I can’t believe how much time and how many steps go into writing a book:

• Ten or twenty years to develop the ideas enough to have the nerve to put yourself out there to try it
• Six months to a year to write a book proposal, itself 45 pages
• Months of talking to editors to solicit bids
• Months to negotiate a contract
• Months to write the book
• Editing
• Editing
• More editing
• Type setting
• And so on…

The above just leads up to the marketing, which is where I am now because on Monday my book went to print!

That’s right. Somewhere in a warehouse or book printing building is a pile of thousands of my book. Actually, I don’t know how long it takes to print thousands of copies, so I only know they started printing Monday.
It still launches in February, which marks the cusp between before and after my book and its influence on how we teach leadership. Mark my words. After Leadership Step by Step by Joshua Spodek, we won’t teach leadership the same, nor entrepreneurship or similar fields.
I don’t know all the steps between now and February, but I can tell from my editor and the publisher that there’s still tons to do, not counting the marketing.
Here are some side effects of writing a book:

• My shoulders are killing me. Not my shoulders, but my trapezius muscles. I guess my back.
• Postponing or saying no to anything else usually affects others, so you have to think twice, but postponing writing only affects you, so it’s easy. Until your deadline. Then you have to cut off everyone else.
• My ideas come together a lot more.
• I learned “show, don’t tell” a lot more.
• You never finish writing. You only put the book out.
• I want to write more books. I know the next three or four I want to write.
• I’ve sat in every chair in my apartment and nearby library enough to get sore in less than an hour sitting in it.

Lots of stuff like that.
Tomorrow I’ll write about the problems in my book that I caught after the deadline—a few little inside scoops for early readers.