Joy Lane Turned Six Years at City College Into F College, and 240 Readers Signed Up Before She Told Her Friends
“I want to normalize the struggle, because it is hard. But I want to show that hard things are worth doing.”
Joy Lane, author of F College
Joy Lane is a senior mechanical design engineer and a lecturer at an engineering college. It took her nine years to finish her bachelor’s degree, and 12 years of college in all. Her memoir, F College, goes back to the moment she nearly quit, and a Goodreads giveaway drew 240 sign-ups before she had told her friends it existed.
The line of students that started the book
Clip · Joy Lane on the moment she knew she had to write it · 65s
Joy did not write about her six years at City College while she was living them. About a decade later, she was lecturing at an engineering college and grading papers during a quiz when a student asked her to look over their answers before turning them in. When she looked up, a line of students had formed behind them.
The students she talked with afterward were carrying the same stress she had carried, and each of them thought they were the only one. Joy had kept her own story quiet for years. She started telling it.
“I think it wasn’t until I started working with students who were in that exact pain point that I really realized, oh my gosh, I need to tell people that I had a hard time.”
Joy Lane
A memoir built like an engineering system
F College opens with Joy at 23, lying in the grass, ready to walk away from her last final. Then it winds back through her sixth and final year at City College, using the language she works in every day: equilibrium, stress and breaking points.
Clip · Joy Lane on what F College is at its heart · 20s
“This book is essentially my almost breakup letter to college.”
Joy Lane
The engineering is there on purpose. Calculus and heat transfer did not click for Joy until grad school, when she started designing real systems as a design engineer. She wants younger readers to get there sooner.
“I think one of my missions with this is to make engineering accessible, especially to younger readers, and just by expressing it in a way where hopefully they can start to see the world through some of those equations.”
Joy Lane
The book is written for the outliers: students with test anxiety, kids who learn best with their hands, and anyone who, like Joy in the book, finds out they have ADHD and hears for the first time that they are not crazy.
“And I think those people are brilliant. And I want to find them and I want to empower them and let them know, hey, just because you don’t fit the mold, doesn’t mean you can’t fulfill your dreams.”
Joy Lane
Why Scribe Media
Clip · Joy Lane on why Scribe Media · 22s
Joy first heard of Scribe’s co-founder in college, through his own memoir. In 2020, laid off from her engineering job during COVID, she found Scribe Media’s free YouTube series on how to write a memoir. It was the first time she realized the chapters she had been writing on the side for years were a memoir.
The advice stuck with her: write it for yourself first, put it in a drawer, and come back only if it keeps calling you. It kept calling.
“Scribe to me was always the goal. I like the concept of self publishing, owning your royalties. And it’s been the best journey.”
Joy Lane
Three months to write, a year and a half to edit
Clip · Joy Lane on the Scribe editing process · 25s
Once she signed with Scribe Media, the first draft came fast. Joy wrote on the patio of her favorite pub, looking out over Paso Robles, with one rule: two pages a day, every day.
“Writing the book was really easy. It’s crazy. Once I had signed my contract with Scribe, I think it took me three months. And I was done.”
Joy Lane
The editing took about a year and a half. Her editor at Scribe pushed her to share more of the past that shaped her college years, which meant becoming that scared girl again. When the issue turned out to be the book’s framework rather than the writing, Scribe brought in a writing coach to help her shape the story.
“[My editor] did a great job explaining me to me.”
Joy Lane
The hardest part, she says, was learning to guide the reader while still trusting them to piece the story together. Then the Scribe team took over.
“I wish I’d known how thorough that the Scribe editing process was going to be because once I finally surrendered my edited manuscript, then you guys [Scribe] just took it and ran with it. And then it was really easy.”
Joy Lane
The cover took months. The title nearly did not survive at all. Joy works in education and worried that a name like F College could cost her career, so her Scribe project manager suggested polling an audience. F College came in second, but the people who liked it loved it. She kept it.
“So I think writing a second book, I know the process a little better and how much support I have on my side.”
Joy Lane
Finding her North Star
Clip · Joy Lane on defining her North Star · 32s
Scribe Media’s process asks every author to start by defining a North Star: the one thing the book is for. Joy expected it to take five minutes.
“And on the very top, you define your North Star. And I thought that was an easy homework assignment. I was going to fill it out in five minutes. And I think I sat with that for weeks.”
Joy Lane
Where she landed is the line at the top of this page. Normalize the struggle, and show readers that hard things are worth doing, even when you spend the whole time asking whether you are meant for this.
The launch
Clip · Joy Lane on the Goodreads giveaway · 16s
F College comes out October 20 on Amazon and Kindle. Ahead of launch, Goodreads ran a giveaway of 100 copies, and Joy had not yet started promoting it.
“And I’ve been kind of slacking on my marketing and I didn’t tell any of my friends and I checked my Goodreads and like 240 people signed up.”
Joy Lane
She is also building FCollege.university, a home for the series where readers can post on a shared wall and get a certificate when they enroll. And she is not stopping at one book. Joy thinks the full story takes four, and the next one picks up as she finishes her bachelor’s and, for the first time, starts getting good grades.
Do it for yourself
Clip · Joy Lane on why to write it for yourself · 32s
Her advice for anyone too scared to start their own book is the same advice she followed.
“Do it for yourself. Do it for the tears you’re going to cry when you have to sit with who you were. And there’s something that’s been so healing about this journey for me.”
Joy Lane
Writing the book did more than tell her story. It changed how big she lets herself dream.
“All of a sudden, I’m dreaming bigger and I’m starting to feel a connection with people that I haven’t felt before just by allowing myself to connect with me first.”
Joy Lane
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