So, to continue what I started in In 2011, I’ll Be in Heaven. And let me right now apologize for how boring for you this post is bound to be. Looking at “In 2011,” I see I made it sound as if the moment I finish the book on which I’m currently working, I’ll set off for a ten-month trek through the Amazon, or maybe enter a Christian monastery somewhere. I won’t. I hate bugs, and don’t like monk food.
What’s going to happen to me as of February 2 that is so exciting just thinking about it shortens my breath is guaranteed to be boring in the telling of it, because it’s just so completely all about me. So it’s not boring to me, at all. But to you? Pffft. Clear anything off your desk that could hurt your head when you suddenly fall asleep.
In 2011, I’m going to go into business for myself.
That’s it.
Hey! Wake up! I’m not done yet!
No, but … really. That’s it: business for myself. More exactly, I’m going to finish writing the book that I was half-way through writing when I had to stop writing it in order to write these two other books for I was contractually obliged. (I signed one of those contracts five years ago.) I asked the publishers of each of these books if they would pay me for not writing the book of theirs I owed them, but, being book publishers, they acted in typically unreasonable fashion. They wanted their book.
Dorks.
Anyway, right. February 1. All contracts fulfilled. All books-for-hire written. Done. Free.
Free!
I cannot tell you what it will mean to me to finally get to finish my bookus-interruptus. That book is very personal to me. Intensely personal. Ferociously personal.
There has been so, so much about dealing with professional Christians that I have found profoundly distasteful. I’ll change names to protect my own ass, but that’s it.
I’m just so pissed off. Thank God I know how to write. Otherwise I guess I’d just explode. (I know what you’re thinking: “But John! You’re so freakin funny, dude! How can anyone as funny as you possibly be angry?” Um. Oh. You’re not thinking that. That’s weird. I thought you were.)
Anyway, My Adventures Amongst the Christians will only constitute about one-third of this book. I have so many other things I want to talk about. My life as a teen. My life as a drug addict. My life as the second half of a couple. And … all like that.
When I am done with that book, I’ll take my real leap: I’ll forgo traditional book publishing, and publish it myself. I love my literary agent. And I love the money I know she could get me for this book. But what I do not at all love is losing control of my book—which is what you do when you sign over to a publisher all of its rights.
Screw. That. Noise.
So my hope is that I have a large enough audience to be able to make a go of it alone. I have no idea whether or not I do. I’ll find out!
And that’s the exciting/scary part: Finding out. Going it alone. Believing it’s possible. Having that faith.
Taking that leap.
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