20,000 Words

Me and my co-author, August 2011.

 

20,000 words. That's how far I have gotten with my idea for a book, chronicling life as a stay at home dad. I know, I know, the last thing the world needs is another book by a new parent telling everyone what they need to do to get their kid to be as awesome as their own is. But don't worry, this book is turning out to be more of an anti-parenting manual. It does not offer a lot of solutions, but basically talks about all of the pitfalls that await new parents, focusing mostly on dads. I go off on tangents, rant quite a bit, and shoot holes in other authors' work, especially when they act like they have all of the answers. All in all, it could be one of the least helpful parenting memoirs out there.

I have 40,000 words as a vague goal before I actually do any of the real work and see if I can  edit this in some coherent way and pull it together. So I wanted to reach half that before I even seriously considered the remote possibility that I can pull this off. There is still a large chance that it will go nowhere and remain a collection of journal entries and bitter critiques of more successful writers. But who knows? Stranger things have happened.

Excerpts will appear (and have appeared already) here as blog posts if I think they are relevant enough and can stand alone. I might include recipes at the end, and some woodworking plans for baby and toddler-related projects. I'm not sure yet, we'll see how it grows. Stay tuned.