Breaking News: Writing Is Hard
Art monsters aside, the real beast is just putting words on the page.
I was planning to post another installation of the Art Monster series for you this week. I owe you one, and I have several thoughts brewing along those lines. But it seems appropriate to say that part of the reason I dropped off is that I’ve been on a brutal writing deadline for a book project, and I’d honestly forgotten how hard it is to get a manuscript into shape.
That’s right; a new book! Before you get too excited, I should say that it’s a book of essays, many written over the last six years and published behind various paywalls, including this one. I’d always wanted to collect the best of these pieces between two covers, and when I had the chance to do that with a prestigious small publisher, I jumped at it. Most were written between 2015 and 2023, a tumultuous time for the country and for myself, and I wanted to round up my thoughts and observations and put them all in one place. Plus, I figured it wouldn’t be too much work. Just copy and paste the published pieces in a document, write a little bit of new stuff to fill in the edges, and slap on an introduction. Easy!
Spoiler alert: it was not so easy.