The book that will never be written
When Greta Thunberg was fifteen, she was supposed to be in school learning to become a good little consumer of planetary resources. Instead, she was protesting the lack of action on climate change outside the Swedish parliament. And hordes of mediocre white men from across the land collectively misplaced their excrement and unleashed the ALL CAPS fury.
That’s how the book began. Late last February, almost a year ago now, my agent told he couldn’t sell it. Turns out he couldn’t sell the next one either, but I’m getting ahead of myself. This is about the lead up to my sudden transition from writing about self-help to switching to history.
Last month I posted a confession to Facebook about how The Holy Sh!t Moment didn’t sell and how that was a good thing. If it had been a big seller, I could have come up with any crap idea and publishers would have bought it and I might still be writing self-help. In that post I explained why I never belonged in that genre, and it’s basically because I don’t write hokey bullshit that doesn’t work.
Five months after that book came out it was pretty clear it wasn’t going to go, yet I remained determined to get another shot at the publishing industry. I came up with the idea of writing about heroism—it was still going to be a self-help book—that encouraged other people to be heroes. I talked to my agent and he thought it was worth investigating (note that he wasn’t super excited, but I figured excited enough). I spent a couple of months reading up on the subject, then wrote the lengthy blog post “Be a Hero.”
I worked hard on that piece and I think it’s got some good writing in it. Then I wrote a sequel, titled “Put Yourself in Harm’s Way”, which wasn’t as good, but still not bad. Anyway, the two formed the premise of the book, which had the working title of “Be a Hero” and was to encourage others to do amazing things in their lives through stepping up to do good things for others blah fucking blah.
We’re not talking about good ideas here; we’re talking about book sales. Yeah, the concept may be solid and admirable and all that, but I wrote up an introduction and a lengthy proposal and then my agent called me and said those heart-wrenching words: “I can’t sell this.”
And at the time it really sucked. I’m not one to believe everything happens for a reason, but this did. It happened because I’d exhausted my abilities in that genre and needed to be somewhere better suited to my abilities. I just hadn’t figured it out yet.
I still wasn’t ready to give up. I’d been writing full time since 2011; what else was I going to do? Peter (my agent) told me to come up with ten ideas and we could discuss them and figure out what might have the most potential. I created my list, sent it to him, and he came back telling me two of them had potential. We had a call scheduled for the following week to talk more about them.
Then I went on a bike ride.
Remembering the date is easy enough. It was April 17, 2020. We were in lockdown because of Covid. I was stressed right the fuck out. Being married to a doctor, she told me it was going to get bad, and it would significantly affect our lives for over a year, probably two years. We were supposed to go to Maui in May for our 25th wedding anniversary, and we’d just canceled it. The Democrat primary was going on and they were eating each other alive and I was worried Trump might be reelected. Also, those two ideas Peter wanted to talk to me about? I had zero passion to write either book. I can’t even remember what the ideas were about now. I just knew I didn’t want to write them.
All this shit was running through my head on this bike ride, and I don’t know where the idea came from because we rarely do but there it was: Write a short and sweary “on this day in history” piece and post it to Facebook.
That was the extent of it. Not “become a history writer” or “do an entire year’s worth” or even “do it for a week”. Just do one. See what happens. So, I went home and googled and decided on Martin Luther telling the Holy Roman Emperor to fuck off at the Diet of Worms, wrote it up, and posted it to Facebook the next day just like I planned. It was moderately popular.
Then I thought: Do another.
And so, I wrote about Mae West going to jail for “corrupting the morals of youth” and posted that the following day. It blew up, and after only two days people were posting in the comments stuff like “You should make a book of these” and “If you wrote a book of these, I would totally buy it.”
And that’s all it took. After two days I decided I was fucking done with self-help, and history writing was my thing. It felt right, it wasright. I wasn’t sure how to turn it into money yet, but I had the benefit of being married to a successful physician who has been most supportive in all of this. She was my biggest champion, saying she’d never seen me so excited about writing, and that I had to pursue it.
I cancelled my phone call with Peter. I didn’t tell him what it was about, but just said I was working on something else and would be in touch. I wanted to collect a month of data on the column to go back to him with.
In the first month, there were a million readers. He wasn’t just impressed with that, he liked the idea of me changing to history, because he could also see that this was a better genre for me to be in. We then got to talking about me doing a “big think” history book at the same time, which is how I came up with Greedy Sexist Religious Bigots (Who Hate Science). If you haven’t read the Introduction to that yet, it was posted on Patreon on December 19. This link should work.
But that book didn’t sell either, mostly because of a combination of my previous book having shitty sales (you’re only as good as your last book, the industry believes) and I was very new at this genre so they were nervous about this self-help / fitness guy suddenly switching to history and I get it. But that’s all fine because I was like well fuck I need money so I asked Facebook and Facebook said I will give you money and a bunch of others said Patreon is good and so here we are and wow am I overwhelmed.
