Author's Edge

How to Turn Your Advocacy Into a Book that Demands Attention with Meg Stone | Ep. 73

• Allison Lane • Episode 73

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What if your advocacy work could become the book that shifts the conversation?

Allison talks with Meg Stone about transforming advocacy into authorship that drives real change. Meg shares how she turned decades of violence prevention work into a book that calls out false safety advice and redefines empowerment.

If you’ve ever wondered how to turn your mission into a message that moves readers and gets publishers to pay attention, this is your roadmap.

In this episode, Allison and Meg discuss:

  • 04:20 — Why Meg’s first book pitch failed - and why that mattered
  • 12:30 — The surprising power of advocacy-based self-defense
  • 21:00 — How her agent helped her find the right book to write
  • 29:50 — The myth of “playing it safe” and how it limits women
  • 44:10 — Meg’s daily visibility habit that actually works

Meg Stone is Executive Director of IMPACT Boston and the debut author of The Cost of Fear: Why Most Safety Advice Is Sexist and How We Can Stop Gender-Based Violence.

Resources Mentioned:

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Meg:

One of the things I learned through all of the failures, all of the wrong terms, all of the books that didn't work is that there is a unique intersection of what I want to say and what people need to hear that I could not find until the cost of fear.

Allison:

​Welcome back to the Author's Edge. I am your host, Allison Lane, and I'm here for you because I know how hard it is to write your book and then get your book into the world and then to launch your book and continue talking about what your book while you're living your life. Too often, experts who are doing their expertise for their living wish that they had time to write their book or that they could bottle all of their knowledge into a book. And that is hard. But today, we're talking to Meg Stone who has done this and is bettering the universe for it because too often the safety advice women get, keeps us playing small. The generally, safety advice keeps everyone playing small. Tells us to smile, stay quiet, stay home. But Meg has been dedicated to challenging that. She is the executive director of Impact Boston and has trained thousands of people with real world evidence-based safety and abuse prevention. And now, her debut book, which I will hold up because it's awesome, The Cost of Fear, she's calling out myths that pass for safety advice and offering something so much more valuable and powerful in their place. So, whether you're stepping into your role as an author or you're trying to figure out how to get your message out into the world even before you think maybe I should write a book about it, or you are raising people and in a world that doesn't always feel safe. This conversation will shift how you think about all of that with confidence and courage and real protection. So, let's get into it. Meg, thanks so much for being here. I'm really happy that I got to see you at a recent book event because the discussion that happens is so much more powerful having read the book. Thank you. And your ability to help make all of this advice and safety precaution actually personal and practical is what we need. Let's start with this. Can you talk through your journey to becoming an author because this is your debut and it's not like you don't have a full time job that is demanding. Right? Sure. You've done what a lot of people want to do. Like you dumped your noggin, like all the knowledge into a book that is helping.

Meg:

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And I have done it. It is not easy, but it is probably one of the most important things that I have done in my life. And I want everyone who is organizing around immigrant justice or social change in any area. If you have a book in you, it can be done. So, that's my little, uh whatever. My brief moment as a motivational speaker, which will now happen. But for me, I first knew that I wanted to write a book about 20 years ago. I was in a writing class and the teacher gave us a prompt. He gave us a deck of cards and told us to build a house of cards. And as soon as mine went up, it fell. And suddenly, I started writing about the two years I spent working the night shift in a domestic violence shelter. And everything about that experience of building something and watching the smallest little external pressure collapse it, really broke my heart and broke me open and motivated me. So, I have been writing I've published some short pieces. I have several ill-fated books along the way. I have been writing for most of my adult life. And as I have been writing, I have been running Impact Boston, a nonprofit organization that gives people practical skills to prevent and interrupt violence. And being a nonprofit executive director is for me, the best job I could ever have but any person I describe it to, even the staff that work at Impact, absolutely think it sounds like the worst job ever. But what I love about it is how many times a day I have to shift gears. So, there was a day a couple weeks ago where in the morning, I was working with women in science to support them in developing self-advocacy skills for being in a male dominated space. Then in the afternoon, we were working with immigrant rights advocates around developing the skills to deescalate encounters with police who are trying to do things that are not, they're not authorized legally to do. And then, I hopped the subway back to my office and I reviewed our financials and our audit documents. And that is just like a day in the life. And what I love about those shifts is that they really help me look at the work from a number of perspectives. And not just leave a number of perspectives out there in the world, actually integrate them, make one cohesive meaning out of them and move them forward. And my book, I am honored and grateful that I was able to find Leila Campoli as an agent. I came out of her slush pile. I loved a book by one of her other clients. And when that author thanked her agent in the acknowledgement section, I reached out and I said, I love this book by your client. What you're interested in matches my idea? Can we talk? And Liela actually, the original idea I had for a book is so radically different than this book that I've decided that Liela is the best person in the world. And then, I was even luckier to land at Beacon Press. And what I love about Beacon Press is that they have a mission as a publisher, they are about publishing books that advance social justice. And they also have a really skilled sales and marketing team because they understand that these ideas need to not be marginalized. And these ideas need to enter the public conversation the way any other well performing book does. So, for me on the practical side, I saw a lot of 5:30 AM and a lot of 6:00 AM while I was writing. I have a very close relationship with caffeine. But on a more serious note, starting my day, reading research, distilling what I know, analyzing how we got to this place where people associate. Following rigid rules with being safer really helped me do the work better. Do the violence prevention work better, do the safety skill building better, communicate better, connect better. Because thinking about students and thinking about readers has a lot of really important overlaps. So, I think every writer has their perfect gel pen and their perfect notebook, and I am.

