cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking Down the Mountain The fan mail is extra weird today. Extra weird with a side of weird sauce and weirdlings. I'm still being stalked by this German chick who teaches at NYU and sends me email every single fucking day about what she's up to in a park in Brooklyn. Which would be fine if she expressed some sort of interest in engaging in an actual conversation, but its just these weird personal and professional updates. She's not bad looking, at least. Then I got invited to a really weird party this weekend, which I have to go to because the people hosting it have serious grant-making capabilities and connections. Trish is at least coming along with me. Maybe she can seduce the guy's wife or something. I am so close to this book being ready to sell to publishers. And its going to be huge. In all seriousness, the press and attention that it is already getting is insane. I really think that this book is going to become a part of the national conversation or whatever for a month or so. It is going to affect politics and policy, and inspire people to take personal action in their own lives, and along the way perhaps it will kiss the ranks of the NY T1mes best-seller list for at least a moment. And its good. What I have so far is really some of my best writing yet. This is essentially travel writing with a lot of natural history and some how-to stuff thrown in. With an actual plot emerging and really fun characters. Plus recipes and a controversial premise. This is really good non-fiction. I've thrown everything into this and its really good. When I'm sitting there on Conan O'Bri@n or the Daily Sh0w being interviewed, there is a real story about how the book happened. Major sacrifices that I've made. Major personal risks, both physical and in terms of quitting my day job and risking my home and career and marriage. For the first time since I started this huge and risky undertaking, I find myself at a point where I can stop and turn around and look down the mountain and say, 'holy shit I am way the fuck up here and it was worth it and I'm really going to make it to the top.' I'm starting to really believe that not just the premise but the actual product is really good. I've found my groove, professionally, as a writer and public intellectual or whatever the fuck you call what I am and do. When I had the first publicity boomlet, I knew that I had to make the most of it but I didn't know if it would happen again. But it did. This is something like my 4th or 5th boomlet. You can't chalk this up to chance anymore. When the book is launched, its going to be a tremendous relief to me. I've already been told that if its any good, they want me to present and speak at the Book Festival next year. To be finally accepted, formally, into the ranks of a profession that I swore I'd join as a kid will be a big thing to me. I spent 11 years at a desk job working in insurance. By all rights I should have been fucking trapped for life. And yet somehow I got up in the middle of all of that and completely changed my life. 12:21 a.m. - 2011-01-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||