I made a list, by the way.
Not a to do list, but on a list. It’s been only two months since I launched this Patreon and there is a site that tracks the top 50 of the various Patreon genres and I’m already at #37 for the writer category. Everyone else on that list has been doing it for at least eighteen months, many for three years or more.
What does that mean for you, dear subscriber? Well, it means Patreon is a BIG part of my job now. One thing about my personality is that I have a strong sense of loyalty and responsibility. Yes, Patreon is making me lots of money and I’m thrilled about that, especially after the years of struggle. But because it’s making me a good income that means I must give value. Not just because I don’t want to lose subscribers to “Eh, not worth it” but because anyone who pays me should be getting their money’s worth. I won’t sleep at night otherwise.
Thus far, I feel like I’m barely doing that.
But I have an excuse. Y’all want that shit went down book, right? I am fucking buried in edits and working with my designer and launch manager and all that, because I got it in my head that I want it to be available on the first anniversary of that life-changing epiphany: April 17, 2021. And we’re gonna hit it, but it means I’m mostly editing all damn day.
But that will change before long. By March I should have a lot more time to start creating pieces for Year 2 of shit went down, plus create more content for Patreon subscribers. I know I’ve been posting pretty regular, but it’s mostly stuff that is easy to write and blurted out because it’s sitting in my head. I want to do more in-depth, heavily researched history stuff that I slave over and edit again and again for subscribers only. I want some of my BEST writing to be HERE, because you deserve it.
I just ask that you be a little bit more patient so I can get this damn book out the door. Presale will be starting soon. Probably within a week.
Speaking of good writing, despite Peter saying he couldn’t sell that book, the opening of the draft Introduction I wrote I thought was pretty damn good. Even though the book is never going to be written, the opening is kind of fun; I took pieces of it and made it into a shit went down post for last September, but there is lots more below. Oh, and regarding Greedy Sexist Religious Bigots, that book WILL be written and published. Peter is going to go back with the proposal in the fall with my amazing Patreon numbers coupled with what I hope are going to be amazing Sh!t Went Downsales numbers and give publishers another shot. If they don’t bite, then I’ll self-publish.
Anyway, being a hero and Greta Thunberg is a hero and here is the beginning of that intro you might find amusing:
When Greta Thunberg was fifteen, she was supposed to be in school learning to become a good little consumer of planetary resources. Instead, she was protesting the lack of action on climate change outside the Swedish parliament. And hordes of mediocre white men from across the land collectively misplaced their excrement and unleashed the ALL CAPS fury.
Born in Stockholm in 2003 to an opera singer and an actor, by the age of eight Greta had taken an interest in the battle against climate change. And by “interest” I mean she was devastated by so little being done about an issue critical to the fate of humanity. The sense of powerlessness she felt had a negative effect on her psyche, and within a few years her mental health degraded to a state of depression where she would neither talk nor eat. She was eventually diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and being on the autism spectrum. Greta refers to the latter not as a disorder, but a “superpower.”
Rather than a cape, she wears a yellow raincoat.
In Harm’s Way
For two years, Greta appealed to her family to walk the talk, pleading with them to lower their carbon footprint by no longer eating meat and ceasing air travel. (Not flying meant her mother giving up her career as an international singer. Also: No more Swedish meatballs.) Greta showed her parents the scientific data on climate change, endeavoring to make an argument based on the logic of taking action, but they remained unconvinced. And so, she added an emotional appeal in a way that only a teenage girl can: she accused them of stealing her future. Greta later said that persevering in convincing her parents to change made her believe she had the ability to make a difference in the world.
For decades the vast majority of climate scientists have agreed that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is happening, and it’s going to bite our species in the ass. Soon. But that guy with the tinfoil hat on FreedomEagleDotNet said it’s all a scam perpetrated by Big Windmill and the scientists are in on it. There is no shortage of those who believe conspiracy theorists rather than accept the weight of scientific evidence. But it’s worse than that, because people can acknowledge the reality of climate change and still refuse to alter their behavior. I’m writing these words while imagining my next cheeseburger and planning a trip to Maui.
Greta showed her parents the data, yet they remained unmoved. That’s because logic and reason aren’t the powerful drivers of human behavior that so many imagine. What moves us to action are emotion and story. Greta’s appeals told a heart-wrenching tale of how she was fated to grow up in a society racing toward destruction. Coupled with the telling science of climate change, she became a beacon for others, but her success was not immediate.
In the spring of 2018, she won a climate change essay prize hosted by a Swedish newspaper, writing, “I want to feel safe. How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?” Inspired by the students in Parkland, Florida who organized a “March for Our Lives” to bring about greater gun control, Greta tried to organize a similar school strike among her peers, but when she couldn’t get any takers, went ahead and did it by herself.
