No. 164 - Why I Haven’t Published in a Month
Dear Reader,
I haven’t published anything in almost a month. Why? Two reasons:
A. I’m wrapping up a book to publish.
B. I run a business that occasionally takes over my life.
I have recently learned that writing a book is relatively easy, but editing a book is a herculean effort that I was ill-prepared for. Allow me to explain how it works:
1st – An idea pops into your head that you want to write about, so you do. I constantly read about writers who struggle, who toil through the torture of putting words on a page—I am not one of them. I enjoy writing, but I don’t have to make a living doing it. There’s a reason why I never turned pro—I took the Bobby Jones route and kept my amateur status. I had a mentor once tell me that the definition of success is:
Being able to do what you want
Being able to do it when you want
Being able to do it with who you want
That is how I treat writing.
I write when I want to, and I write about what interests me without anyone having a say in it—which is a recipe for not being gainfully employed.
2nd – You edit your piece. In the old days, which was as recent as a year or two ago, that meant checking for spelling—that’s it. There wasn’t a means to edit anything professionally, short of hiring an editor, which costs money, takes time, and can be frustrating as hell. But, lo and behold, artificial intelligence came along, and nowadays writers can become editors.
I usually copy whatever’s in Word and paste it into ChatGPT and/or Claude. I always tell it to do the following:
Check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation – DO NOT change anything – provide a list of issues that need to be addressed with a solution.
You see, AI will gladly rewrite what you’ve labored over, and it’ll read like a computer did it. I can spot AI writing from a mile away, and it’s maddening, at first, until you learn how to work with it. Eventually, it’ll sort of act like a normal editor, but not before a bunch of bullshit.
That’s how it works these days, but I have hundreds of articles whose editing was nothing more than spell check in Word, and when you start putting your writings together, you quickly realize you’re committed to an insane amount of mind-numbing work.
3rd – You publish your article and enjoy others reading it, though you rarely know who does, which is why I always reply to comments in Red Clay Soul (if you’re not familiar, I’ve had over thirty articles published there). That said, I don’t reply to articles on my website. I don’t know why—I suppose it feels a tad egotistical.
Those three parts are fun. Get an idea, write about it, edit it, and share it. Easy peasy.
But, like I said, when you’re assembling dozens of articles to turn into a book, nearly all of which have never been edited, it takes on a life of its own.
For starters, I had to take articles that were written in 8.5 x 11 format and transform them into 5.5 x 8.5. Books are not printed on sheets of printer paper. Doing this to sixty articles took a lot of time.
In addition to that, I had never “Justified” anything I had written. Simply put, when you look at a book and every sentence is perfectly laid out left to right, making paragraphs look like symmetrical squares – that’s what “Justified” means, and it took a lot of time.
I also re-edited every article. So, sixty pieces, times two means I went through the editing process 120 times. And every edit meant reformatting—it was exhausting. I am a writer—not an editor. The back end of putting a book together took ten times longer than writing.
And this is my hobby. I also run a business that has me traveling all over the place. Add those two, and that’s why I haven’t published anything in a month.
I’m pretty sure this is the longest I’ve gone without publishing an article in several years. But when I’m done, I’ll have a book—two, actually. I forgot to mention that: I’m editing and publishing two books. One is a collection of essays on living in New York, and the other spans several genres—from art to road trips to aging.
So, if you’re a reader of mine, I appreciate your patience. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I never really have. I’m a “dive in headfirst” kind of guy. I’ve never once dipped my toe in the water.
I’m learning a lot and hope to share it with other writers. The publishing world is complex and secretive. I have a newfound respect for anyone with a published book—be it with a major publishing house or self-published.
And if you enjoy my writing—thank you. It means the world to me.
P.S. If you’re a confused writer like me, feel free to reach out. I’ll help in any way I can.
