Writing a Book? Piece of Cake

I write the sports blog Deadspin.com, assembling more than 25 posts a day meant to enlighten, amuse and distract sports fans from the drudgery of their desk jobs. Every day, I write about 7,000 words; this means that every three weeks, I write the equivalent of an extremely long book. Sure, this book would be unreadable, and reviewers would certainly point out that none of the links went anywhere, but the word count would hold.

Recently, I wrote a real book, with words and pictures and a cover that will hurt you if you are struck across the head with it. It's an entirely separate enterprise from blogging, and not just because, when I finished a page, I didn't have people named CaptainCaveman and sexydogg1983 calling me an idiot. I wrote it in five months without taking a day off from the site.

Much has been written about the relative lack of sales success for books written by bloggers, as if bloggers were an ethnic group, or some sort of easily charted genre. Every blogger is different from the others; I can't think of a single shared characteristic among bloggers, save for lack of a tan. The one thing we do do, however, is write. A lot. I've worked for newspapers, magazines, television stations, doctor's offices, you name it, and no job requires more daily effort than being a professional blogger. If people have a slow day at the office and do a little less work than usual, hardly anyone notices. If I have a slow day, every commenter on my site lets me know immediately.

I once worked at a paper factory, piling magazine pages into a sorter, and if I fell behind for as few as 120 seconds, a red light would go off above my workstation and the entire machine would stop. Professional bloggers have that red light looming over their heads every day. Blogging is not a job for those who are afraid of writing, and it forces you to let go of all those niggling bad habits you had when people weren't waiting for your next post all day.

This is my third book; I'm proud of it, and I hope it does well, but if it doesn't, I will not shrivel up and die. I'll just write another one. (Okay, I might cry a little, but I'm sensitive.) This is how those who have mastered the art of online writing—where every minute is another deadline, when you have to bring your best game every day—have been trained. We are not looking at a blank page and trying to fill it; we are looking at yesterday's work and realizing it means nothing. The next thing you do is all that matters; every day—every minute—is a test to grab eyeballs with something fresh and inspiring. You write because that's your job; you won't hear a blogger ever say they're “blocked.” Writer's block is the luxury of those who have no one expecting to hear from them today.

When I turned in the first draft of God Save the Fan to my editor, I e-mailed him the full manuscript the day it was due. He couldn't have been more surprised if I had shown up at his office wearing a leotard. “You're the second writer to ever turn in his manuscript to me on time. The first was [golfer] John Daly, and I'm not sure he'd read it.” In my work for print publications, I've found that editors love employing online writers because we are efficient, we are on time and we are not divas. It's just work. We care about what we do, and we make it the best we can. But we don't obsess over changes and pick petty fights over tiny word choices; there's more work to be done, elsewhere. Editors tend to appreciate this.

Don't get me wrong: I'm aware of all the fundamental differences between blogging and writing a book. (My book doesn't contain a single LOL. I swear.) There is more work involved in writing a book. But the singular principle of writing—the notion, as Roger Ebert said, that the muse visits during the act of creation rather than before it—is the foundation of everything we do. Ninety thousand words of a book? Bring it on. And then, on to the next.