I’ve got a book deal with MWP. They’re the publishers of Save The Cat! and Hardware Wars.

So… what am I writing for them? An epic philosophical / business book on stay-at-home creativity. No title yet. My publishing deadline is approaching at the end of April. It’s inspired by a pile of 100 creative career mantras I put together over the past few years.

In 2005, I wrote and self-published a faux-motivational book called, “How To Sell The Whole F#@!ing Universe To Everybody, Once And And For All!” It detailed the process of creating a 4-hour, 3-CD album of the same name. It took me about 3 months of total schizophrenia. I haven’t read it in years, but it was one of those Philip K. Dick “Pink Beam” periods of my life. It felt like I was possessed. It was nuts. I think I really lost my mind, and I even went to therapy after all of that stuff.

It’s a little different this time around.

Over the past six months, I’ve spent the first hour or so of my day taking notes on what important lessons I am learning. A lot of concepts have popped into my head while working freelance AND doing my own thing. Big-picture stuff. Abstract ideas that you don’t get if you are 100% “practical” and follow the rules in life. That’s the kind of stuff I love. The counter-intuitive bits of wisdom you pick up while failing a Steve Vai audition. So I type them all into a text document on my desktop as they appear. Easy.

OK, THAT PHASE IS DONE.

The publisher has asked for approximately 50,000 words. As of today, my text document (which mostly consist of sloppy, incomplete one-sentence ideas and bullet points) adds up to 26,000 words. That’s good news!

Now I have to smash all of these ideas into a practical shape. A logical structure. That’s the analytical side. I’ll discover, once I put these all in order, where the gaps are. Then I’ll fill them in. At the same time, I have to do a lot of lateral thinking and embrace the chaos. I have to riff on the ideas, walk around and look at them from different sides (some of them ugly!), so they’re not flat and two-dimensional. I don’t want “A movie with only good guys in it.” (Thanks, Frank Zappa.)

This has to come from an authentic place. No one wants to read “A Boring Book About Creativity.” It has to represent what I truly believe. Where I have been, where I am going. All while sharing the mutual creative experience with “Constant Reader” as Stephen King says. (No, we’re not related, but I did serve him coffee and scones at a Barnes & Noble Cafe back in 1998. And I messed up his order… not just once.)

I’m going to write the book from this perspective: what do my own mutant friends need to hear (and apply!) in order to thrive?

I know a lot of creative people who are STUCK. They’re trapped in corporate day jobs that they hate. All of their time and energy gets sucked away by the mundane problems of life. They have talent but can’t seem to get it together and make anything happen. They don’t REALLY believe their lives can change.

I was the same way.

I was over thirty years old and living with my mom. I was overweight, depressed, and lonely. I was addicted to self-sabotage. Most of the time, I left the house after dark so I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. I was so embarrassed by who I was. I spent an entire DECADE in a small retirement town in Florida, hating myself for not living up to my potential. (I was furious when I saw American Movie, because I was convinced that someone had made a parody of my life.)

I never thought I’d “figure it out” or make anything that anyone in the world would understand. My music was strange. My writing was offensive. “Industrial Society And Its Future” made a lot of sense to me.

This book is about how I fixed that. How I turned my creativity into something that can exist and function in the real world. A creative career isn’t just a fantasy.

I’m no famous rock star or millionaire, but I do what I love every day. I run my own creative factory. The outcome of these ideas: I just spent the past year working from home and dedicating ALL of my free energy to writing an animated TV show. The Old Me would have never believed it was possible. How long will this last? I don’t know.

So I think I’ll get back to it, because there’s a weird book that needs to be brought into existence. We’ll see what happens.

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