All Right Seriously, I Need to Finish My Book

Goodbye for a bit

A little over a year ago, I published a post called “I’ll Be Back, I Need to Finish my Book.” I sometimes have strong epiphanies when I’m traveling, and one I had while in Buenos Aires last March prompted that post. I realized how little other types of entertainment and art matter to me in comparison to books. Movies, TV shows, podcasts, blog posts, and even Shorts and Reels can be great, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that they don’t matter. But books matter so much more, and it’s not even close. It’s all about books! Books are the highest form of art in my mind. They are what I remember and cherish and am inspired by the most.

But not too long after that post, I changed my mind about taking a break from Substack. I continued writing essays, while working a corporate sales job, staying committed to the gym, playing basketball all the time, and enjoying social life. I’ve balanced it all well, and still made significant progress on the book, but the progress has been somewhat sporadic. So I’ve decided one of those activities needs to be cut to free up some bandwidth, and the one that makes sense to stop doing for a bit is putting out blog posts every week.

Especially considering another reason my progress on the book has been somewhat sporadic: straight-up procrastination and fear. Working on the blog became a kind of distraction from working on the novel. Which is weird, because I’m so excited about the story, and think it is genuinely funny and clever. I also know I’d be more satisfied just knowing it exists, regardless of any outcomes. So I need to go make it actually exist!

It takes a while even without procrastination and fear. And I’ve been laboring over every word, the good old-fashioned way. I could’ve been done a long time ago if I just used AI, but what would be the point of that? That would feel like a betrayal to myself. I’m not against using an LLM to help find grammar errors in your writing and maybe give a suggestion or two, but to generate or consistently rewrite the text? That does genuinely give me the ick. Better to have something a little bit “worse” that came from your mind than a “perfect” text that came from a data center.

Anyway, I hired a professional editor in December, and his copy edit and developmental feedback letter that I received in February were extremely helpful. While I already implemented his copy edits in the manuscript for the most part, I have not implemented the developmental edits, which is the actual hard part.

Whatever excuses I’ve been using—lots of traveling, moving apartments, starting a more demanding job—are all just that: excuses. So it is time to put my fours up. It is time for me to stop writing Three Point Thursdays and essays for now, as much as I absolutely love doing so. All of my writing energy has to go into Degrees of Absurdity.

Thank you for being here. It means a lot to me. You’ll still catch me on Substack Notes, but until the book is pretty much ready to be published, adiós.

Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation