Life as a marathon, not a race

Reflections on the creative process, and an update on my book on civility, coming May 2023, and available for pre-order soon

Gracious reader,

My apologies for the hiatus of Civic Renaissance this month.

I focused my energies on our Philosophy + Film Course, which was exceptional, and which concluded just last week. We explored some of life’s biggest questions by putting masterpieces of film history into dialogue with great philosophic texts. It was life-giving to think about big ideas with brilliant, curious people.

In addition to Philosophy + Film, I also focused this month on finalizing the manuscript for my book on civility, being published by St. Martin’s Press May 2023.

When my manuscript first materialized back in November, the word count was about 140,000 words. This was virtually everything I had to say on the topic of civility.

In February, after I received revisions from my editor, I ruthlessly cut it down to 100,000 words.

As of Wednesday, I finished another major cut and re-write of manuscript. This included cutting 30,000 words of material that doesn’t excite me and replacing it with better content. My total word count is now 88,000 words, which, if my math is correct, means I added 18,000 words of new, better content this month.

I plan to go through it ruthlessly one more time, and hopefully trim 10-15,000 words.

In addition to that new content, I’ve revised much of what’s there to make it the most cogent and best manifestation of my thinking.

All this is to say, it’s been a huge undertaking.

I felt tremendously accomplished when I finished going through it. I sent it to a handful of trusted friends who generously offered to read through either some chapters or the entire book.

One friend embodied how I define civility—as respecting people enough to tell them hard truths—and gave me some honest and candid feedback. There were moments of originality and brilliance, she said, that were bogged down with too much self-indulgent personal stories and quotes from philosophers.

“You don’t need to prove to everyone that you’ve read everything,” she said.

She suggested confine the philosophy to one chapter instead of having it throughout.

She also made me aware of some particular comments that might unduly often people of certain political persuasions.

I know that I won’t please everyone with my work. No author can ever be all things to all people.

Her critique knocked the wind out of me. Here I was, so proud that I’d cut so many words, and improved the book so much—only to be told that there was still a long way to go.

[As a side note: my friend’s was an example of good critique. It was specific and constructive with actionable advice. Bad critique—critique that is meant to wound and harm, and not improve—is ambiguous and diffuse. We need critique to grow—but must learn the difference between good and bad critique so that we can benefit from the good and discard the harmful.]

It wasn’t the critique itself that was painful. It was the feeling that, after a month of getting up at 3:30 and 4:30 am to write and edit before my children awoke and the day begin, the worst was yet to come.

I thought the season of grueling and intensive labor was over, and that I could settle into a season of rest.

Her critique made me feel like it had just begin.

I’m allowing myself a few days to let my work settle before going through it again with my machete sharpened and my editorial eye sensitized by her concern.

It’s also good to step back every once in a while from long-term projects, as the subconscious continues to think about ideas even while one is no longer actively working on the issue. I woke up this morning with half a dozen new ideas of things to add. I find I have to write them down immediately. Otherwise, the thoughts are often gone forever.

Life is a marathon, not a race

I’ve embraced the long, arduous, painful, and beautiful process of writing this book because I feel like every small, incremental change I make—though difficult—affirms my emotional health, and my sanity. I read somewhere once that people with mental-health challenges have difficulty maintaining long-term relationships and/or completing long-term projects.

Pushing through the difficulty and forcing myself to finish this, I’ve told myself many times, keeps me sharp and sane amid a crazed and chaotic world.

This project has been five years in the making. To some extent, my entire life, I’ve been writing this book my entire life.

I’ve often felt as if publication could not come soon enough.

The world needs my ideas, I thought!

I did not want perfection to prevent me from releasing it into the world.

I also felt this supreme tension between wanting to finish and wrap up this project so that I could move on to the dozen or so other projects I have in the pipeline.

It felt like, in order to finish this project, I was restraining and repressing an enormous amount of creative energy and excitement for my other projects.

“No,” I told myself firmly. “You MUST finish this before you move on to the next project. You must prove you’re someone who finishes things—and finish them WELL.”

I’ve been chomping at the bit for so long.

But now, I find myself feeling like it’s not ready. I wonder whether I’m truly finished with it—if I’ve said everything I have to say on the topic. I wonder if I ever will be.

I’ve found that the deeper you dive into a subject, the less you feel you know about it—and the world in general.

It’s a beautiful process to let some text die and give other, better material new life.

It’s a painful one, too. The old aphorism— “One step forward and two steps back,” applies here and illuminates the difficulty I feel in making any meaningful progress.

Each day, I feel like I’d taken two steps forward cutting content, only to take one step back in adding more back.

Writing a book—and thinking deeply about important ideas—is slow work. And I like fast.

I’m impatient to a fault. And this process and project has cultivated in me the virtue of waiting. It’s allowed me to appreciate that the best things in life take time.

It’s helped me appreciate that life is a marathon, not a race.

Lessons from home improvement projects

I learned this lesson the hard way with my recent move and house renovations, too. I inherited a HUGE project in moving into our new home. Instead of pacing myself, I did everything, everywhere, all at once.

I burned out and felt like I was teetering on the edge of insanity more days than I’d like to admit.

Understanding that life is a marathon, not a race, is for our own benefit. It means understanding how the world works as it currently is—not how we wish it were.

It means understanding ourselves and our limitations.

It means adapting to new circumstances and environments—allowing ourselves to be formed by events and the process instead of trying to force the world to conform to us, an utterly exhausting and futile endeavor.

I have written 5 million words related to my book on civility.

This includes no fewer than five different book proposals related to this idea, each with 3-10 versions, journaling, hundreds of op-eds and essays—most of which are still not published and probably never will be—dozens of speeches, and more.

Someone might read this and think me a poor writer—or at least an inefficient one. Why would she have to write 5 million words to write a 300-page book?

I’ve found that you have to write a lot of words to get good words. Writing a lot of words is hard, and takes a long time.

It’s an incredible feeling to have made it to this point. I’m thankful for the encouragement and support of many of you in this book, and especially the broader life project that this book is part of—cultural revitalization intellectually, morally, and communally.

Thank you for being here. I invite you to share with me any thoughts or experience you have on the creative process and on whether life is a marathon or a race. Write to me at ah@alexandraohudson.com

Warmly,

Lexi

P.S.

Thanks to those of you who joined Philosophy + Film!

If you wanted to register but couldn’t, don’t worry. I plan to launch another course in the fall. Here are some future course ideas:

• Five epic poems that will change your life?

• The timeless principals of human flourishing: five historic civility books that will change your life

• Philosophy now: five classic books that will change your life

Let me know what YOU would like to learn about next! Write to me at ah@alexandraohudson.com