I was stuck. I had written a first draft of a book. As I was editing it, I was stuck. I saw the flaws. Some of the initial chapters were too long, so I pulled them apart. Now they were shorter, but some of the content of the newly separate chapters now overlapped with that of some other chapters. Pulling apart the chapters still did not fix the fact that some chapters were a lot longer than others, some chapters covering many more disparate concepts than other chapters. Each of these concepts probably would have deserved a separate chapter in any case. Ahhhhhh, I thought, I’ll never manage to finish it.
But I felt what I wrote had value. When I was younger, I would have really liked to read something like this. Didn’t help, still felt stuck, so distracted myself by looking at an art book. This made me think of an artist I vaguely know, a lady I don’t really like. When I first met her, randomly sharing a table at a sake tasting right after the Corona lockdowns, she barely glanced at me when I politely introduced myself, turning her attention immediately to the third lady at our table who turned out to be a Chinese lady banker working for a private bank, who looked a lot more glamorous than me. I hate people like that, people who have cocktail eyes when you speak to them, looking over your shoulder to see if there is anybody else they think is more powerful than you to talk to.
In any case, this acquaintance, the arrogant artist with the cocktail eyes, had a major role in getting that book over the finish line. I thought, she’s an artist, she paints pictures that don’t speak to me, that I think are ugly. Hm, I thought, how does she decide when a painting is finished? Does she just, like, decide when it is finished? Not needing to ask anybody’s permission?
To me that was a revolutionary thought, since in my day job it is the client or some government authority who gets to decide when my work is finished, not me. Hm, I thought, is this book going to win the Nobel Prize? No. Could it be that it might actually be useful if only I managed to get it over the finish line? Yes.
So how about I just decide it is finished now, flaws and all. And reader, I published it.
Don’t believe all these social media gurus telling you writing books is a waste of time. They are right in some ways but so wrong in others. Writing books is great, not least since they teach you that you just have to decide that they are finished at some stage. And that it pays to hang out with all kinds of people, even people you don’t like.