Allison:

Oh my gosh. I really do. I went looking for my perfect gel pen before we hopped on. It's true.

Meg:

Oh my gosh. I have gel pens that are the body of the pen is translucent, so I can see the ink decrease. And that makes me feel like I'm writing and accomplishing something. I'm sure the listeners of this podcast already have their own favorite pen and don't need me to go on about this forever. But I think what I would say to anybody who is doing the work that the current moment demands is if you can build in some time for that very disciplined, very rigorous, and also very pragmatic thought. Then, not only can you engage in the glamorous work of publishing a book but also the work gets crisper, the work gets clearer, the work gets more focused, and frankly, we all need that.

Allison:

That was amazing. We're going to unpack a few things. When you said yes, you saw a lot of 5:30 this morning. I was up at five because insomnia is fun. But I was so grateful for it because I read a book this morning before 8:30, an entire book. Because I speed read because my mother was an English teacher. She's taught me to read when I was four. So then, you just move on to speed reading. And I couldn't put it down. And I was like, oh, so good. Okay, so let me get back to dig into everything you just shared. So, you have this idea for a book and you find I'm assuming a list of agents that you thought might fit. And did you pitch them all in one fell swoop? How and what did you pitch them with, like a full proposal or an idea? Take us through that.

Meg:

I pitched a completely different idea that ended its life as a Huffington Post piece in 2020. But after the 2016 election, I became deeply curious about women abuse survivors who voted for Trump. And what motivated them and what their concerns were, their hopes, their fears, and what resonated with them about Trump. It didn't work as a book, but what I was able to distill in the article. And frankly, like the fact that I wrote this four years ago makes me want to hit my head against a wall. But there is a way that we understand the voting behavior of every type of demographic group you could think of. Divorced moms, millennials who don't own property. Parents who are over 50 and live in the suburbs. But there is no, and believe me I asked a lot of people, there's no evidence, there's no understanding of the way a lived experience of abuse and trauma affects people's sense of safety and security and how very harsh, very simplistic rhetoric can resonate with people who have a life history of feeling deeply unsafe. And if we don't understand how trauma impacts our politics, we will all be doing the things that the trauma therapists try to heal us from in the public conversation. So, that was what I was able to get at with my failed book idea. And any reasonable agent would have said, you know what, Meg? Let's part ways after two rounds of unsuccessful submission. But Liela is an incredibly generous and incredibly committed person. So she basically sent me back to the drawing board. And what I realized about being an executive director and an author is that the point of being an author is to get to talk about and write about the issues I am most passionate about. And political division is very interesting to me, but it is not the issue I'm most passionate about. So, the more I thought about what really moved me in that writing process. And it wasn't just writing like I traveled to North Carolina and upstate New York and Pennsylvania, and I went to diners. I went to a women's gun convention in Texas where I drove past billboards of all of the billboards in the area were either gun sales, pro-life, or Christianity. And I realized that I was not getting outside of my own world and my own reality. And those lessons were very humbling and very motivating. But what I love about the way that Liela navigated what happened after the book didn't sell is she really helped me get myself on a new course. And a new course took a couple years. And I published a lot of short pieces. I pitched and got rejected from a lot of short pieces. And it really helped me understand what was important to me that wasn't resonating with others and what was important to me that was resonating with others. I was one of those writers who could make a pretty sentence out of anything, but I didn't have the bigger picture of what I was saying or the central argument. So thankfully, I have a friend named Molly Singer who runs the consulting firm, dexterity management. And she is a nonprofit generalist in a way that I am so entrenched in one issue that I couldn't like move 10 degrees over in the violence prevention world. But what I loved about Molly is she sat with me with flip charts and markers. And she kept persistently asking me the question, what are you saying? In so many more creative ways than I just asked it, and in ways that actually yielded fruitful answers. So, for a two and a half month period, I didn't write a single pretty sentence that I edited 4,000 times before I liked it. I just wrote an outline that followed a central argument through a logical progression. And so, when I finally did develop my book proposal, the book that was published and the chapter outlines and the sample chapter that was submitted to Beacon are almost identical. So, I really knew, I mean, it took 20 years, two years, or four years depending on, or 50 years depending on when you start the clock. But what was so helpful was figuring out what I am passionate about most connects with the people that it matters most to connect to. And how to not just connect, but to connect in a way that motivates people to move further into working for personal and social change.

