A Long Week

It's been a long, busy week, and I haven't read too much since finishing Adam Blumer's Fatal Illusions on Tuesday. I've been easing into Tony Dungy's Quiet Strength and the followup book, Uncommon, for a project at work, interestingly enough. And I say "easing" because I don't normally read sports memoirs or autobiographies. Dungy has a good co-author with Nathan Whitaker -- both books read easily and well. (I'm just not a big pro football fan.)

I've focused a lot of time this week on editing the text of a major addition to our corporate web site (a multi-media history) and working on a presentation for a talk I'm giving in New York in May. And there have been the usual crises, upsets, issues and meetings that seem to fill up a work week far too fast and way too much -- the tyranny of the urgent at the expense of the important.

Outside of work, I've been turning my attention to a new writing project, or more precisely, a major rewrite of a relatively new project. It's hard, because I'm tearing away a lot of scaffolding and all kinds of things have started to collapse. But I'm pleased with the result so far. Something better is emerging from the wreckage.

I've also been learning some needed lessons about the publishing business. Some illusions that needed to go are finally gone. Publishing is what it is, a business like any other. I had some romanticized notions about some aspects of the business, mostly centered on my love of books and stories, and my faith. It's good, if painful, for those notions to die a timely death. I still love books and stories, and always will, but my illusions about the business needed to get jettisoned.

As painful as it's been, it's also had a positive effect of opening up broader possibilities. I'd been focused on one segment of the business, thinking it was my best fit and looking askance at other segments. Once my illusions were gone, I began to see I'd been limiting myself. If publishing is indeed publishing, I'm free to explore possibilities across the business, and not only focus on one kind of publisher or another.

It's hard to give up those illusions. But like the title of Adam Blumer's book, my illusions could have been fatal to what I'm trying to do. They had to go. But I wish there were some lessons I didn't have to learn.