July 20, 2025

A Mojave Take: 3 Ways to Water Your Book Idea (And The One that Actually Works)

You’ve got a book idea that could change everything. You’re also drowning in everything else. The Queen of Everything has infrastructure advice from the Mojave.

The Water Situation

A book idea that could accelerate your message and expand your impact—that would be a rich resource for you and your message. But every time you sit down to write, you're overwhelmed by where to start, how to structure it—and whether you'll ever have the time to finish. The project feels too big, too complex, and you're already running an organization that needs you.

The Queen of Everything hears you, and I've got some advice. Before any work could start on my jackrabbit shack, I had to figure out the water situation. A dusty, dry, abandoned cabin can't flourish into a creative retreat—a desert maison—without water, a precious commodity in the Mojave. The decision felt enormous, especially from 3,000 miles away, especially when this Brooklyn renter QOE had never had to invest in a utility. After all, I’m the Queen of Everything, but not the Jack of All Trades. 

With help from my general contractor, I settled on three options. Each had its own appeal. Each was a source of anxiety.

Option 1: The Tank

I could purchase a water tank and have water trucked in. People in remote areas do this all the time. The tank would sit near the cabin and get filled periodically by a water truck rumbling down my dirt road. Pay as you go. Use what you need. Self-sufficient. I liked the feel of this independence. No ongoing monthly bills, no connection fees, no dependence on town infrastructure. Just me, my tank, and whatever water I could afford to truck in. I had control over every drop, I told myself.

You know this feeling. You've been handling your communications yourself—writing grants, crafting newsletters, managing your website. Bringing in help when your budget allows, controlling every piece. Making it work with whatever bandwidth you have between meetings and management.

Option 2: The Well

My goat farmer neighbor had drilled his own well. Specific geological factors in Yucca Valley have created an aquifer below the surface. Hit the right spot and you can tap into something sustainable. The gamble intrigued me. Invest in expertise, drill deep enough, hope the water table cooperated. If it worked, I'd have my own source. But if it didn't, I'd have an expensive hole in the ground and still no water.

You've considered this path too. Block out early mornings, develop your own voice on the page. Pour your evenings and weekends into learning narrative structure, hoping you hit the right creative aquifer before you have to turn to the next brushfire. Some leaders have the bandwidth for this approach. Others find themselves with half-finished chapters and still no sustainable way forward.

Option 3: The Connection

The third option made my bank account wince: Pay to connect the town's water main to the cabin, which would entail trenching across dozens of feet down the drive. The cost was eye-popping, especially when I hadn't even made the place habitable yet. All that investment for something I couldn't even see? Would I even be at the cabin long enough to make this connection feasible?

Then a Mojave friend leaned in with advice during a Golden Hour cocktail: "Think of the neighbors!" I bristled at first—what, where are we, in the white-picket-fence suburbs?! But the comment landed somewhere tender. I didn't want to be the person with the makeshift setup, the one whose choices made the area look rough around the edges. I wanted to belong to the community, to contribute to the kind of place I'd want to keep coming back to.

You face the same consideration with your book. Your message can't be sustained by pieced-together fixes. It needs to flow from deep, reliable expertise, supported by proper infrastructure.

The Infrastructure Investment

I chose the connection. With the general contractor's expert oversight, a trench brought water from the town's aquifer system directly to my property. I have a shutoff valve to prevent waste during absences, and the water flows fresh and clean—I tell you, it's New York City-level good. In a place where water scarcity shapes every decision, this abundance feels like a daily gift and a privilege that should not be squandered. When I am there writing, the water nurtures my few scrubby, scrappy cacti that I call a garden, allowing agaves to grow bigger than the jackrabbits that wander through.

Your Book Infrastructure

My regal opinion is that sustainable infrastructure serves mission-driven work better than DIY approaches, even when the investment feels overwhelming. Your book can become another program that amplifies everything else you're building. Instead of rationing inspiration between urgent deadlines, you can focus on what you do best: the work that changes lives.

Working with a ghostwriter means your ideas flow cleaner and stronger than you imagined. The infrastructure becomes invisible, reliable, something that strengthens your organization's impact page after page. Your readers can sense when a book flows from deep, reliable sources versus being sustained by makeshift fixes.

I'm not a gambler myself, so I admire those who can handle the creative unknown with courage. But I've seen mission-driven leaders exhaust themselves trying to truck in expertise or drill their own creative wells while managing everything else. The investment that seems challenging when you're stretched thin transforms into the resource that waters everything you're building.

Responsible Stewardship

Your story, your expertise, your years of frontline experience—these are precious resources that deserve infrastructure worthy of the change they can create. Your impact can grow bigger than what you've imagined possible. Sometimes you just need to connect to the expertise that's been waiting to support exactly what you're trying to accomplish.

Ready to explore what kind of creative infrastructure might serve your mission? The Queen of Everything would love to hear how your book fits into the larger systems you're building to create change. Contact me!

Elizabeth Smith is a ghostwriter, developmental editor, and book strategist with two decades of publishing experience—and a southpaw with a mean right hook. Between a NYC boxing gym and her Mojave Desert maison, she helps thinkers, creatives, and organizations articulate their ideas through books that resonate deeply. Ready to transform your vision into a book with impact? Let’s connect!