Allison:

Wow. Okay. So, you went on this journey, your agent helped redirect you, and you stuck with her, and you guys have a rapport. And now, your book is out in the world and it's tremendous. And it gives you the power to open doors as well to be in places that you weren't before. And then, have deeper conversations. I mean, I could have talk to I know you and have known you for months now. But I could have sat and talked to you for hours or just listened to you talk for hours because everything you're saying was so fascinating and personal. When you are out and about in you're meeting people, what's one big change you're seeing when you're talking about violence prevention or empowerment self-defense especially with people who don't already know you.

Meg:

Yeah. And at the bookstore event that you saw a lot of the people, I think more than not, the people who attended just happened to be in the store and came over which was delightful and amazing. I think I've always loved bookstores and I've always loved independent bookstores. And I have gone to so many author events and just like that, like to be the person leading the author event is just such a dream come true. It's so amazing. And I think what I'm seeing particularly in this moment, in the unique reality that is 2025 is people are understanding that individual agency or individual resistance and systemic broad-based change are not in opposition, are not opposites. They are both part of the same work. So, yes, we have to change laws. Yes, we have to change policies. Yes, we have to change media and social norms. And we have done a lot of that work and public opinion has shifted a lot more than the actual prevalence of sexual violence. So, what we do to change things in public and what we do to change things in private are both part of the same work, even though it is different work. Particularly, with gender-based violence or sexual assault. Most of this harm is caused when we are alone with someone we thought we could trust, or at least someone we thought would not deeply hurt us and traumatize us. So, part of the prevention strategy needs to live in our bodies. I have my own body with me everywhere I go. And it is very important to educate people to intervene if someone else is at risk. It is very important to work with young people to make sure everybody understands consent. And none of those efforts could ever be a hundred percent effective. So, we also need a strategy that gives us the tools to interrupt the harm in the moment. And again, like the research shows that feminist, or empowerment self-defense is very effective. And even very effective programs nothing is ever a hundred percent effective. So, what I've realized is that there seems to be because so many more people are feeling fearful for their bodily safety right now, that there is so much more hunger for practical actionable skills, but also skills that further the broader change. So, a lot of personal safety advice or even self-defense classes are like in a football field away from any facts. One of the largest police led self-defense programs in their student manual, they tell women to get thicker curtains so that nobody can see them changing clothes. And when I took the training, I asked what I thought was a very simple question. I said, is there a lot of evidence that violent crimes begin with someone seeing someone through the window? And that should not be like a gotcha question, but the person who's leading the training was like, eh, we're not going to get into all of that. And what I found is that a lot of primarily men, primarily folks in positions be they military or law enforcement, or martial arts primarily in positions where the expectation is you do what the authority figure says because they're the authority figure. A lot of those folks have begun pedaling safety advice to women. That is completely, evidence poor that has no evidence to show that it works. Everything from don't wear a ponytail, an attacker could grab it, to don't park near a white van because otherwise you'll get pulled into trafficking, to always take the elevator because attackers hide out in stairwells. Yep. And even with the most sincere intentions. This type of advice becomes a form of coercive control. Like I got my start in a domestic violence crisis center. And what we learned when we first started the work was that while the public imagination is of very severe physical violence and women cowering in corners, what actually is the environment in which that abuse is possible is one in which the abusive person tells somebody what to do and what not to do and tries to control their every action. And it breaks my heart when I realize how similar those types of coercive control strategies are to a lot of the personal safety advice that is out there. Never ever take the stairs or never you know, any number of things. And like, I had to roll my eyes because there's a bunch of European cardiologists that are showing that climbing stairs is really good for heart health and you only have to climb like five flights a day to get the cardiovascular benefit So, in that particular situation, with no evidence that there is any great amount of crimes either in stairs or elevators, the prevailing safety advice is telling us to do something that's bad for our health. Or that at the very least, that removes us from something that is good for our health. So, that is I wanted people to understand that it is not compliance that makes us safer, but resistance, critical thinking, self-advocacy and choice. So, I don't tell my students what to do. I give them options of what they could do. Good information about the real epidemic of violence. Not the law and order. You know, Show of the week.

