Book contract!
Big news: I signed a book contract with University of California Press! They have agreed to publish a book tentatively titled, Drained: Why the Burnout Epidemic Keeps Us from Flourishing and How Compassion Can Cure It. (I feel compelled to add paragraphs of standard legal caveats about how their publishing the book is contingent on my actually writing a decent manuscript, but I'll spare you all that ... for now.) This means that sometime in the next couple years, something that looks sort of like this will appear in the world:
This moment feels like a culmination of a lot of work. I started thinking seriously about the problems with the American work ethic eight or nine years ago, when I was planning to teach a new undergraduate course called, "Why Work?" That course led into a plan for a book on the theology of work, which I started researching during a sabbatical year in bucolic Williamstown, Massachusetts. When I finished at the library for the day, I would often hop on my bike and ride past defunct textile mills and hillside pastureland. Now that was a way to work. By the end of that year, I had a solid draft of about 60% of the book.
Or so I thought. When I returned to my teaching job in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, I had more work than ever to do, at an institution facing the crises that are, alas, typical of small, private colleges in the Northeast. The book manuscript stalled. It wasn't just that I didn't have the time for it. I was eventually barely able to do my job, or even to get out of bed and to class on time. I had burned out.
(I've written about this before. If you want more of the story, you can read my essays in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Commonweal, and The New Republic.)
I quit that job three years ago, followed my wife's career to Dallas, and committed myself to writing for audiences beyond the academy. I started revising the manuscript and drafted a proposal for basically the same book, but with what I thought was a more commercially-viable approach. (It was not, in fact, more commercially viable.) I revised. I hired help. I submitted the proposal to agents. I heard nothing back. I revised again. And again. Still nothing. So I put the proposal on the shelf and worked on two things: becoming a better writer, and building a better "platform" (shorthand for the sum of everything that gives a nonfiction writer legitimacy to write a salable book on their topic). I figured that if I did these things, then maybe with a little luck an agent or editor would reach out to me, and I wouldn't just be submitting my proposal into the void.
I tried to become a better writer by going to workshops, participating in long-term critique groups, and taking classes. (In fact, I am writing to you from a workshop.) I started writing more than just my standard armchair opinion pieces. I went out and interviewed people. I wrote about places. I sought out new experiences and wrote about them. My critique partners pushed me to tell stories, to find a narrative "voice" and not rely solely on argument. I listened to them. I got better.
I tried to build my platform by continuing to write about work and by reaching out to devoted readers, largely through this newsletter. But that wasn't all my effort. You have helped build my platform by sharing what I write here with others. Your faith in and enjoyment of my writing are big pieces of whatever legitimacy I have as an author.
I realized that readers responded best to my pieces on burnout, so I started to think about reframing the shelved proposal to address that topic. I started writing a sample chapter that told my entire burnout story and why it might matter to workers generally.
Then I got lucky. In early January, burnout was suddenly a major topic of the public conversation, thanks to Anne Helen Petersen's Buzzfeed News essay, "How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation." I wrote a piece in response for The New Republic. I was interviewed for CBC Radio.
That's when I heard from Naomi Schneider, an editor at University of California Press. She asked for a proposal, I (eventually) wrote one, and soon after, she offered me a contract. I'm thrilled and frankly honored to be working with her, and she has brought countless very smart books to broad audiences.
An author on Twitter -- I can't recall who -- recently wrote that the path to publication is often, perhaps only, about finding someone (emphasis on one) who'll champion your work. Or being lucky enough to be found by them. That was certainly my path to this moment.
As I said, getting the contract feels like a culmination, and everything after is falling action. Of course, it's not. It's more like a beginning. I have a lot of work ahead of me. Research, interviews, visiting communities that exhibit alternatives to the American work ethic, writing, revising, revising, revising. In the year ahead, I'll periodically let you know how it's going, and I'll also use this newsletter to take a mental break from the manuscript. I'll also point you toward newly-published work when it comes out. (Pieces are on the way.)
Thanks for sticking with me. We've reached a milepost. There are more ahead.
Jon