Folks, writing a book is hard
Why do any of us do it??
I had been sitting on this book idea for at least five years. The world did not need another book that merged memoir with pop culture, but it needed this book, and I was the one to write it.
But I kept putting it off for one reason or another. I didn’t know where to start, I didn’t think I’d have the time, some other (usually shorter and easier) project would take precedence. I also almost died somewhere in there, but I doubt I would have started any earlier if I hadn’t. Mostly I just kept telling myself that it wasn’t the right time, and I’d get to it at some vague “later.”
And then, around the end of last year, “later” became “now.” Much of it had to do with unexpectedly getting an opportunity to co-host a live show focusing on mental health and how it’s portrayed in the media, which was precisely what my book idea was about. It wasn’t exactly a coincidence: the host of the show was a friend who had been reading me for a while and knew I had been germinating the idea. It was more like getting a nod from the universe: okay, you can go ahead and do this now.
I filled (and continue to fill) a Google Doc with voluminous notes, and now, nearly six months after I started, I’m five chapters in, and folks…it’s fucking hard to write a book.
Let me clarify: I have written a book before. It was fiction, a horror-comedy about a woman who meets a vampire on Tinder. I thought it was pretty good. My beta readers thought it was very good. But after a couple of rejections from agents my confidence was deflated and I did the digital equivalent of throwing it in the bottom of a file cabinet, never to be thought about again (that’s not true, I think about it a lot). Writing it felt like a breeze, however. I’d get up early in the morning, sit at my desk with a cup of coffee, and get in an hour of writing before I went to work, and then an hour at night, just like a real writer! I had the first draft done in less than six months.
This one, though, it’s different. Maybe it’s because it’s non-fiction, and I’m almost certainly spending too much time researching (or using it as an excuse) rather than just hammering out a complete first draft. I think it may also be a question of scope: if every chapter is going to be as long as chapter four was, this thing is going to be 700 pages long, and that’s not feasible for what’s ultimately going to be an irreverent look at stuff like how many movies feature a character with “split personality disorder,” a condition so rare in real life psychiatrists aren’t even sure it actually exists. It’s not intended to be an academic text, it’s for people who own all of Chuck Klosterman’s books.
The problem is that I keep finding stuff to include. Of course there needs to be an entire chapter on bad psychiatrists! Now that I’ve watched most of Baby Reindeer, I should go long on its unsparing depiction of PTSD, right? And what about pop culture’s (generally not good) treatment of neurodivergence, should I include that? Probably! From the very start, it’s been both an exciting and intimidating undertaking, but I dread how much editing this monster is going to need when I finally complete the first draft (which will very likely not be by the soft deadline of December 31st that I initially set for myself).
Then, of course, there’s poor time management, the problem that plagues me in every other aspect of my life. I would love nothing more than to be one of those people who goes on Threads or wherever and boasts that they managed to write 6,000 words (12 pages! can you imagine!!!!) in a few hours like it’s nothing. If I can get twelve paragraphs down in one day, that’s a great day for me. Mostly it’s just a couple. Sometimes only a sentence or two, just so I can say I wrote that day.
Now, it’s entirely possible that of the 6,000 words these human writing machines turn out, only 2,000 are any good. Regardless, as this is my first draft, and no one else is going to read it, I should just be letting it rip and churning out page after page to be edited later. But it’s hard. There’s a disconnect between writing the book in my head, and getting it out on a keyboard that I can’t understand and don’t know how to fix.
Also, my cat is dying. That’s probably not helping either right now.
ANYWAY, don’t interpret this as giving up. This book will get written, and maybe even published, though I’ve conceded at this point that my long-standing dream of being published by Random House or whoever is not likely to happen. That’s not because of a lack of talent on my part, but because the publishing industry as we used to know it is collapsing, and self-publishing is quickly becoming the norm, with all the weird interpersonal drama and bad A.I.-generated covers to go with it. I’m just being honest about the process, which has been famously compared to giving birth. I don’t feel like that, though. It’s more like building a mansion using only toothpicks and glue: I’ll finish eventually, but it’s exhausting.