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I AM CUTE GODDAMMIT
Feb. 26th, 2021 09:11 amI just accepted an invitation to give my first (virtual) book talk. I've been holding off on doing this partially because I was concerned about time management (as I am fairly useless right now) and partially because of the psychological baggage I have regarding the labored publication of this book.
Like, what if the book is genuinely really bad?
But then I picked it up off the shelf yesterday, and I was like, actually you know what.
It's a cute little book. It has a cute little introduction and six cute little chapters, each of which begins with a cute little story. Every chapter has multiple cute little illustrations. The cover is cute, and the paper smells nice.
In terms of first books, my book is not horrible. I'm not a bad writer, and my argument is not unreasonable. As an added bonus, the book is also short (65k words), and the chapters are all roughly the same (8.5k word) length. I went through a lot of trouble to keep the citations and footnotes manageable, but I referenced a good range of material. People tend not to think about this when it comes to media criticism, but I'm studying a lot of rare but valuable texts, not to mention drawing on a lot of original-language Japanese material that required an extraordinary amount of textual archaeology to find and understand.
My first book may not be a staggering work of overwhelming genius, but that's okay. It's accessible and fairly easy to read, and it's a neat physical object that looks good on my shelf.
My publisher didn't do the best job of supporting or promoting me, but that's okay too. This is only my first book, and its main job is to be a key that unlocks the door to other opportunities.
Like, what if the book is genuinely really bad?
But then I picked it up off the shelf yesterday, and I was like, actually you know what.
It's a cute little book. It has a cute little introduction and six cute little chapters, each of which begins with a cute little story. Every chapter has multiple cute little illustrations. The cover is cute, and the paper smells nice.
In terms of first books, my book is not horrible. I'm not a bad writer, and my argument is not unreasonable. As an added bonus, the book is also short (65k words), and the chapters are all roughly the same (8.5k word) length. I went through a lot of trouble to keep the citations and footnotes manageable, but I referenced a good range of material. People tend not to think about this when it comes to media criticism, but I'm studying a lot of rare but valuable texts, not to mention drawing on a lot of original-language Japanese material that required an extraordinary amount of textual archaeology to find and understand.
My first book may not be a staggering work of overwhelming genius, but that's okay. It's accessible and fairly easy to read, and it's a neat physical object that looks good on my shelf.
My publisher didn't do the best job of supporting or promoting me, but that's okay too. This is only my first book, and its main job is to be a key that unlocks the door to other opportunities.
