I finished my book (sort of)

I have been working on a book for about three years.

I don’t even know exactly when I began it to be honest. It was before Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation came out and that was over two years ago.

I know because when I heard about that book, I was like “fuck, he wrote the same book as I did” — that kids are messed up today for a lot of good reasons. And then I was like “wait, actually this is a little different and my book builds nicely on what he said” — because Haidt’s book was pretty tech focused, which I agree largely agree with his critique there. But my book, being that I’m an urban planner, looks at how the outside world has been designed to exclude kids. Sort of the flip side of the problem.

It turns out literary types agreed with that because I succeeded in getting a literary agent and a book deal. So the book is going to be published by North Point Press (under MacMillan), hopefully in 2028.

That seems like an agonizingly long time off. And I don’t know how I am going to keep my cool because I’m very impatient for it to be published — I feel like it’s a very timely subject.

I sent my editor an 80,000 word draft last weekend. And there’s a lot of good stuff in it. That might not mean much, coming from me, the author, after all, but I just know I when I have something good. The few people who have read it (my agent and my publisher) are excited about it too, which is encouraging.

If you want more background on the subject and the way I see it, I talked about it in this interview with Pantsuit Politics.

One thing that was kind of eerie about writing this book at the end, this is going to sound nuts, but the Linkedin algorithm at the end was like divinely inspired, delivering the EXACT article I needed at the exact moment into my feed. It was kind of crazy.

Here’s another eyerolling thing to say but I read Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act,” at least part of it, not that long ago. And what he said was that when an idea’s time has come, the person who produces it is just the vessel. If they don’t do it someone else will. I think he sorta had a point. There was just SO MUCH good stuff out there on this subject. And I just pulled it together.

Anyway, the bad news is, my editor said it will take about 4 months to edit. (Editing, I find, sometimes excruciating, even though I know it’s important.) And THEN it’s going to take A FULL YEAR to go to print. 😢

My last book, it took six months to go to print and that seemed like forever. But now apparently, since the pandemic, this takes a year which is NUTS considering how information is spread these days online like instantaneously.

I wrote a few months ago about what a hard time I was having writing the book. But at the end, it was easy and fun. I sort of don’t know what to do with myself now. (Work at my fun and rewarding higher-paying real job is the answer, but still!)

I am reading this book right now called a Marriage at Sea. It’s about this couple in the 1970s, that were sailing around the world, when their boat was randomly sunk by a whale. And they survive for months on an inflatable raft.

I am loving this book. I love nonfiction. But this book talks about people’s survival and how important it is to have hope and to have an occupation to keep you busy.

The book’s author, Sophie Elmhurst, writes:

Doubt grows in emptiness.

Some years ago a pilot crashed his small plane over the empty mountains of the High Sierra. He left behind his two passengers and hiked alone for nine days over mountains and through forests, eating snow, until he came to a road and found help. The trek had been arduous; the pilot arrived in a cafe hurt and bedraggled and hungry. But the journey had given him purpose and something to do. When the pilot returned to the plane, he found his passengers dead, one trapped in the wreckage the other a little distance away. Able to sit and wait, what could they do but die?

Okay sorry that was extremely melodramatic and I’m not going to DIE now that my book is (almost) done. I have to promote it and that is intense. I have already started that a little.

Still though, as I was getting to the end of it, I started to become less impatient to be finished and frustrated with how difficult it was and tried to remind myself that writing can really be very fun, at it’s best. Really gratifying. That’s why I guess everyone really wants to write a book, even though in some ways it’s objectively a bad deal.

I don’t know how I got so lucky in life. I think this book is the best thing I have ever done, except for (hopefully) the job I hope to do with my kids and family. I don’t think there are too many people following this process with bated breath so hopefully this doesn’t seem too grandiose.

I just wanted to share this little milestone with you guys. And I appreciate your support and I hope I don’t annoy TF out of you whenever promotion phase begins in earnest. But I think it will be worth the wait!