Paige DeSorbo on Publishing Her First Book Without a Ghostwriter: 'I Don't Know Punctuation!' (Exclusive)

Paige DeSorbo is reflecting on her new title: author.

Speaking with PEOPLE exclusively, the Summer House alum and Giggly Squad podcast cohost, 32, says that writing her new book, How to Giggle: A Guide to Taking Life Less Seriously, was a daunting task, in more ways than one.

“Simon & Schuster reached out to us, and I truly was like, ‘Yeah, there's just no way. What are we writing a book about?’" DeSorbo says of the idea for the book, which she wrote with her podcast cohost Hannah Berner. "And I think the first part, I was like, ‘Oh, we'll get a ghostwriter. This will be fine. We'll just talk to them.’”

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“And they were like, ‘No, you're not getting a ghostwriter. Like, you two have to write this book. It's comedy. It has to be in your voice.' So I immediately went into a panic and I was like, ‘I don't know punctuation!’ And I don't.'"

DeSorbo says that Berner's mom, Lenore DiLeo-Berner, also helped edit How to Giggle, and that "all my parts [of the book were] in red."

“It was like, ‘Paige, we don't know what you're talking about. Rewrite this,’” DeSorbo says. “And I truly felt like I was in school and it was double because it was Hannah's mom and I was like, ‘I'm so sorry.’”

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How to Giggle packs DeSorbo and Berner's signature humor, as they give advice on how to navigate everything from complicated friendships to achieving your goals (with “delusion and manifestation,” of course.)

“I've always wanted to be one of those girls that brings a book on vacation and just reads the whole thing. I'm never going to be her, and that's fine,” DeSorbo says. “And I think that's why we like How to Giggle, because you can truly pick it up at any point in the book, and read one chapter and then put it down and come back to it. So we like that. And we grew up with Cosmopolitan, those quizzes and the magazines, so we wanted it to feel like that.”

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DeSorbo notes that the writing process showed her how difficult it can be to write a book (“I give a novelist so much credit.”) But it wasn't all work and no play — whether it was recording the audiobook alongside Berner or getting to pen some of her memorable moments.

“There's a story in the book where I am studying for a science test with my mom and she's like, ‘You have to focus,'" DeSorbo recalls. "And I'm like, ‘But the Oscars are on.’ And she wanted to throw that book at my head. She was like, ‘You don't know anything for your test tomorrow. The Oscars are not important.’

“So then to call her, when I booked Vanity Fair Oscar party, I was like, ‘I told you that the science actually wasn't important and I needed to know how to pronounce Oscar de la Renta,’” DeSorbo says. “So it was such a full-circle moment for both of us.”

And though DeSorbo admits that there are areas of the book where she and Berner “could have gone deeper,” their message about seeing the lighter side in life still stands strong.

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“Maybe we'll write a memoir and we'll go deeper into breakups and relationships and stuff like that,” DeSorbo says. “But we really wanted to show the girls how everyone goes through these different life moments at different times, but they're all similar in how you can laugh throughout all of them.”

How to Giggle: A Guide to Taking Life Less Seriously is now available, wherever books are sold.