Hello! I am pleased to report that I have submitted the draft of my book, tentatively titled Mind Game: An Inside Look at the Mental Health Playbook of Elite Athletes, to my publishing house, Rowman & Littlefield. (Well, all but one chapter—a last-minute interview means it won’t be finalized until Friday. But that’s close enough.) Some notes about the process so far, if you’re into that sort of thing:

• I’ve been working formally on the research, reporting, and writing of this book since the paperwork got settled in October 2021
• The book was inspired by my first Sports Illustrated feature, from April 2020, about how elite athletes (including Simone Biles) were handling the start of the pandemic mental-health-wise
• This was hard. Really hard! My original submission deadline was September 2022, but I wasn’t even close by then. I thought a year would be enough time to write a book. For me, it just wasn’t, on top of a full-time job and some semblance of a social life. I encourage writers to take however much time they think they’ll need—and then some
• The manuscript is hovering right around 75,000 words (the number agreed to in my contract)
• Hiring a freelance fact-checker was the best decision I’ve made so far (no, most publishers don’t include this service in house—it’s as wild as it sounds)
• I spoke to a lot of cool athletes you probably know and some cool ones you may not know
• Publication is somehow still more than a year away, set for May 2024. Don’t worry, I’ll ask you to mash the preorder button as soon as I have one

I know there’s still a lot of work ahead on the book—edits, copy edits, publicity, etc.—but for now I’m proud of myself for making it this far.

Awards SZN

I found out Monday night that my feature on psychedelics in sports is up for an Associated Press Sports Editors award. (Yes, that’s the one I interviewed Aaron Rodgers for.) It’s in the explanatory journalism section, and you’ll see a number of my current and former colleagues nominated across other categories!

In much worse news …

SI’s operator laid off a ton of my friends and colleagues a couple of weeks ago. I’m crushed and I’m going to miss the hell out of working with them regularly. If I embedded all their looking-for-work tweets here your email would burst, but I did want to highlight one person: Sarah Kelly. She was one of two (2) copy editors on my desk, and her work for me the past two years was stellar. Shoot me a note if you’d like me to vouch for Sarah’s editing skills.

Thanks in advance for considering hiring her (or any of my SI pals: get in touch about them, too) and making your newsroom better.

Julie