My A White Guy Confronting Racism book is in order – all the sections and the pieces in the sections, and I've been thinking about what I should say in the preface and how I should write the introductions to each section.
I've got notes on my whiteboard and in my notebook and on notepads and on envelopes and on little scraps of paper and in my head and on a Google doc.
Probably too many notes. Probably too much planning. Probably overthinking. Probably procrastination and fear and excuses and. . .
I got up this morning at 5:00. I came down to the basement and started to write. I wrote until 7:30. Thirty-five hundred words.
I just started writing, and it all just flowed and flowed and flowed. Started the preface with an anecdote to set the tone for the book.
About racism, but not obvious, egregious racism. A subtle, nuanced racism. How it shows up, how it lingers, how it never goes away until we confront it.
I continued in a stream of consciousness style and captured my evolution of consciousness, and there was so much consciousness that I wrote twenty-five hundred more words.
And when I was done I reread what I wrote. And, yeah, I made a few tweaks, and, yeah, I'll make more edits down the road. But the essence – the essence! – is staying as is.
And I can't wait for you to read it when it's published.