In case you noticed, December was pretty quiet around here. I shared the few posts I wrote for Adweek and The Hollywood Reporter, but that was about it. Cinematic Slant remained active, but I made the intentional decision to take the month off from writing on this site.

That’s because I’m working on a book.

No, this isn’t a “some personal news” type update. No one commissioned me to write it and there’s no publisher that, as of yet, has expressed interest in it. I simply wanted to write it and decided to focus my attention on doing so for a month. December seemed a good time to do it since publishing would have been irregular anyway given the holidays.

Since it’s still something I’m working on and since I don’t want to hurt my chances of finding a publisher for it I’m hesitant to go into details on what it’s about. There are a few things I can share, though:

It’s non-fiction.

It’s business-related, but it’s not some self-help nonsense.

It’s also not a glowing portrait of how wonderful things are.

It’s not related to the marketing or communications industries.

I started it around April of last year and it currently clocks in at a little over 25,000 words.

As expected, the outline keeps shifting as I find new and interesting rabbit trails to head down.

So what’s next for it? That remains to be seen. As alluded to, I continue to seek out publishers who may be interested in it, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time researching the best way to do so as well as whose overall portfolio it might fit into well.

The process has been fun and an interesting writing experience. It’s a different form of writing I hadn’t done much of in the past. Mostly it’s the longer form that’s unique for me.

What I’ve tried to avoid doing is simply writing as if I’m stringing together a series of shorter blog posts into a longer piece. That doesn’t serve the narrative well, though it’s where I defaulted to at first. Each section and subsection simply needed to be the equivalent of a post, I though at the outset.

That belief was quickly dispelled as I found smaller, contained units didn’t work. There needed to be more connective material between the thoughts to make them part of a cohesive whole.

What’s most exciting to me is the unknown of it all. Not only is this a format I’ve never written in before, but the material keeps surprising me as I go along. I’ve learned so much during the research I’ve done and find my thoughts growing and changing along the way.

If something actually comes of this I’ll share more and hope to make continued progress on this in the new year. If you’re with a publisher and would like to learn more, feel free to contact me.