You're Watching Me Write My Next Book

All this will be published.

I plan to take these posts and collect them as a book titled [Title From Ones of The Articles]: Writing on Children’s Justice by Brendon Marotta. I’ll re-write a bit, edit some, and add a few new articles exclusive to the book.

This book will be more conversational. Children’s Justice was 100,000 words with over 500 academic citations. This next book will be shorter simpler reading. Children’s Justice requires that you to read it front to back. These articles will be self-contained. You’d benefit by reading the whole thing, but you’ll be able to skip around.

When I wrote Children’s Justice, I did roughly 3,000 words a day. I can still maintain that pace. These articles average 500 words. That means I can do all the writing for this blog in around 2 days a week. Usually, I do more, which means there are always a few articles waiting in the queue.

If I publish 3,000 words per week, that means in ten weeks (2.5 months) I have a 30,000-word book. For reference, The Intactivisit Guidebook was a little over 30,000 words. Maybe I’ll keep writing and make it a little longer. Maybe I’ll do a “best of” book at the end of the year. We’ll see.

If you want to write a book, this is the way. There are a lot of activists I’ve spoken with who say they want to write a book or are already writing one. What I tell people is that if you can write 3,000 words per day, you can have a 30,000-word book in ten days. In twenty days, 60,000-words. The first Harry Potter novel was 70,000 words. That means you’re always only three weeks away from writing the next Harry Potter. If you actually write.

The biggest reason people don’t write is fear. Fear of what others will think, fear it’s not good enough, fear no one will read it, fear of being attacked or misunderstood… If you’re a writer, you don’t get paid to write. You get paid to feel the fear and publish anyway. 100% of the people who have been talking about their book for a long time but haven’t finished are stuck because of fear.

Sidenote: If you’re in this fear category, I recommend two things: 1) Read The War of Art. I used to keep this book on my desk. Anytime I had “writer’s block,” I’d read 2-3 pages from that book and be cured. As time has gone on, I’ve shifted to 2) do Completion Process or parts-work on any part of you that doesn’t want to write. Now, I don’t even need The War of Art on my desk. I just write.

The process by which I’m creating this book could be done by anyone. If you’ve been writing about this issue for years, collect your best posts and publish them. There are self-publishing people very friendly to this issue who can help. I can connect you - if you’re serious. Give it a good cover, title, formatting, and you’re a published author. No excuses.

I’ve also teased the idea of a Children’s Justice audiobook for a while. Writing is free. Professional audiobook recording for a 100,000-word book will run a few thousand dollars, even if I’m using my own voice (studio time + editing). This means I’ll probably need to crowdfund it and pre-sell the audiobook to justify that expense.

So… there might be a Kickstarter in the future.

If so, I plan to include this next book as a reward in that campaign. I’d like to use the funds to 1) create a Children’s Justice audiobook, 2) adapt some of these ideas into short videos, and 3) get more publicity for these ideas. Still in development, so no link yet.

If you support this site, you’re supporting my next project as well, so please: