative development:

“I said to myself, ‘The goal is to get published by the time you’re 73 years old.’ I just thought: I have to figure out how to make a living, but my life is going to be centered around this beautiful hobby.”

This period of financial security without publishing pressure proved formative:

“For all those first years that I started writing, I never associated writing with stress in any way. It was always the bonus, it was the pleasure... I think that’s been really important... I still have a Pavlovian association of writing with my place of peace and sanctuary.”

Finding Her Subject

Despite friends advising her to write about negotiation, Susan pursued a more personal interest in introversion. As she explains, “This is where I say that thing of making sure you’re serving the correct god matters because had I been thinking in financial terms, I would have written the book about negotiation... But it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

When most agents rejected her proposal, with several commenting that “this topic is really not commercial,” one agent, Richard Pine, immediately recognized its potential, telling her, “This book is going to be big.”

2. Creative Process and Book Development