I’ve Spent The Past Two Years Writing A Book — Here’s How And Why
By: Dan Ymas
Tags: Creativity, Life Lessons, Self Improvement, Life, Writing

I graduated from school back in May 2017. In the pictures from that night, there’s a smile on my face and wisps of coarse, dark hairs on my upper lip and chin. (Sad to say I haven’t made much progress here. If there are any secrets to growing a lustrous beard do let me know.)

A couple of months earlier, I had accepted a job offer at a big tech company on the west coast. I was going to be a Software Engineer. My dream job. A six-figure salary and stock options.

My whole life I had said I would make six figures out of college — even when I was ten and didn’t know exactly what ‘six figures’ meant — and now it had come true.

My parents were proud. My sisters were proud. My girlfriend was proud. I was proud. I felt very much like the high-school wallflower getting asked to the big dance by the star quarterback (A Cinderella Story with Hillary Duff, anyone? My sister got the DVD as a Christmas gift way back when and it’s gotten a lot of use over the years.)

In the months before my start date, I traveled to Europe and Asia with Ben — my best friend — my first time flying over the Atlantic.

Things quickly went downhill.

My girlfriend was in a dark place and we spent most of our time-fighting. I’d wake up at crazy hours and ditch Ben at night to run through dark city streets and talk to her across the ocean for hours on end over spotty wifi.



The warning signs had been there — fights and tears during my last semester — but each time I had covered the boiling pot and, since I no longer saw the bubbles, I convinced myself our problems had been solved.

They hadn’t. And when Ben’s girlfriend — she was also my girlfriend’s best friend, it’s cheesy, I know — joined us in Thailand things only got worse.

My girlfriend was in a world of pain — terrible, gut-wrenching angst over our future, dark, bitter jealousy that I was seeing the world with our best friends and she wasn’t there — and since I wasn’t equipped to handle this, I crawled up right beside her in her ditch and made myself at home.

I withdrew from Ben and his girlfriend, subtly at first and then overtly. I began to ignore them and hang out on my own.

And early every morning and late every night I walked around whatever hostel we were in looking for the square foot with the best wifi signal so I could spend the next two hours spewing acid on the phone. I felt down in the dumps and very alone.

(I remember one fight in a hostel in Bangkok. I’m sitting on the stairs and people are passing me going up and down. My girlfriend is saying that I betrayed her, that I left her. I’m close to tears and at the peak of my anguish. I say, “I hope I get run over. I hope I die in some terrible way and you feel awful for the rest of your life.” Yeesh.)

The trip ended and I flew back home.

I patched things up with my girlfriend and in August I flew out to start my job. The beginning was new and exciting, but the Seattle gloom soon hit me like a truck.

The constantly-gray sky, the lack of sun, the cold, and the Groundhog Day-like grind of the job, day in, day out, all combined to swirl me into a dark, anxious depression.

I felt lost and trapped. College was over. I’d climbed the mountain. I’d gotten what I wanted and now there were no more landmarks, no more guideposts to lead me to the next ‘stage’ — I didn’t know what came next.

I spent some long months in this hole. Wake up, breakfast, bus ride, read, work, lunch, work, bus ride, read, dinner, sleep. Day in, day out. Wake up, breakfast, bus ride, read, work, lunch, work, bus ride, read, dinner, sleep.

I was a zombie and books were my one consolation. I was reading a ton. I had read lots when I was young, but while in college I had traded books for hours of scrolling through Reddit.

A terrible trade.

It’s mind-boggling the amount of time I wasted on Reddit and Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram. But now books were back in my life and they got me through the days.

2017 slunk away in this fashion.

But one morning in early 2018, having spent the past six months submerged in books, I decided to write. I had just read Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion and I wrote a short post about some topic in the book.

It was absolutely terrible.

The title of the post was clickbait, the content was regurgitated, and the stock image I used at the top of the post I have since seen used dozens of times.

None of this mattered. For the first time in months, I saw light at the end of the tunnel. In the distance, landmarks and guideposts began to appear again. I had new goals, new dreams.

I began to wake up early every morning to write. In the beginning, there was lots of regurgitation, topics pulled straight from the books I was reading. Sometimes I just straight up posted book summaries or my notes on the book.

But slowly I began to venture out. I began to write about more personal things, about my life, about financial independence and money and minimalism.

I was writing on my blog and on Medium and a couple of times my posts went viral. People shared my writing on Twitter and some of my posts had thousands of ‘likes’. I had my email at the bottom of all my posts and a couple of people emailed me to ask for advice or to say thanks because they’d gotten something out of the post.

It was surreal.

This went on until around September 2018.

At this time I was still waking up early every morning to write, but the stuff I was writing wasn’t any good and, unlike in the beginning, this now greatly peeved me. I was putting out posts I didn’t like because I felt I had an obligation to do so, because I wanted the jolt of going viral.

And so again gloom took over and the landmarks and guideposts faded.

This went on for a month or two until finally one morning I broke down and said enough. Pumping out crapola just for the sake of hitting the green ‘Publish’ button wasn’t why I’d started writing in the first place.

So I stopped.

And having done so — and having given myself some time to grumble and feel down and lost — I felt in control again and I realized that what I really wanted was to write a book. Something great.

I dreamed that someone would read this book on their morning commute and would feel the way I did when I read Catch 22 or The Great Gatsby or Post Office or any of these other incredible books that had gotten me through my dark days.

And so the next morning I opened a blank doc and began to write.

And it was garbage.

Oh God, stinky, stinky garbage. The first draft was a clobbered, disjointed mess. I changed setting and characters and character names from the first half to the second half.

The writing was stilted and serious and lifeless because I wanted so badly to write well. There were similes and metaphors all over the place that were trying too hard. I wanted the book to be serious, literature, and so the subject matter was always gloom and doom.

This draft took me a couple of months. I then spent another couple of months trying to edit it, to salvage it, but there was no saving this kludge and I trashed this first attempt and started over.

But my second effort was not too different from the first and I began to despair.

I remember getting back home from work one day and being so incredibly angry and frustrated that all I could do was lay down in bed, looking up at the ceiling, and stew. A terrific impotence bubbled up inside me and I wondered why I had ever thought I could write a book.

The next morning I woke up early again and decided that maybe a book wasn’t in the cards and I began to write short stories instead (I had started reading Raymond Carver around this time.)

I finished a couple, but they had the same problems my book attempts had had: the writing was stilted, trying too hard, too serious, dead.

I decided short stories weren’t the answer either.

It was now January 2020.

I’d spent a year and a half writing with nothing to show for it. This was maddeningly frustrating, like scooping water, but having it all slip through my fingers before I could bring it to my lips.

Yet the tides of hope from New Years were still fresh in my mind and I decided to give the book another go.

More early mornings, more writing. Again the writing wasn’t great, but it was my best effort yet. The words and chapters began to pile up.

By July I had a ‘Part 1’. I edited this first half of the book and though it wasn’t great it wasn’t an utter failure like my previous efforts.

I began to work on the second half and finished it much faster than the first. Again I edited.

My girlfriend (now fiancé) read it and gave me feedback. I edited.

My sister read it and gave me feedback. I edited.

I read it myself over and over and edited.

And that’s pretty much where I’m at today. The book is mostly done, but it needs a couple more rounds of editing. My goal is to have it out by year’s end.