Book Update, and Vague Life Update

Quick update on the book: went with the photo you all liked a couple of weeks ago in the photo post, did another pass on the book for small copyedits, wrote my acknowledgments, finalized the catalog copy, and it's now getting turned into advance reading copies, I think... publication date is July 25.  Fun fun fun.  Scary scary scary.  But that's the update.

I tell people about the book being done and they ask me what I'm going to write next.  Great question, and I don't have an answer yet.  I can fake an answer, by talking about how I've got stuff to do -- there's marketing stuff for the book, which I'll begin posting stuff about soon, once I have something to post.  I can make that take up a lot of time, and I have some ideas already... but it's not a full-time job doing that, at least not right now.

Not that writing the book was a "full-time job" in the same sense that my friends at law firms have full time jobs.  I have no reason to pretend that's not a seriously more grueling lifestyle than what I've been doing.

The Frank McCourt post below gets at this next point a little bit -- McCourt's written three books that cover different parts of his life experience.  But he's in his 60s or 70s.  I'm 27.  I don't know that there's another book I'm able to write, today, given my life experience.  I could make stuff up and write a "real" novel, or at least I could try.  I might be good at it.  I don't know.  I might not be.  But what I think makes Anonymous Lawyer work, to any extent it does, is that I was immersed in a world, and I was decently good at observing stuff and writing about that world, in a satirical and over-the-top way.  So if I'm smart, I should go find another world to immerse myself in for a little while, and hope it gives me some new things to think about and a whole new arena that maybe I could write about.

That's so easy to conceptualize, and yet it's slightly more difficult to actually imagine doing it.  Not this week.  Maybe next week.  :)

The cool thing about entering a new world -- law school, law firm, anything -- is that things seem to matter when they're new.  This is what I miss most about being a kid.  When I was a kid, things mattered.  I remember getting really worked up about a grade on a report card.  A dumb pair of stories to illustrate this point.  In fifth grade, my teacher gave me a Satisfactory in spelling even though I won the school's spelling bee.  Does that make any sense?  I certainly didn't think so at the time!  (I lost in the district round, incidentally -- I think I've told this story on here before -- on the world "halibut," which I spelled "halibit" because why would I have ever been to a fish store and seen how to spell halibut?  I don't eat halibut, in protest.  I'm told it's tasty, but I won't touch it.  Good thing I didn't misspell something necessary, like water, or shampoo, or deodorant, or socks.  Or Internet.) 

The grade thing is a bad example.  Because it's good to care less about grades, and I'm glad I cared less about grades in law school than in 5th grade, and it's a lot easier to live life when you're cool with stuff and not everything needs to matter, than when everything matters.  But it's still nice if some things matter.  It's dull to think that nothing you're doing matters.  That life will go on no matter what.

Before all this crazy book stuff happened, I was absolutely a better blogger.  It mattered more.  I felt like I needed to write some amazing post as often as I could, because this perhaps my most plausible ticket out of being a lawyer, if somehow I was writing amazing things and people were linking and reading and someone would discover my blog and rescue me.  Now that I've been rescued, it matters less.  It shouldn't, and I should be able to force myself to be better at this, but it's harder to find inspiration when there's not that sense of desperation.  I write better, generally, when I have pressure.  Deadlines.  When there's someone I'm trying to impress.  I expect most people do.  I expect most people do their best work when someone else cares about it, or they need someone else to care about it, and there's that sense you need to prove something.

Maybe that's wrong.  I remember some online test I took once that said I was externally motivated when it's healthier to be internally motivated.  I mean, I'm internally motivated when it comes to the bigger picture.  I want to succeed, I'm ambitious, I'm driven... all that fun stuff... but when it comes to the day-to-day things, in law school I was a lot more likely to read for class if I thought I was going to get called on, and I'm a lot better now at unloading the dishes from the dishwasher because I don't want my roommate to be annoyed, not because I feel some internal need to have dishes put away.

It's seriously sad that my examples of activities are "reading for class" and now "unloading dishes."  Wow.  Boring stuff.

