On Publishing the Second Edition of My First Book, Document
When I independently published my first book Document on February 29, 2016, it was seemingly as random as the day on which it was published. (Leap Year). It was an anthology of short pieces about things as seemingly disconnected as my first play as a Division One college football player and the chaos that transpired, the mass shooting committed by Dylan Roof, the Angels Landing trail in Zion National Park, the contradictory emotions conjured up when we revisit the college towns where we came of age, some southern Gothic fiction, what it’s like to take a night flight in blackout conditions in a combat zone, one of my literary heroes Thomas Wolfe and his hometown, Asheville, NC, and lots of topics in between.
I wrote the stories and published the book because I had some things to say and some stories to tell. I just didn’t know who the audience would be. I figured at worst, I’d leave a little 80,000-word journal for my sons that would sit on the coffee table in the living room and would provide a bit of a window into their Dad’s busy mind, at best, lots of people I’d never met might read it. To my surprise, it performed both functions.
And five years later, the thing I’m most proud of is I didn’t sit back and wait for some agent or publishing house to pick it up out of a stack of manuscripts and get back to me nine or twelve months later; I just researched how to publish it myself. And I did it. I cut out the middle man; I put it out there. I did all the editing, the formatting, and the cover design. I did all the proofing. It was an incredibly difficult and time-consuming task, but it was a labor of love. And I learned a lot about the industry, the craft of writing, and indeed, myself.
And today the “journal” has continued and now makes up four books and runs over 250,000 words, and the new endeavor brought a publishing company along with it.
But Document was the first chapter.
I look at the new second edition now, published five years later, and I’m struck after not reading any of it for years at the rawness, the roughness of those 285 pages. Sometimes I cringe a little. Maybe I was too honest. Maybe I wasn’t honest enough. Maybe I told too much truth for some people. Maybe I didn’t tell enough. But I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m pretty happy with the results.
After all, when you have a dream or a goal, you’ve got to start somewhere.
The point? If you have a dream or a goal you want to accomplish, don’t rely or wait on other people. In the majority of cases, they will always slow you down.
For instance, one of the reasons I was able to write the book was I had thrown my lot in with a group of people who were not what they first presented themselves, and when they showed me who they really were, I left the organization. But a positive collateral effect of leaving that job was it freed me up to write my first book. I would’ve never had the time to do it had I stayed in that dead-end, dysfunctional situation. My gut, my instinct, told me I had to leave. And you have to follow that feeling because there’s a reason it’s there.
You have to cast aside anyone who doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Sometimes these people are your friends, but when you step back and really think about it, they were never really your friends in the first place. These lessons are painful, but they will liberate you.
Don’t hesitate. Take the most direct route. Cut out everything that is unnecessary. Cast aside anything that stands in your way.
I’m not talking about your true friends or your family; I mean people who will delay and create obstacles just because they can. There are people who don’t want to see you succeed. People are jealous and envious. There are people in your life who will always look at you in the role they see you and they will want to keep you firmly anchored in that box. Break out of that box. You’ve already met these people at other points in your life. You don’t need those people. Bypass them. If you’ve already met goals and been successful, you already know what do.
You have a dream or a goal. Maybe you’ve never mentioned it to anyone.
Stop putting it off. Stop being afraid. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. The only voice that matters is yours. Put yourself out there. Get out of your own way. Take a chance. And do it. Go after your dream. Whatever it is.
“Casting aside other things, hold to the precious few.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Glen Hines is the author of the Anthology Trilogy of books — Document, Cloudbreak, and Crossroads — and the recently released Cathedrals in the Twilight, all available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. His writing has also been featured in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, and the Human Development Project.
