On being almost-done with the novel that's been driving me nuts (Monthly update #12)

Also: Beat Saber; The Gospel of Wellness; even MORE about hell and weight loss!

Today is also my daughter’s first cross country meet of the season. I’m excited

Monday was Labor Day, so I guess I was supposed to be out grilling or marching in a parade or wearing white or whatever you to do on Labor Day, but instead I spent most of the day sitting in my living room working on my novel. I let myself sleep in till seven (most days I get up around four to work out before I have to go to work), but as soon as I was awake, I grabbed the ol’ iPad, parked myself in a comfortable chair, and…stared at a blank page for an hour.

(Sigh.)

I’m so close to the end of this draft, I can taste it. (Unfortunately, I’m also employing clichés like “so close I can taste it,” which suggests I’m a pretty lousy writer. Sorry you had to find out this way.) I’d told myself I’d shoot for 100,000 words, and I just crossed the 97,000-word mark, leaving me, give or take, with only twelve pages to go. Within just a few days (days!), I should finally reach the point where I can type the words “THE END,”¹ turn off my computer, and go celebrate.

But man, this thing still isn’t working. Or at least it doesn’t feel like it is.

With every other book I’ve written, there’s always been a “moment”—the moment where the essence of the thing finally gels in my mind, and I know exactly what it needs to be and why it needs to exist, and then it’s only a matter of time (i.e., hundreds of hours of grueling labor) before I get it there. Sometimes the “moment” comes as early as when I’m finishing the first draft; sometimes I have to get halfway through the final (usually third) draft before it happens; but it always happens.

It really hasn’t, with this book.

When the idea for this book first crossed my mind, it seemed great; when I pitched it to my agent, she loved it; but every moment of writing it has felt like pulling teeth. (There’s another cliché. Geez, I suck at writing.) Even as I approach the end of this third, and I hope final-ish, draft, I still have no idea what this book is “about” or why it “matters,” or even how I’m going to end it in a satisfying way.

I started this draft more than a year ago, in June of 2023. Back then, I’d already written two drafts, neither of which worked even a little bit, and I decided that the only way to make this book into something functional was to bash my face on the keyboard daily, as slowly as I had to, until the thing was done. Since then, I’ve been writing anything from a few words to a dozen pages a day, depending on what I could coax out. And now here I am, fifteen months later, and I’ve been stringing words together for so long that I’ll be shocked if this thing even slightly makes sense.

But I’m almost done!

I’m not even sure my agent is still alive (no joke, she’s been really sick, I genuinely hope she’s okay)—but I’m almost done. This novel, like my last one, will probably never find a publisher—but I’m almost done. The publishing industry is going down in flames (cliché counter: 0️⃣0️⃣3️⃣), and everyone who’s smart has already jumped ship (cliché counter: 0️⃣0️⃣4️⃣)—BUT I’M ALMOST DONE!

I’m going to drag myself across this finish line (cliché counter: 0️⃣0️⃣5️⃣), because words (and fart jokes) are all I care about, and I’ve come too far to turn back (cliché counter: 0️⃣0️⃣6️⃣), and I’m basically unemployable in all other fields, and I’M ALMOST DONE.

I’ll send you a postcard from the other side.

(cliché counter: 0️⃣0️⃣7️⃣) 🕹🌙🧸

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Poll of the moment

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Two years ago: “I kind of blew up my career to write this book”: an interview with journalist Rina Raphael

This piece is the closest I’ve come to doing actual journalism on this blog.

Back in late 2021, I realized that all I really wanted to do was write novels (see previous section for the disastrous results of that epiphany), and I was uniquely situated to do just that, since I had a sugar momma and a literary agent, so I killed off everything else I’d been working on, including my podcast, Changed My Mind with Luke T. Harrington. A few months later, I realized what a terrible decision that had been when slightly famous journalist Rina Raphael (columnist for Fast Company; bylines in NYT, WaPo, and many others) reached out to me asking if she could come on the show. I gave her the bad news: the show was dead, but I’d love to interview her anyway.

Nobody reads this blog, so I don’t know if this interview sold any copies of her (very good) book The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care, but I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with her. And I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading our conversation, if you’ve got half an hour or so:

The book is about the “wellness industry.” For readers who might not know what the wellness industry is, can you sum it up?

