New lease
Jan 31, 2004 Writing
I met with my friend, B. today. We met via my blog, which is weird but not out of the ordinary weird. (Briefly going off topic, I have another friend I met via an article I wrote. She saw in my bio that I lived in the city she was planning to move to and she liked my article so she wrote me and asked for dental referrals, etc. Her son is now my son’s best friend.) Anyway, B. is helping me with my book along with my virtual friend, Cecelia.
The new book idea is a bigger, better version of what I thought I wanted to write. It’s the kind of book that I would choose to write had I enormous optimism and confidence, which I don’t. I have small optimism and wavering confidence. The truth is, the other book I wanted to write would — I thought — be the easy way out. B. and Cecelia are both convinced it wouldn’t sell anyway so why not write this bigger, better book, which they both think would sell and I think would be enormously more interesting to write. So why not write it? Because I worry that I don’t have the chops or the discipline. I don’t care. I’m going to do it anyway. The idea of chomping into the research makes my teeth tingle and I think that if I take it step by step (chapter by chapter) and abuse the friendships of my editor/writer friends, maybe I can pull it off.
I’m going to spend the next couple of months exploring some themes and also working on growing a thick skin so that I can benefit from critiques.
January 31st, 2004 at 11:31 pm
man, go for it. i know that’s much easier said than done (i have my own book planned for “someday” - that is to say, some day when i think i’ll have more time or energy than now, which i cannot imagine happening…), butif you’re going to do it, you may as well do it big.
February 1st, 2004 at 10:59 am
As my son, Tyler likes to say in an exaggerated Indian accent that he must have picked up from some movie: You can do it!
February 1st, 2004 at 12:47 pm
Congratulations. As a last-stage dissertator, I feel your ambivalence. But the one chapter-at-a-time approach is a great way to go, surpassed only, perhaps by the one-page-at-a-time-approach.
There are days when a paragraph is all I can manage and even that merits a celebratory dinner out!
I can’t wait to read your book.
February 2nd, 2004 at 2:23 pm
Go for it, go for it, go for it. I’m totally certain that you have a BIG BIG book in you. And I look forward to reading it.
!!
Eve