On August 20, after Sweden experienced the hottest summer in 262 years that resulted in massive wildfires, Greta Thunberg launched her protest. Rather than returning to school to begin ninth grade, she protested alone outside the Swedish Parliament each day until the September 9 elections, often in the pouring rain, demanding her government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. On the first day, she posted a photo of her campaign on Instagram and Twitter, and the internet responded, sharing it across multiple accounts and platforms.
After the election she returned to school, but continued to protest every Friday, encouraging her fellow students to do the same. She soon began attending demonstrations and speaking publicly across Europe while mobilizing her rapidly growing social media following to take action. Within three months over 20,000 students had held similar climate protests in hundreds of cities. The following spring the Guardian wrote about “The Greta Thunberg Effect” and the young Swede made the cover of TIME Magazine as a “Next Generation Leader.” Later that summer she sailed across the Atlantic in a much-publicized carbon-neutral voyage to New York. The following month she addressed the United Nations Climate Action Summit.
During her speech to the UN Greta revealed to the world just how passionately pissed off she is.
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, yet I'm one of the lucky ones,” she said to the gathered crowd. “People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing.” Holding back tears, she explained how the science is “crystal clear” and that we are at the start of a mass extinction while world leaders discuss “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” Toward the end she stabbed at them: “The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.” She finished with, “The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”
“How dare you?” she said to them.
Four times during her four-and-a-half-minute speech she asked the same question about their lack of action: “How dare you?”
In the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations, to dozens of heads of state, business leaders, and senior representatives of civil society, Greta repeated those three words while being broadcast on live television to the world.
“How dare you?”
As a father I well know the displays of righteous indignation an impassioned teenage girl is capable of, but holy shit.
Greta Thunberg is what a hero looks like. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Darren Aronofsky agrees, as a few months after her UN speech, and fifteen months after her initial protest, he wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Greta Thunberg Is the Icon the Planet Desperately Needs.” He’s wrong, however. It’s not the planet that needs her. The planet will survive. We might not. It’s humanity that needs people like Greta.
Aronofsky wrote, “As a director, I’m in constant pursuit of the right image.” He explained how he knew he’d found one when he saw this 15-year-old girl sitting outside the Swedish parliament to draw attention to our impending climatological doom. The image he saw was one of hope, commitment, and action. One that could spark a movement. She represents the early days of a significant cultural shift. We’ve been bandying about the idea of doing something about climate change for decades, but Greta is indicative of a tipping point being reached. She has given me hope. She has given hope to many that something can be done before it’s too late, including respected conservationist David Attenborough, who said of Greta, “She’s achieved things that many of us who’ve been working for it for 20-odd years have failed to achieve.” He said she has “aroused the world.”
Alas, Earth is infected with a virulent strain of fact-resistant humans. As I mentioned, many a mediocre white man responded to Greta by screeching like a howler monkey on a meth bender. Well, white dudes and that Tammy Lasagna Fox News person.
By the way, I’m a white man, and reverse racism is not a thing.
I expect part of the vitriol relates to what Upton Sinclair said regarding how it’s difficult to get a person to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it. But it also can be attributed to the bruising of fragile egos. These guys were told they were special. They wanted to be rock stars sleeping with porn stars. They imagined they could be astronauts or athletes or actors. But then Greta shows up speaking truth to power and lands on the cover of TIMEMagazine a second goddamn time—this time being named “Person of the Year”—and even gets nominated for a friggin’ Nobel Peace Prize for chastising older generations and it hits them right in the I’ve-done-the-square-root-of-fuck-all-with-my-life inferiority complex. Greta Thunberg Effect? No one named a global movement after me!
To see toxic masculinity on display, simply read the comments on any article about Greta Thunberg. She has been the subject of multiple misogynistic attacks, referred to as mentally ill and a puppet, and repeatedly threatened with death. Other attacks are subtler. Some wish to diminisher her with “What about [person who did a thing for the climate]? How come we’re not celebrating them?” because they can’t imagine it’s possible to celebrate more than one person. Some criticize her methods or proclamations or targets of ire. These may have the guise of a reasonable critique yet represent the same forces that maintain the status quo: that of putting industry before individuals, pollution before planet. And you also have the brainless ass wagons who, when Greta was honored by TIME, couldn’t wait to point out that “Hitler was TIME’s Man of the Year too!” Yeah, so was Trump. The magazine’s designation is about who or what has “done the most to influence the events of the year.” Some people are influential for good reasons, others for bad ones. It should be obvious as to which is which for those who are not suffering from a rectal-cranial inversion.
In the face of it all, Greta remains undaunted. She is a hero.