August and Then Everything After

It’s almost August. And then there is everything after.

I had a few goals this summer. I wanted to finish writing two books. Transformations in 10-Billion Excruciatingly Difficult Steps: An Unhelpful Guide to Teaching and Learning is a book of stories about teaching I wrote with my friend Erin. Sam is Sam, Dad is Dad, and God is God is a literary memoir about fathers, sons, and dying and coming back to life. Here at the end of July, I’m happy to say that the first drafts of these books are finished. And they are good.

Next comes the gross part. Figuring out how to put these works into the world. Query letters, book proposals, and submission logs. I don’t enjoy this part of the writing process. And I’m not very good at it. Writing honest books hasn’t been lucrative. But these books are as they should be and, somehow or another, they’ll go off into the world. They will sell 6 copies, 200 copies, or a million copies. I don’t care. I’m learning anything can happen, and I’m cool with that.

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There are other things I’ve accomplished this summer. I’ve transitioned into a department chair role. I’ve broken the all-time record for the worst shooting percentage by anybody in the history of the University of Iowa’s noon ball game at the Field House. I’ve taken a few vacations. I’ve put one foot in front of the other. These are no small feats. Who knows what will happen this August? And then everything after?

I have an academic article I want to write about teaching, learning, and love. I have other projects I’m working on with my friend Erin. I’d like to write a book that is purely fiction. No Sam’s, I’s, or me’s involved. I’d like to record a cover of Cat Stevens’s Moonshadow. I’d like to play tennis with my son Solomon, watch Vikings preseason games with my son Samson, go for walks with my wife Katie, and maybe watch the Twins claw their way into the postseason. And maybe none of these things actually matter, because nothing really matters, and coming to terms with that mattering makes all things matter. Do I contradict myself? Very well, Walt Whitman did too. I wonder if I’ll grow a long white beard before this version of me passes into the next version of me?

We are always passing into the next version of ourselves. It is better to let those transformations happen. That’s part of what both of the books I’m trying to put into the world are about.

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I can’t tell you how much I dislike writing query letters.

This book will sell a million copies. It will appeal to this reader and that reader. It is like this other book and that other book. Please, kind person, please publish the book. I’m like beggar selling wares in a bazaar. It has been many years since I’ve written the word bazaar. What a fun word. Bazaar. Say it 10-billion times fast. I dare you. Talk about excruciating.

I’m doing my due diligence the best that I know how to. Always have and always will. Always building something new with the hope that all newness will lead to more newness. That’s how life works, I think. That’s how love and Jesus work too.

One foot in front of the other, intentionally working to love and to be loved. Let’s hope that is enough.