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  • Good morning, John. Beginnings and endings...

  • I like it. I like this frame.

  • I love beginnings. I've got several beginnings that I'm interested in.

  • Soda syrups. Sock - anything to do with socks I'm really into right now.

  • I've got a couple things I'd like to end on a sort of a national level.

  • But in terms of me, things that I can definitely do and control, I don't know what I want to end.

  • We interview people for jobs sometimes, sometimes for fairly high-level jobs.

  • I once had somebody come into a job interview and be like,

  • “I could get you to acquisition in just a couple of years,”

  • and I was like, “To ac - to what?”

  • Like, building Complexly up to sell it, and I was just like,

  • Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

  • I wanna be running this company when I die!”

  • I was really sounding like a moped there for a second.

  • Here's a thing that I would like to end. I would like to end my line edits for my book.

  • What are line edits, Hank? Okay, here's what book writing looks like, if you're in the traditional publishing industry.

  • First, you write a book. I don't know how this works. I don't know.

  • So you've got a manuscript, and you've got an editor. However that happened... is a mystery.

  • But you got it, and you give it to the editor. And then either they tell you, "This is trash,"

  • or they write you a letter. And that's called the editorial letter, and it says, “This book is not trash,”

  • followed by a 22 page list of all the ways in which the book is trash. This is the success condition.

  • So then, you finished your big revision. You've basically rewritten the book.

  • There's 50,000 words that aren't in there anymore and 40,000 new ones.

  • Then you get your line edits. And your line edits are like, line by line, your editor goes, “Why did you do this?”

  • Usually it's fairly simple things like it's, you need a different word here

  • because you used this word earlier in the sentence beforehand.

  • And then occasionally you get a line edit that basically says, “Rewrite this chapter,”

  • and you're like, “This isn't a line edit!”

  • And during the line edit is for me when I read the entire book out loud.

  • I'm a slow reader regardless, but reading out loud is particularly slow.

  • Now of course, after your line edit, you get your copy edit, and that's when somebody, in my case last time,

  • the valedictorian of my high school graduating class for some reason, Mary Beth Constant,

  • just reads your entire manuscript and tells you all of the little things you got wrong

  • and that's usually much less troublesome. You're just being like,

  • Yes, I agree that there should be a comma there. You're right, I did use the wrong word, Mary Beth.

  • Yes, you are still smarter than me all of these years later.”

  • This is maybe the weirdest coincidence of my entire life. I hope I get Mary Beth again.

  • There was literally a single typo in the whole book when it came out, which is amazing.

  • So at this point, you've been changing this book like every day for six, eight months?

  • You've been looking at it and changing things, and then they say, “Don't change anything else!”

  • And your entire mind is built to change the book, and then you have to say, “No!”

  • This is the final! You decide now that all of the words that are in here deserve to be in here,

  • and none of the words that aren't in there should be, and...

  • Gaaaaah!

  • I'm not a high stress person, I'm really not. I'm laid back, but that is too much.

  • That is the biggest ending I'm working toward in 2020, and I'm kind of terrified of it!

  • I like this book a lot. It's… it's much more ambitious than my first book, and I think that it says

  • a lot of interesting and important things that we need to be saying and thinking about right now.

  • But this is one of the great things about creative work, that you are forced to an end.

  • So I guess I'm lucky to have a job where I get lots of little “I did itmoments,

  • whether it's finishing a book or whether it's finishing this video.

  • John, I'll see you...

  • right now, because we're on tour together.

  • [JOHN:] Hank, you just made a whole video about your book

  • in which you didn't say the name of the book, which is A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor.

  • Nor did you say when it comes out, which is July 7th.

  • And nor did you say that it's available for pre-order now, which it is.

Good morning, John. Beginnings and endings...

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