Part of this whole internally motivated vs. externally motivated gets at another point related to the book.  What I missed while writing the book was being part of a work-related team of some sort.  I was worried that while writing, I would be lonely and never see people.  I made sure that didn't happen.  I made lots of plans with friends and took improv classes and saw shows and did lots of social things.  I'm really proud of myself for that, honestly.  For reaching out to people and making sure I filled my days well.  That's something I have to force myself to do sometimes, but I did force myself to, and I'm happier because I did, and I wasn't lonely while writing.

But what I didn't realize was that it's not just about social stuff.  I miss collaborating on projects with people.  Writing with other people, where you can all care about something, and it can feel important.  It can feel like it matters.  I think having other people in the trenches focused on the same thing you are is a good way for things to seem like they matter.  Even if they don't really matter, if more than one person cares, you can start to get fooled into thinking something's important.  And that's the whole point.  Even if it's not really important, I just want to be able to fool myself.  That's why big things like movies and TV shows and plays and musicals seem like awesome things to be involved with.  Lots of people are working on them.  Lots of people care.  They end up not feeling like a waste of time, because so many people are pretending they matter.  And making you feel like they matter.  Writing a book alone in front of your computer can sometimes feel like it doesn't matter, and there's no one there who can help you pretend it does.

So what am I doing next?  Hoping to find something that matters, or at least something I can fool myself into thinking it does.  Maybe a law firm's the perfect place for that, actually.  :)

Comments

[PG]

'I lost in the district round, incidentally -- I think I've told this story on here before -- on the world "halibut," which I spelled "halibit" because why would I have ever been to a fish store and seen how to spell halibut?'

Is this the middle class white boy version of the SAT vocabulary problem faced by disadvantaged minorities? ;-)

If you need material and are worried about your youth and relative lack of interesting experiences, you always could take the F. Scott Fitzgerald route of drinking heavily, partying hard, marrying a woman with psychological issues and turning all that into the material for your books. You wouldn't have to leave NYC as you would for the Hemingway plan of covering wars and deep sea fishing.

So I assume the book people can arrange for you to go on tv to talk about your book? If you can get on the daily show, maybe you can get a job there. That guy who wrote the Areas of My Expertise is now on TDS as their resident expert. Wouldn't it be great if you could be their resident lawyer??

[Allison]

I was kicked out of the southeastern (US) regional championships in 7th grade because I couldn't spell hollandaise. I had never heard of it. it's not something you go around talking about when you're in 7th grade (or a 1L in law school, for that matter).

[Matt Astle]

Mine was "nemesis." I spelled it "nemisis." So I took second place in my elementary school bee, and I lost to a girl a year younger than me! Just like Jeremy, I now avoid my nemesis whenever possible.

[Sanya]

Why is it that there was no spelling bee around when I was in fifth grade? Like, there's this Canada-wide national spelling bee going on right now and all the words they ask them to spell are SO easy and I wish I could have entered, but they're all fifth graders and it's so not fair.

[bob]

"Hoping to find something that matters, or at least something I can fool myself into thinking it does. Maybe a law firm's the perfect place for that, actually. :)"

what does this mean?

well, i left the "t" out of respectfully because i got nervous. that sucked...i knew what it meant and could sound it out. at least you misspelled something you didn't know.

Word. I missed "endurance" because I left the "e" off the end. I got distracted after saying "c," and then I reheard the sound in my head as an "e" and thought I'd already finished spelling the word. And that lost me the district spelling bee, since there was only one other guy in the running at that point.

well, since we're sharing-- I lost in 3rd grade on "familiar." Devastation ensued, but I came back with a solid district-wide victory in 5th grade.

[Allison]

Aww, I am so glad we were all able to have a little spelling bee support group here in honor of Jeremy. I feel all warm and fuzzy.

[Fiona McCaffrey]

Just watched the movie, "Adaptation" with Nick Cage and Meryl Streep. She talks about alot of the same things you do. Turns out she is suffering from mild depression.