The Antidote of We

Sunday we spent three hours taking pictures for the upcoming martial arts book. Here’s a sample.

[Intrigued? Click here for pre-order links.]

I’m a little under the gun because I announced a release date of 9/1/16, which means the final draft needs to be to the formatter no later than 8/1.

So I was hoping the editors would be mainly positive, but to the contrary, they lumped me up pretty hard.  How hard?  More red ink than black.  I now have more scabs than skin.

The criticism was largely valid, and I’m glad I got it because I want the book to be perfect.  Although it wasn’t expressly stated by any of the editors, one of the things that became apparent was how much ego-stroking was in the book.  It was painful and embarrassing to suddenly realize how self-centered some of the material was.

So I went through the text using “Ctrl-F” and looked for capital “I.”  If the ideas were salient and could be re-expressed using “we” then I did so.  If it was clear I was just monologuing, bragging, or verbal vomiting, I cut that junk out.

The good news is that writing this book has become a personal, spiritual, self-analytic and Hermetic exercise.  The bad news is that I should’ve started with that knowledge, and now I’m figuring all this out while being pinched for time.  That’s not easy.

But, at the risk of unleashing the very ego I’m trying to tame, I really do love a challenge.