First of all, I think the term “wellness” is really confusing for the average consumer, because it can seemingly encompass everything. It’s the pursuit of “health,” but that can include everything from nutrition to meditation to fitness to crystals to spiritual gurus. That’s the problem, and it’s the distinction I make in the book: What is actually helping us be healthy?

And “healthy” is a term literally no one can define—when are you “healthy” enough? It’s a very bloated industry that keeps shoving more and more things under its umbrella.

So that’s what’s become of the wellness industry: anything can be sold now telling you that it’s going to make you healthier, fitter, better, prettier—whatever it is. And that’s what I think people are getting very, very tired of. I think I mention in the book that there are reports coming out that every brand is going to try to be a wellness brand. And it’s kind of serious—you actually have the auto industry doing aromatherapy or guided meditation in their cars… (Read more here!) 🕹🌙🧸

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⬅️ In case you missed it: Every “cinematic universe” contains the seeds of its own destruction

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Stuff I’ve been enjoying lately

Back at the beginning of summer, I resolved to accomplish two things before school started up again: (1) finish my novel (which I almost did; see above), and (2) lose those last twenty pounds (which I also almost did; see here).

I knew that to accomplish #2, I was going to have to lower my calorie intake and up my exercise tally, which meant making “move my body around” my go-to activity for when I had some time to kill. Fortunately, my previous go-to time-waster, “read a book,” had been leaving me cold (seriously, it’s been almost a year since I read something I loved—please feel free to recommend books in the comments), so there were gaps in my schedule anyway, and it wasn’t hard to think of things to do: walk the dogs; bike to errands; shoot hoops in the driveway; go roller skating.

But, as as with everything, the real answer to my problem turned out to be video games.

I’ve had a VR headset—a Meta Quest 2—for several years now; it was one in a long line of tech gadgets that my wife couldn’t live without, until we had them, at which point they just collected dust in our basement. When I decided I needed to move more, though, I remembered that I’d barely scratched the surface of the 2019 VR game Beat Saber.

By now, Beat Saber has become the poster child for VR gaming, but in case you aren’t familiar, here’s the gist: you stand in a dark corridor, holding a lightsaber in each hand; colored blocks come flying at you; you have to slice each block, with the correct saber, in the correct direction, in time with the music. It’s simple, addictive, and the challenge ramps up pretty quickly: by the time you get to “expert” mode, the game is throwing a block at you for every sixteenth note, and you either ride that wave or collapse into a puddle of insanity.

I don’t know if there’s anyone out there who (1) owns a VR headset and (2) hasn’t tried Beat Saber yet, but if that’s you, you should give it a go. It’s a great way to work up a sweat (which will no doubt ruin your expensive headset) while having a lot of fun. 🕹🌙🧸

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Favorite comment of the month

As a fellow attendee of the infamous Hell-Themed Birthday Party (did we meet? I don't think we did formally) and also a Greek Orthodox Christian, I can link up one of the verses you said was "a Bible verse about hell" with the Orthodox understanding of æonic (not necessarily eternal but going through eons) suffering (not hell, we absolutely don't believe in it because we have never had any use for it and don't use the word) and show you that it's not about hell. So the verse is 2 Thessalonians 1:9, and you quoted the ESV (the "Extra Special Version"), which was created by evangelicals who often delight in the idea of a hell and frequently imagine certain individuals, often many, many individuals, are roasting there. The ESV says, "They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might..." This fits the evangelical worldview that there could be a place where the Lord is not. Which is so silly.

So the word translated "away from" is a little word and often has a locative meaning of something being away from something else, but that doesn't make a lot of sense here, so the Orthodox take it to mean "from" as in "because of," and then this verse reads (with a couple other savvy (better) Greek translations "They will pay the aeonic punishment from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his might." So the idea is that there is a punitive payment for those who do not know God and it's simply to be in his presence. Imagine having to spend the evening at a party with someone you hate and then just imagine that you can't escape that person's presence and you can't leave the party. It would suck. —Christopher Brenna

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1. I will probably not literally type the words “THE END,” because that is cringe