I am gearing up for another round of the unpleasant “actually finish the book” part. You know, the part where I have to do all the OTHER work to prepare the next book instead of the writing part. I hate this part. 

Last time I was doing this was Fall 2016. I had just come back from space and it was sort of a dark time. I started my website then and things haven’t gotten easier. I suppose it takes a certain type of weirdo, addicted to pain, to willingly put oneself through the wringer for some far fetched belief that maybe some-day, somewhere – all of this will have been worth it. I don’t know if I wrote about this at all when I started this site a year and a half ago but when I first was trying to reach out to people, I had someone at the Lawyerist literally tell me that he does not see why anyone would even put my book on their coffee table. Ouch. I have thought about this from time to time as I continue my work, one un-remarkable stone at a time.

While a lot of successful people might seem like they made it overnight, unless you’re one in a billion, the truth is far more unvarnished. Usually it has taken years, even decades to get to where they can count themselves as successes. Rome was not built in a day. My comic today captures what it feels like from the inside. That it takes unrelenting willpower to get up and fight your nature as a lazy ass person and to put down those chips and get to work. It’s that voice inside your head that always tells you, forget about it – its too hard – that you must constantly battle. Some days you lose, but some days you win. You just gotta collect up more wins than losses.

And for the man at the Lawyerist who told me no one would put my book on their coffee-table I say: You are wrong. I just sold yet another book yesterday and I’m pretty sure it’s going to sit on that person’s coffee-table. You were wrong yesterday, you are wrong today and you will continue to be wrong in the coming days.

Because I got up today and I continued my work, and I will continue to work everyday trying to get my book on coffee-tables. And maybe eventually one day in the future, my pile of un-remarkable stones will stand together and become a beautiful cathedral.

-W.