Allison:

Not the hide. Make sure you have an escort. Right. You make your life smaller. Right. Turn off the lights when you go into your apartment. Essentially, it's your fault, if you get caught.

Meg:

Yes. If you're a woman living alone Use your initial, not your name on your mailbox. Yeah. Put a pair of men's old boots on your doorstep so you look like you live with a man. The NRA went as far as to direct women to, this is a direct quote from refuse to be a victim. If someone comes to the door asking for the man of the house, tell them that the man of the house is busy and can't be interrupted, do not tell them that you're home alone.

Allison:

Unfortunate, but Yes. I've heard all of that. Now, the flip side is like,

Meg:

you're a woman being harmed in the United States is probably the man of the house who is harming you. Just as an aside, sorry. To be continued.

Allison:

Yeah. And then the flip side is what we want for our kids is to grow up and have a healthy relationship which we're not teaching them how we're teaching them. Don't be alone with a boy as a mom of a two teens, a boy to girl. What you want is for them to grow up and have healthy relationships, which also includes a healthy sex life, and there's no talk of that. It's really just make yourself smaller. But not even the environment that's okay to have your first kiss. Right. My first kiss was behind the roller skating rink and it was slushy, it was gross.

Meg:

If you talk about quality sex education and the person you were kissing did too, you might have had a great first kiss. Because sex and relationships are skills like anything else. And we don't expect teenagers to magically do well on math tests. We put them in math classes and teach them stuff. And then when we teach them, they can do it. So, a lot of what impact Boston does and a lot of what the research shows is that the most effective self-defense classes include elements of healthy relationships and healthy sexuality. So, it's not just don't be alone with a boy because some girls don't date boys. Let's be real.

Allison:

Don't be alone with anyone.

Meg:

Right. But it's say what you want and what you need and pay attention to how the person responds. And say what you like and what you don't like, and pay attention to whether that person is invested in the relationship being as good for you as it is for them. And the red flag, the opposite being if you say what you want, and what you need, or what you don't want. And the other person acts like that didn't happen. That is a red flag. Not that they're wearing disheveled clothes, not that they jumped out of bushes. And that way you don't have to restrict your life and you don't have to treat, you know, an entire gender or an entire class of people. There were threat to you because you have the skills to discern what people are doing in response to you advocating for yourself. And then, make decisions to the extent that you can, that serve you. Or for example, if you're in some of the folks I interviewed were teaching self-defense to janitorial workers who worked the night shift in corporate buildings. And a lot of those folks are very fearful about losing their jobs, losing their incomes, so the self-advocacy skills had to make sense in that context. Some of the folks I interviewed are PhD scientists working in drug companies who are navigating peer pressure to become drunk from male colleagues who do not feel vulnerable when they're drunk the way they do. Resistance skills and self-advocacy skills have to fit your context and have to be taught as a strategy you can use to navigate an unfair world and not as a thing you do wrong and therefore you are attacked.

Allison:

Well, i'm just going to let that sit there because that was super powerful. Thank you for that. I'm going to pivot now because you're an author, but you're also an avid reader. And I would kick myself in the shins if I didn't ask you for a book recommendation, what are you reading now that you love?

Meg:

So, I have a problem with vacation reading in that I sometimes don't read fun books on vacation. So a book that I'm reading that is very important to me right now is the fall of Roe, the Rise of a New America by Elizabeth Diaz and Lisa Lerer. These are two really smart, really thorough journalists who have presented this very compelling investigation of what happened in the 10 years before the Dobbs decision hit the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v Wade. And what I love about the book is that it helps me think through okay, how can I reverse engineer that? How can I use strategies to help advocate the causes that I care about. And okay, like we went to a little cabin in a beautiful small town and I sat outside, overlooking the farmland and the rolling hills. And while normal people would read like this awesome novel, I'm sitting there like underlining passages in the fall of row. And it still felt like a vacation. But it's just been thought provoking to see the political changes that are happening in our world, whether we agree with them or whether we don't as the result of methodical strategic work. And like what the different factions were how they disagreed, what they brought to the table, what worked, what didn't. What they abandoned What they kept. So, it doesn't you know, political changes that I disagree with are not feeling as much like a force of nature. And are now feeling like an engineerable and reverse engineerable reality.

