My book went to the printer today.
You can pre-order it on Amazon for an alarmingly low price. It's due out on June 2nd.
Writing it was hard. It turned my hair gray(er). I learned to drink coffee. I completely ran out of words. For weeks I could communicate only through grunts and eyebrow movements.
It was sort of like going through pregnancy in reverse. Melissa helped me conceive it, then she put up with me through weight gain, lost sleep, mood swings, and generally irrational behavior. In the end, she held my hand through the final, painful steps of getting the damn thing out the door.
I kept waiting for a montage to start; a Huey Lewis song would fade in, I'd do some sit-ups, and then the book would be done. That never happened. Instead, I had to put in a tremendous number of hours at coffee shops and all-night diners to get away from my Xbox.
Even there, procrastination was a constant companion. After beating myself up for a long time, I learned to accept it as a part of the process. I'd goof off on my iPhone for however long it took me to finally get started, then look at my blank laptop screen, decide I wasn't ready yet, and go back to goofing off for a while longer. I lost the will to fight my bad habits and just let them run their course.
The book is hardly a tome. It's 40,000 words, cut down from a peak of 80,000. The chapters are brisk; I took a cue from the videos themselves and wrote a series of very short stories about what went into getting the 50 or so most interesting dancing clips in all three videos. My hope is that, like the videos, the brief glimpses will form a cumulative impact that is greater than their sum. Failing that, I'm shooting for a laugh here and there.
In other news, NPR asked me to do an essay for their "This I Believe" series. The invitation honored me into paralysis. It took them eight months of hounding to squeeze 500 words out of me.
You can read it here, or click "Listen Now" at the top of the page to hear the actual broadcast.