Brown wrote letters to her parents about these experiences and originally thought about writing a book of essays about her law school experience until a literary agent advised her to adapt them into a novel. Brown took a community college writing class, put together a manuscript, and shopped the book around but was unsuccessful. She later resubmitted her manuscript again, this time in pink, which got the attention of an agent, and "movie people went nuts." Amanda's mother, Suzanne, remembers the day of the bidding war and thought she would be lucky to get $10,000 but the final figure was considerably more.