Allison:

Yeah. When someone points out to you of let me show you how this happened. Yeah. It was, this was not an accident. It was not just a groundswell. No. It was a strategy that we are all manipulated and we didn't see the people in the back going like, now this is the move. Yep. Okay. Before we call this podcast complete, what's one tip you want to leave the authors out there authors with who are trying to stay visible, get their work out there, whether they're have a book or they want to have a book, what's one thing they could do today?

Meg:

I am a big fan of methodical persistence. I may not be the Flash Point social media queen of the world, but I have done something to get my book out there almost every day since it was published and many of the days before it was published. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I think it didn't work. And then two months later, I hear back from the person that I thought, never read my email. And one thing that I have been so grateful for is that all of the relationships and all of the collaborations that I have built over my 30 plus years working to prevent violence and abuse have really come back to help me in terms of getting the book out there. There are empowerment, self-defense, domestic violence, sexual assault, survivor advocacy colleagues and collaborators that have worked with me to get the word out about the cost of fear. We just heard from a Planned Parenthood organizer. Who reached out to us because she read my book and I was like, oh, cool, let's talk. So, I think just the promotion of my book starts from the heart and from the fire under me about what all of the ideas and all of the messages in this book mean to me. So, if I lean into the heart of why I am doing this and the urgency of it and the importance of it, then I don't feel like I'm selling you another maxi skirt that's going to disintegrate in the wash. I feel like I am moving the work forward and I only know what a maxi skirt is because I watched Project Runway. Just for the record. In the Tim Gunn era, I loved Project Runway.

Allison:

So, what was the term you used the consistent redundancy, no?

Meg:

Methodical, consistent, just like impact Boston has grown, not because big fancy grants fell from the sky, but because I just kept meeting with people who were interested in what we did, but really struggled with it and really weren't sold. Or who were sold, but couldn't figure out how to fund a program. So, just that consistent, methodical present work is what has served me as an author. Also, indie bookstores that have a good events program have just been such a joy to work with.

Allison:

Yeah. Shout out to Porter Square Books and.

Meg:

Porter Square books. And the other thing, we can double shout them out. The other thing that Porter Square books did that was so special was they didn't just have me come and read, they do an event. They do it, I don't know, monthly, quarterly some iteration where they donate a portion of book sales during the two hours surrounding the event to an organization. So, Porter Square Books is generously offering very concrete support to impact Boston in addition to hosting a book talk. And what I just want to acknowledge is since November of 2024, our waiting lists have been larger than our classes, and we have had to add extra classes to reach people who are feeling very acute fear and very acute concern about their or other people's safety. And many of the folks that we reach can't afford very much. And so, it's just been incredibly wonderful and I'm incredibly honored to work with Porter Square Books and so many others. And yeah, It is such a.

Allison:

Big shout out to Porter Square books in Cambridge. They're like many indie book stores dug in and committed to their community and to authors. So, we love the Indies for sure. Meg Stone, thank you for spending this time with us and thank you listening on your drive to work as people actually go back to work and wondering, will I ever get a chance to write the book, I know I'm meant to write? Yes. Yes, you will. There is always a way, and that is not blind optimism.

Meg:

One of the things I learned through all of the failures, all of the wrong terms, all of the books that didn't work is that there is a unique intersection of what I want to say and what people need to hear that I could not find until the cost of fear. And when I was not finding it, the projects were not working. And when I did find it and I had a lot of help and a lot of support, then I wrote the book that I needed to write because we write in a journal for ourselves, we write for publication for a connection between ourselves and others. And like the impact staff teach in the healthy relationships classes, a healthy relationship benefits both people.

Allison:

You've given us so much to think about and for you driving to work, now that everyone's back actually commuting except for me in my basement. I appreciate you and you're thinking, will I ever get to write the book i'm meant to write? Yes, of course you will, because you can, not because of some lightning strike, but because Meg says,'consistent, repetitive steps, actions forward.' And there's always a way, there is always a way to make it happen. It's not if now then I guess I'll give up on that. No, it's, there's always a way. Please, if you are ready or you think I might be ready, book a call. It's a free consult. Send me an email, allison@lanelit.com, or go to my website and grab time on with me. I have time every single week, and I would love to talk to you about your message and getting it into the world. Meg, You are a force and I so appreciate you being here.

Meg:

You are a force and there's a lot of really ridiculous algorithm things that will pop up in your feed, but skip all of those and go to Allison's classes because she makes it clear. She makes it actionable. It is based on what actually works and like good safety advice. It's not one size fits all. It's about what works for each person. So, thank you. As Allison says, book a call, maybe you believe that, but as a participant in Allison's amazing trainings, I will say book a call.

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