Post the First

I wrote a book. I think it's pretty good... I think it's terrible... I think it's really great... Eh, it's all right... I can't decide. So much depends on the time of day and how much wine I've had to drink. But I wrote a book and have spent every free moment over the past 20 months either working on it or feeling guilty that I wasn't working on it and now suddenly it's done and it's time to do the next thing.

It occurs to me that there's a fairly large area between writing a book and getting anyone to read it. And that's just when I'm talking about my friends - who are mostly people who seem to like me and would do stuff like help me move or loan me money. I'm not sure any of them want to read a book I wrote. If I start thinking about getting it published by someone who is (a) not me and (b) willing to give me money for it, well there's a damn ocean between that and writing it, no matter how much fucking work the writing of it was.

But I don't care, because I wrote a book and I decided that the very least I could do was try to publish it.

But how?

Long ago, when I was still palavering away behind the bar at Streeter's Tavern (greatest bar below earth) and trying to find a way to stop palavering behind the bar, I was doled out a piece of advice that I've long felt was the best advice I've ever gotten: baby steps. In other words, don't think of the long game, think of the thing that you have to do next. And then do that thing. This is solid advice and you can have it for free.

Prior to that, the best piece of advice I'd ever gotten was from my mother who told me that "you're never too poor to afford a good moisturizer." I thought this was good advice but it turns out that sometimes you are too poor to afford a good moisturizer and besides, the cheap offbrand shit you buy at CVS works just as well. If I were going to dole out advice in this arena, I'd tell you to wear a hat in the sun and wash your face every night prior to moisturizing it with the stuff that comes in the $4 jar at CVS. Besides, just between you and me, my mother's been moisturizing with Vaseline which is even cheaper than the $4 shit you can get at CVS and her skin looks great - but that's off topic. I'm stalling. I'm kind of scared of the whole process and skin care comedy is my whistling in the dark.

Onwards!

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the A&T Cafe in Rogers Park with a grilled cheese, a diet coke and my laptop and I was plugging away at The March (which is the name of my brainchild and sometime nemesis) and I felt so happy to be doing that. The idea of a future where I could sit by myself in a public place and play with words and pick things out my own brain seemed so tantalizing and so wonderful and so impossible.
But I remembered that advice from oft in my 20s and instead of thinking of that impossible, tantalizing goal, I decided to think of the next thing to do.

First, I've started this blog wherein I shall document the process of trying to get a book published (consider the skin care advice a happy bonus). This, I thought, might prove instrumental to other young(ish... who am I kidding, knocking at middle-age with extreme prejudice) writers trying to get a start in this business. But more importantly, I thought it would remind me to do these baby steps, to engage in the process and try. At least: try. To remember to think of the next thing to do instead of the whole thing to be done.

And the next thing now?

Write a letter that describes what this book of mine is about. Join me in that pursuit, won't you?

If anyone out there in the blogosphere has some ideas about what my baby steps should be, please let me know. I'm making this up as I go along.