Almost there...

The last few days

It’s not that I haven’t been writing.

My first full draft of Live Laugh Love is due to my editor at the end of this month so I’ve been writing nearly every waking moment—just not much here on Substack.

Why, why do I over-research and over-write? Every. single. time.

Right now I’m trying to chisel away and polish what I have and resist the temptation to add just one more thing, a hundred times over.

There are occasional moments where I’m so tired of this project—the final stretch is always grueling. But as I’m seeing the project come together, seeing things snap into place:, it’s pretty thrilling. Yes, this. Exactly this. I’ve even been reading passages aloud to my husband. I rarely do this, but each time I wrap up a section that gets it just right, I feel a need to share it, and he’s the lucky one who happens to be walking by. (Thankfully he’s a good sport.) When I like the sound of my own words (not at all a given), I know it’s getting close.

Research is a long, winding process. Writing is, too. I had no idea where this book would end up when I started. Now that I see where it ends, it feels right. (I mean, it’s not a happy ending—but it puts the pieces together to show how we got here.)

This is how I felt when I finally finished up Jesus and John Wayne: Yes, this. This is what I want to say. If anything, I feel that even more strongly with Live Laugh Love. Given our current political climate, I do worry about what kind of world the book will launch into one year from now, and where I’ll be, and how that First Amendment will be holding up, but I’m not letting myself think (too much) about that right now. I have words to cut and footnotes to fix.

I’ve been saving most of my writing energy for editing the manuscript, but I did want to share two recent conversations. The first, our podcast from last Thursday where we process…a lot.

The second, my beautiful conversation with Hanna Reichel. If you weren’t able to tune in live, this is well worth a watch/listen. Even better, grab some friends, read the book (it’s a very quick read), watch the video, and talk.

In a couple hours I’m off to Candler in Atlanta for a very quick trip, and then I’m back home tomorrow midnight to make those final edits before sending the manuscript off. It’s not done done yet—my editor will have hundreds of (sometimes brutal) suggestions to make it infinitely better. But I’ll celebrate the milestone anyway.