Write and ship my first book

I have been telling myself I will write a book for five years. This is the year I stop telling myself.

A finished, edited, self-published non-fiction book of at least 40,000 words, available for sale by Dec 31, 2026.

Deadline · December 31, 2026

Zero words written. A messy doc with twenty-three half-ideas and a working title I do not love.

Every update logs a % at that moment. The line goes down when I fall back — that's the point.

1. February 25, 202618%

   Back up. New chapter two is honest and shorter. 6,000 words total.

2. February 8, 20268%

   Threw out chapter two. Was lying to make it sound smarter than I felt.

3. January 20, 202612%

   Wrote 3,200 words this week. Most of it is bad. Keeping it anyway.

4. January 2, 20265%

   Day one. Outlined the first three chapters. It feels both exciting and stupid.

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  Writing in the morning before email exists is the single biggest unlock.

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  A bad first draft is infinitely better than a perfect imagined one.

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  Setbacks are not failures. Hiding setbacks is the actual failure.