God Damn The Timelessness of Books

I have a goal, to get a roughed out manuscript of the book based on this here newsletter done by December 12. So I’ve spent the past few weeks revising past newsletters into something book-worthy.

I’m struggling.

The information is easy; it can be written in a style I like to call Wikipedia Explainer. This is who the Big Five are. This is what you should put in your query. This is how distribution works. I could write this book in vague pronoun-referencing-simple sentences filled with passive verbs. It would be useful. It would help some people out there.

But it would be pretty boring.

What I gather people enjoy most about these newsletters is a style literary critics ascribe to Samuel Richardson as innovating, ‘writing to the moment. Writing to the moment is why people like newsletters, after all: News; letters. Letters, by a person, filled with news, events that have just happened. Like, say, the fact that I have a deadline looming eleven days from now and I am struggling (sure, I …