Why write?

I think I've told you that back during the COVID-19 lockdowns I wrote a book about the stuff that I used to do in my professional life, back before I more-or-less retired. And then I've never done anything with it because I'm paralyzed by trying to find the next step. The writing was the easy part, but what then? I talked to someone who was supposed to be an expert on marketing self-published books (this was about two years ago), and her first question was: What outcome do you want from this book? What do you want to achieve? The marketing strategy will be fundamentally different, depending on your answer.

And I froze. I had no idea how to answer the question.

She even made it easy by telling me there are only two choices for the answer: Money or Fame. (To be clear, she then explained that in practice saying you want Fame means that you want the book to advertise your consulting business. I read a great book by This Guy, and now we have to hire him to help us transform our company!) But I still couldn't answer. Neither of those options sounded right to me.

So there it sat. For two years.

Recently I realized I'd made no progress at all on publishing this book, even though it's something I need to do. So a couple of days ago I tried to think through the question, What do I want from this book? The results were inconclusive. Then this weekend I went on a meditation retreat. And today at lunch I suddenly saw the last step in the (hitherto-unfinished) chain of reasoning. So let me write it out for you here.

What do I want from this book: Money or Fame? Let's consider them one at a time.

Do I want Money?

I mean, sure, it would be nice. Wouldn't it? Of course everyone wants money. I recognize it's a small topic in an obscure niche. But who doesn't want to be rewarded for what they've worked on? Maybe that's a good reason to self-publish, because I'd get to keep a larger fraction of the total earnings. Also, it really is a niche topic, and I fear that it would be hard to persuade any publisher to take it on. 

On the other hand, if I could publish the book and it became well-known but I earned no money, how would I feel? Of course I wouldn't be happy, but I would be satisfied. It would be enough.

Suppose someone bought the rights from me for an insane amount of money, but then buried the book so that it never came out. What then? Well I might like the money, but I would be deeply unsatisfied. I would rather have my name out there, connected with this material, even at the cost of less money.

The most likely case is that I self-publish and the book drops into obscurity. That would be too bad, of course. I'd be disappointed. But I'd figure that at least I took my shot. It's a threshold I would have crossed, even if it didn't amount to much in and of itself. Sort of like losing my virginity, I guess.

Do I want Fame?

This one is a lot more difficult. You all know that Fame matters to me. I've written about it multiple times before, in particular here and here. But why, exactly? Besides the sheer intoxication, I mean. I pushed this thought a little farther to see what I could figure out.

The first question is whether I want the kind of fame that makes people hire me? And the answer is, Meh, that would be OK I guess. It would give me something to do with my days. But I think I'd rather stay home and write. My desire for fame isn't nearly that pragmatic. 

Do I want the kind of fame that makes people go crazy? "People will see me and die." It sounds thrilling until I think about it for a minute or more. But people who have to live with that report it as like living in Hell. They have no more real friends, and they can't relate to anyone directly any more because everyone sees them through the lens of their great fame. (I discuss this a little here.) Me, what I'd like to get out of fame is more good conversations. But the crazy kind of fame isn't the way to do that.  

But there's something else, another concept that trails along in the wake of the word "fame." It's the idea of achievement: of scoring the goal, or winning the match, or somehow leaving a mark on a wall that will be there when I am gone. This is closer to what I want, but it took several days to unpack what lies beneath it.

What is achievement?

It's a tricky concept, achievement. Partly it feels (as I just said) like Leaving a mark on a wall that will still be there when I'm gone. Partly it feels like Doing something that someone else can't do. Partly it feels like Crossing the line that separates Worthless Lives from Worthwhile Lives. But none of these is quite right.

Think about the line that separates Worthless Lives from Worthwhile Lives. Am I really supposed to believe that Publishing a Book is where that line is drawn? I'd have to have a pretty poor memory to believe that, because over the years there have been any number of targets that I've seen that way, goals that felt totally out of reach and therefore that felt like the difference between a Meaningless Life and a Valuable One:

• getting a girl to fall in love with me, to kiss me, to fuck me, or to marry me;
• getting and holding a normal (non-academic) job;
• managing employees, along with hiring and firing them;
• buying and selling a house;
• raising children to adulthood;
• retiring with enough to live on.

All of these seemed like fantasies, once upon a time. For each one, I thought—at least once—"Wow, if I ever get to the point where I'm able to do that, then I won't have lived in vain." And I've achieved them all. On the one hand, this fact should tell me that Publishing a Book is just as possible. On the other hand, it should totally shred any illusions I might still hold that "if only I publish a book, life will have been worthwhile." Anne Lamott once wrote, "If you aren't enough before you publish your book, you won't be enough after you publish it."

Doing something that someone else can't do? There are lots of such things. Ever since middle school I've been able to sing most of Tom Lehrer's songs from memory, and I can recite the digits of π to more decimal places than you can. Do those count as achievements? Do they make my life worthwhile? Probably not.

Even leaving a mark on a wall that will still be there when I'm gone is iffy. Will a book last longer than I do? It might. On the other hand, books go out of print, and paper rots. There's no guarantee that a book will outlast me, nor that anyone will ever read it. So what makes that a goal?

And then this afternoon, over lunch, I thought of another angle.

Imagine someone who made a career doing something that he enjoyed, but where he worked as part of a team and it was impossible to tease out what exactly he contributed to the final work. Let's pretend he doesn't get along well with his birth family; and while he might marry, he never has children. Let's pretend furthermore that he outlives his wife. (I've known someone exactly like this, for what it is worth.) When he dies, what's left? A few memories in a few aging friends and colleagues, and not much more. Is that enough? Would any of us be satisfied to leave so little? Or would we want—somehow—more out of life?

I think that somehow, in some way that is often unarticulated, all of us want to matter to somebody. So when we die, we want to know that our life mattered. And this, I think, is the key to the elusive concept of achievement. An achievement is something that matters. A significant achievement is something that matters to someone after we die. Publishing a book doesn't guarantee that we hit this goal, because there are books published that nobody reads (or not unless they have to). But if you are the kind of person who hides in his apartment anyway, then publishing a book increases the number of people you can talk to … or somehow touch … or matter to. It increases the likelihood that you might matter to someone even after you die. It increases the likelihood that you might matter.

This is why it feels like publishing a book makes your life worthwhile. It doesn't really—not by itself. But it increases the number of lives you might possibly touch. And if some of those lives respond, … why then, you matter. At least to them. And that's more lives you touched than you would have touched without the book.

So that's something.

It also means the only kind of book for me to labor on is a book that stands a chance of mattering. There are some that won't ever matter, no matter what. But as long as I'm not pushed to write one of those out of financial desperation, I shouldn't waste my time.