I'm trying to write a book: Day 4

Wherein I open up my initial thoughts about what the book is about.

Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash. Day x of finding the silliest cover image for these posts.

Getting Over My Anxiety

Today’s post is all about level setting where I am, and friends, it’s looking good.

I’m fortunate enough, through my writing, to know a few publishers and editors, which is already a leg up over others in my situation: Has the urge to write a book, doesn’t know where to start. So I’ve spent the first few months of this process organizing my ideas (read: staring at a blank screen), desperate to find the right alchemy among the following:

• How do I write a relevant book that stays relevant, even if all the people who need to do a behavior change do that change and then the book is useless?

• How do I zero in on the simplest version of my thesis? Some books that I’ve loved recently I’ve enjoyed despite the complicated centrality.

• How do I make sure that this book reflects me, or who do I make sure that I pitch this book in such a manner that only I can write it and that people should listen to me?

• How do I source and report on interesting stories that are both delightful and thought-provoking?

• Am I talented enough to pull this book off so that it will have lasting presence and will make my publisher a profit?

• How do I not bore, simply bore, you and me to death talking about the culture of transportation?

If you know me in real life (some of y’all are parasocial, hey), I’m nothing if not overconfident, bordering on arrogant, and ebullient. This combination is the origin of my exasperation and gives me the crazy notion that anyone should listen to what I have to say. That’s a cultural touchpoint in and of itself.

What is “The Culture of Transportation?”

Should I structure this book as a search and solution for meaning and understanding? What is the culture of transportation? Is it a question about the roots of how and why we move? Is it an interrogation of the practice and delivery of infrastructure? Is it cross-cultural, and if so, on what level?¹ Is it about how you and I think about transportation? Is it choo-choo good? Bike lanes!

I’m hoping to ground this idea in some deep storytelling and to define “culture” by what it isn’t rather than what it is. Policy, for example, is not culture, and we can’t solve our cultural problems with more policy; we’ll just get more complicated policy and no outcomes. Spending a trillion dollars—$1,000,000,000,000—is a cultural choice as much as it is a policy one; authorizing spend is as much a cultural choice—earmarks anyone—as it is a policy lever. Appropriating it is as much a function of how fu*king tired Senate staffers are as it is how much they’ve been lobbied by boosters and well-meaning (c)(4)s. What we build and where we build—or purposefully don’t—is a decision we make when we cast our votes for people who hold the purse strings. And sew the purse. And source the silk.²

All this to say I want to help our well-meaning thinkers and doers think and do with clearer eyes and fuller hearts.³ To meaningfully distinguish between a policy choice and a cultural phenomenon. That’s the book I want to write. I want to center the humans (and computers?) behind the story, to share that, while we may see the world one day through eyes unclouded by hate,⁴ the culture that binds us—the definite human quality of connection—can be applied magnanimously. We can move freely.

1. Just how much panel data am I going to have to parse to make any sort of very flimsy point about how Americans love to drive, but wait, so do Yuropeans?

2. Silk purse, nice.

3. Can’t lose.

4. Red elk are inherently single-occupancy vehicles, but can be flexed if there’s a babe or injured person to ridealong.