How it feels to finish writing a book

Or mostly finish it, actually.

Around 4PM yesterday, sitting at one of the large tables of Merit Coffee on North Lamar, I sent my manuscript to my editor. This was the manuscript for the book project I’ve been working on for the year, though it really represents the culmination of most of the work that I’ve done on YouTube and Substack for the last three years.

It’s difficult to describe the book currently. When I announced the book, the working title was either The Philosophical Life or The Intellectual Life. I can’t say what the title will actually be, but I can say that (i) there’s a very different title in my manuscript, and (ii) I won’t know the title for a few more months, as this is a decision that has be made in collaboration with the publisher.

That’s a surprising fact to most people! They assume authors get to choose their titles. While we do get some say in it, we aren’t the only voice that matters in that conversation.

So, hopefully, in the next six months or so I’ll have news about the title, when you can and where you can order it, and so on.¹ Around then, I’ll likely share the table of contents here on Substack, too, and maybe an annotated bibliography so that you can get a sense of the book before it goes on sale. But that can’t happen for a few more months, as there is quite a bit of work left to do.

That timeline might be another surprising revelation. What I’ve learned over the last year is that releasing a traditionally published book is a very slow process. That’s what I want to detail today. This is a behind-the-scenes post about the process of writing a book with a major publisher. At the end, I’ll share some more personal reflections about what I’ve learned in the process of writing.