We’ve all heard about that Great Book that no publisher wanted but which, when someone finally saw its true value, instantly vaulted to the rarified air of the New York Times bestseller lists and stuck there, quivering, like a dart in cork.

I’m sure it happens. But usually when publishers don’t want books it’s because the books are bad. I believe a good book can be written on literally any subject. And so can a bad book.

After 20 rejections I had to suspect that I had written a bad book.

I decided not to call a third group of publishers. Instead I put the manuscript away. This wasn’t difficult: I was discouraged as hell. I worked on other projects, waiting for time to give me a more measured perspective.

Something like a year later, I returned to the manuscript. I tried to read it like a piece of furniture, a chair or a table. What was its job, and did it do that job? I asked.

I could easily see that ‘Anything Worth Doing’ was well-written in the sense that the word-level and sentence-level writing were strong and satisfying. But I knew that alone couldn’t make the book good. In other words, I was growing up as a writer. A book is made out of words but it needs to be far greater than their sum.

What I saw after resting the manuscript for a year was an obvious fatal flaw: The book was in love with its subject matter. And it forgot to invite the reader to fall in love as well. It presumed that the reader, like the writer, came to the book gaga over wilderness, whitewater, and quirky, independent lifestyles. The book didn’t justify itself. It didn’t even think it had to.

I tore the manuscript apart, rewrote it, polished it, then got in my car and went to visit two friends. One was an old high school buddy named Steve Mays. The other was a college classmate named Christine Hathwell. Neither are whitewater boaters or adventurers. Steve is a Seattle attorney and Christine a damn good shade tree poet who lives a quiet life in Boise, Idaho. Both are very thoughtful readers. Both agreed to read for me, which meant that we read the entire book aloud, picking it to bits yet again.

I also went to see my most important source, Jon Barker, one of the two participants in most of the crazy adventures that comprised the book. He couldn’t help much. Like I had been writing it, he was in love with the material.

Back home, I rewrote the book. Again. Then polished it. Again.

Then I called a regional publisher called Falcon. Rights to the cougar book had just reverted to me and my coauthor from Sasquatch. My coauthor had opted not to pursue reselling and revising that book. He had said I was welcome to it.

So I figured I’d pitch both projects to Falcon which:

1. was not in New York, source of all 20 of my rejections and

2. had published a travel book I’d helped write and

3. specialized in outdoor and natural history titles.

Good match, right?