The Better Part of Valor

Sometimes it’s better to admit defeat.

I’ve been working on a book project for years, and it’s a dud. I should have known it’s a dud because I wrote two other books while keeping it on the back burner. This should have told me that I’m not excited about it. It’s a drag.

The reason the book didn’t work out is because I mishandled it from the start. For a reason I can’t fully explain, I decided to chuck everything I know about working on long-term projects and do the exact opposite.

What works for me is to have a book plan, with chapter names, tiles of books I’ll analyze in each and the main idea of each chapter. Then I write one chapter, finish it, revise the main idea based on what I found. Write another chapter, finish, and revise the first chapter and the main idea. And so on. That works.

But for the poor, innocent dud, I abandoned the policy of targeted strikes and went with the carpet-bombing technique, writing several chapters at once, not knowing how many there will be, being unable to define the scope, and getting hopelessly bogged down.

The result is a confusing, directionless, repetitive mess.

Sometimes, concession is whatevs, whatevs, so I’m officially conceding defeat and starting a completely new project titled Neoliberal Love. I already did the complete book plan today.

The failure of the poor dud is due 100% to my hubris and disorganization. I thought I was too cool for school and could just wing it without the humility and the discipline that a large project requires. With the Ukrainian book, I felt humbled by my language difficulties, followed the rules, and everything worked.