How To Write A Book.

The Single Only Way to Write a Book, Sorry.

I know. Annoying. Satirical. Almost in a ’90s way. But, whatever, we’re in our boom boom trad wife disgusting brothers era.

In any case, I am finishing my fourth book. This is not to say it is finished, I am working on it and by now I sort of know where I am.

More specifically, I’ve spent the last six weeks cutting a third draft from 138,663 words to 118,280 words.

I knew it was too long. Baggy. I’ve also been in the process of interviewing new lit agents and part of that has been tossing this bloated fucker over to them with the gnashed teeth emoji and seeing where they land with it and one of them called it, “rich.”

It was a real Kombucha Lady Face Meme moment.

So I tugged a little more and got that it was, “rich, like eating a cake’s worth of chocolate truffle.”

My book was Lipitor rich. Semaglutide rich?

Whatever, this was not a compliment.

In any case, this past round of notes was a big lift. I had to cut. I had to give one of the characters “more stakes,” which, if you’re a maker of anything, a “stakes note” is the worst kind of holistic, time-consuming, asshole puckering note you can get. Truly, stakes notes are like, “tone notes,” it’s not a page-one rewrite but it might be. Also, it’s the kind of note where even the person whose taste you don’t trust has sniffed something real out. Like, even if the note isn’t the note, there’s a real note behind it.

And it sucks because even as you’re writing the thing, you’ve got a tab open in your head about it, that feeling of leaving the gas on somewhere, that you know you will have to tidy up and sort out as you diligently keep building upon this rickety, non-weight-bearing structure of fuckery.