An Update
Back when I thought I was a writer, I wrote what I thought were three books.
They were not.
They were book-length manuscripts that I edited a few times and said, "Hey! I wrote a book!"
That is not being a writer.
One of the most difficult things about writing The Man You Trust is that I had to accept that I wasn't a writer. I was a hobbyist.
If I wanted to be an actual writer, I had to start over.
Which I did, and it's been hard.
Here's an example, which is very common at this point. Here's an example of an edited page:
Here's the stack of pages (only the heavily edited ones, not ones with minor changes) over the course of all drafts:
It's 5 1/2" high now. Probably in the range of a thousand pages. The book is two hundred pages long.
I've been keeping this stack because I sensed it was going to be important at some point to not just think about what I was doing, but what I had done. It reminds me of the time when I wasn't actually writing and how much distance I've put between myself and that moment.
I get up every morning and put in my time. I don't expect it to be good time, or inspired. It's work.
Occasionally, though, there are periods where everything makes sense and passages come together and everything flows like water. The last week has been like that.
This is going to be wrapped up by the end of the year.
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