Elizabeth Wellington Rollins — A Day In Her Life

This week, we're sitting down with Elizabeth Wellington Rollins, a former award-winning tech copywriter turned full-time novelist whose debut, "The Three Graces of Pearl Street," just landed on the USA Today bestseller list. Liz shares what it's like to launch a book she's been working toward for 20 years, working "investment banking hours" on a solo book tour across six states, all from a small town in Vermont where she loses cell service five feet from her front door.

In this deeply week’s conversation, Liz opens up about spending five years on a first manuscript that never sold, writing her debut in a single year while losing her dad to ALS, and caring for her newborn daughter in a medical bubble for ten months. We talk about the $25 vacuum cleaning article that launched her writing career, weekly pots of sauce from her family's Italian-American recipes, and why surrendering to "the hurricane" produced the best work of her life.

What We Cover:

Why she describes launch season as very full, tired, and so grateful (and why it feels a lot like postpartum).
How she protects her mornings for writing, then uses a dog walk as her transition to shift from Liz the writer to Liz the operator.
The path from a college bookstore job to a $25 article on vacuum cleaning methods to messaging strategy for tech unicorns, and why she was set on scaling the complexity of her writing instead of building an agency.
The five-year manuscript that got four offers of representation but no book deal, and the month she "left the planet for a fairy prince" before getting back to work.
How Caro Chambers' monthly meal plans made dinner "frictionless" for her marriage while she finished the book.
The bedtime nightlight trick that lets her four-year-old read as long as she wants (and cut down on nighttime check-ins).
Why a walking pad in her favorite window became a necessity for her mental health during launch.
Letting go of a "facade of perfection," flubbing the first line of her prologue in front of 200 readers, and learning to feel the bestseller moment instead of just thinking about foreign rights.

References:

The Three Graces of Pearl Street by Elizabeth Wellington Rollins — Liz's debut novel
Under Story by Chloe Benjamin — what she's reading now, a fellow WME author with the same release date
Friday Night Lights — her comfort rewatch while packing for tour and doing admin
Caro Chambers' What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking and Substack — the monthly meal plans and grocery lists that carried her household through busy seasons, plus her new cookbook
Instant Pot — for turning leftover roast chicken into bone broth
Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses and Throne of Glass series — what she read to lick her wounds after her first manuscript didn't sell
Jane Austen and Little Women audiobooks — her go-to soundtrack while cooking dinner
Costco Parmigiano-Reggiano — her tip for the best Parm on this side of the Atlantic