Writing the Next Book

I have been on fellowship this semester, and have had time to write. The next book. The second book. Is. Hard.

I have been writing, writing, writing. Thanks to ’s helpful suggestion of setting a word count goal in Scrivener, I’ve been writing almost every day, a little. The goal I set for myself was 80,000 words by January 1, and I’m at 72,392 as of today. Every day the amount of words I need to write gets smaller. It used to be around 500 words per day. Today it is 362 words. I give myself the weekends off from writing the book, but sometimes I still sit piddle around in the file, breaking things down, writing a random line that occurred to me in transit or the shower or just before bed.

I want to finish a draft by the new year so I can send it out. I want this book to get published. I want it out in the world. But it is still kind of a mess. Or at least, some parts of me are unsure as to what the actual fuck I am doing.

The second book is hard because you don’t have a plan—or you have a plan, but then it changes over and over again. At least that has been my experience. Before I started, I had an outline. I had a book proposal and chapter summaries, and I had a general idea of where all this was going. But then I’ll find something that I didn’t expect, and rather than shelve it for later, I think I need to figure it out now.

For example, I didn’t expect myself to be writing about Indigenous porn. Rather, the lack thereof. Why is there no Indigenous porn? That has been the thread of my words over the past week or so. I’ve been writing about Dust unto Dust, from 1970, one of the first gay hardcore porn films ever. And it features two Indigenous actors, and a storyline that depends on their Indigeneity. It’s a spiritual, pornographic Western. Kind of. Sort of.

I feel like I’ve been writing about porn and it is not something I’ve done before, and I keep wondering, does this matter? Who cares? Is this actually interesting?

That is what the second book has felt like for me. Lots of wishing there were people, a chorus behind me, telling me, yes, Joseph, that is good; no, child, don’t worry about that. But there is no chorus, or maybe there is one in my head and I have to listen better to what they are saying. Or is that intuition as reminds us?

Perhaps the second book is the place where you follow your intuition. Perhaps it is where that intuition is meant to sing. But I keep wondering what the difference is between doubt and intuition. As if I could distinguish between the two by praying hard enough. By listening better.

I don’t think that is really the way it works, but I am struck by the idea that writing the second book requires more trust in yourself. To have developed not just the skills to research and write, but to trust that what you are writing, because you have done it before, because you are supposedly an expert, is not just good, but worth writing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do think what I’m writing is worth it. But sometimes it doesn’t feel so purposeful. Sometimes it just feels like writing because that is what I have to do. And maybe that’s all there is to it. But then again, I keep feeling like there should be some sort of filter I have developed to decide what stays and what goes. What is worth writing and what is not.

All that to say that I have been enjoying my rabbit holes insofar as I can. I’ve been writing about porn, and that is cool, I think. I’ve been working and working and trying to get it all down so I can send it out and see what other people have to say about it. The chorus will arrive in the form of peer review, lol. Its true.

But today this here is what I’m writing, and then I’m going to watch some World Cup and take a nap.

(Screenshot of a white guy whittling a stick—porn studies in action. From Dust unto Dust, Dir. Tom DeSimone, 1970).