Justin left a comment asking why it’s so hard to find longer-form offerings of my writing.  For the most part, all I’m doing here are quick bullets, except for really long items on my obsession, The Wire.  Can’t say that’s not a good question.  In fact, I wonder the same thing sometimes.
Well, the game has changed substantially in the last few months.  Gone from paying the bills writing two columns a week to doing so by teaching a course and hosting radio shows.  Both are gigs that involve more work than it sounds like they do.  Trust me, for I’ve learned those lessons the hard way (though the lesson about a class was learned well before now).  All the same, the time to write just isn’t what it was.
Also, I’m trying to get a book proposal off the ground.  A friend that’s working on a book right now described the process of writing a book as being similar to “going to the top of the Empire State Building taking the steps.”  That’s real as steel, man.  The proposal includes a couple of sample chapters, and the process is one of the most frustrating and draining processes that’s there.  That’s especially true for someone that’s used to working 1,000 words at a time.  After that, writing about 13,000 words fully understanding that they are, for right now, the best you’ve got but, ultimately, not nearly good enough seems like swimming upstream around the Aswan High Dam.  You better stroke like hell before you hit that wall, Jack.
At the same time, it’s one of the more rewarding.  As a columnist, much of my time was spent reading back through old pieces and considering what could have been done to make the work more effective.  To make the opinion clearer, to the make the words float a little more, to make the lead catchier.  Now, I’m doing that all the time with things I already thought were done as well as I could do them.  That’s so incredibly difficult, but I’ve never challenged myself like I am with this.  I hate it, but I absolutely love it.
But hopefully, I’ll get to do more writing soon.  Just not really the time right now.  I did write a gamer off the UNC-Duke game the other night, and I just didn’t get around to posting it.  Here’s the link.   Mostly wrote it for the practice because I don’t ever want to get out of the habit of being a columnist.
That’s what’s funny about where I am right now.  The work I’m doing is probably as fulfilling as anything I’ve done before this.  The class is great, and radio is as much fun as I’ve had doing anything professionally.  But even with all that, there are days I wake up and see something and hate that I don’t have a column to put forth my take on the issue.  There’s something about that gig that’s just in me.  Maybe it’s being a know-it-all, or maybe it’s some of that “true calling” talk.  I don’t know.
Either way it spins, I can’t believe I won’t be writing columns again.  At the same time, I made the decision a few weeks ago that my writing will be primarily done on this proposal.  So that’s what I’m on right now.
There is an interesting feeling I’ve got about all of this.  In a way, I feel like an artist that came out the box regularly releasing singles, but now I’m in the lab working on an album.  You sure as hell hope you get it done while people still remember who you were.  Well, at least the 15 people that knew who I was before.
Either way, it’s moving along.  Hope to have more to share about the book soon.