“So how’s book-writing?” is a common question I get these days.
My short answer: sweet and stretching.
I’m 88 days away from my manuscript deadline and most days my desk looks like this:
I have written a total of 41,127 words, but only 26,176 are still in the book. (If you’re doing the math, that means 14,951 words have already been cut.) Moral of the story: It takes a lot of words to find the right ones.
Most days, writing makes me feel fully alive, which is the really sweet part. I often turn to Ben at lunch or dinner and marvel, “I can’t believe I get to do this.”
But writing a book has also had its share of surrender.
I did not anticipate how much writing would take out of me. It is an outpouring I am still learning to protect. Saying good yeses and good noes* is an art, and many days require that I live like a monk, quietly attending to the work while I set other things aside for a season. (And yes, *that’s the right way to spell the plural form of no. It looks weird. I agree.)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Human Together to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.