I started writing my first book about 5 years ago.
It was a novel about a wrestler who struggled with anxiety, depression, heartbreak, and the pressure of trying to win a state championship to appease his wrestling-obsessed father.
I never finished it.
I, like about 97% of people who start writing books, gave up.
I even made it pretty far. Either way, I started writing my first book about 5 years ago, and it never became my first book.
I abandoned my first book and became an internet writer and ghostwriter. It would be years before I’d try again to release a true book. I was scared.
It was March of 2023 when the idea came to me. I was on a plane from Chicago to New York to compete in a Jiu-Jitsu tournament. I recently had read a book called The Book of Life by Krishnamurti, a book that contains 365 daily “meditations” about life, wisdom, and spirituality.
The idea hit me to write something like that but for Jiu-Jitsu.
This was before I started The Grappler’s Diary Instagram page, back when I was still ghostwriting dating blogs, and before I even started this newsletter here, The Modern Writer.
This was a long time ago — nearly 2 years.
Much has changed, but for today’s article, only one change is important. My first book is no longer a concept, it’s real. I have a copy on my desk right now.
This is what the process of self-publishing my first book looked like.
This is how I wrote A Grappler’s Diary.
Hint: It wasn’t pretty.
I almost quit.
Trying to have original thoughts is hard.
Trying to have 151 original thoughts about something you do every day is even harder.
Or is it?
I started The Grappler’s Diary Instagram page back in 2023 when I was spending a month living in an Airbnb in Austin, Texas. I would wake up, drink too much coffee, write an Instagram post, work on a newsletter or a client project, and then hammer a note or 2 of the book when inspiration struck.
I wrote Instagram posts about everything.
Weight-training for Jiu-Jitsu
Losing in Jiu-Jitsu
Winning in Jiu-Jitsu
Philosophy in Jiu-Jitsu
I wrote posts about everything, and as the posts gained traction, I started to get ideas for things I wanted to say more about. I wanted to be a bit more unfiltered. I wanted to say what I was really feeling.
I put these ideas in the book.
Then I ran out of ideas again.
The first draft of the book was just constant ups and downs and challenges. It was hard as hell to be totally honest with you.
Trying to get to 151 notes about Jiu-Jitsu was hard.
In the end, writing the book became the ultimate test of endurance, grit, and passion. It became a lot like what I think preparing for Jiu-Jitsu tournaments is like. It’s just hard and you need to grind to get it done.
I think it’s funny that not many people in Jiu-Jitsu are avid readers or writers because the truth is that the 2 crafts are very similar. I talked about that in the book.
Anyway, the first main challenge of writing a book is getting the book done. That took me about 9 months. I finished the final note around New Year’s 2024 at my parent’s kitchen table when I was home for Christmas.
Then, I almost quit again when I realized how much editing I had to do.
I iterated on the book a dozen times.
I iterated on the book so much that I almost fell victim to a trap that I always tell writers to avoid: the dreaded “Cabin-in-the-Woods Syndrome”.
It’s funny but even though I started writing the book 2 years ago, the ideas published are still true to me today because I was still iterating and editing the content just a couple of months ago.
See, after the book was written and still in draft form, it became my baby. I didn’t want anything to happen to my baby. I didn’t want anyone to judge my baby. I didn’t want anyone to not like my baby. I didn’t want to let my baby go.
Luckily, I only let my baby turn 1 before I let it go into the world instead of 18 like a real baby.
I encountered a lot of resistance in post.
The idea of self-publishing a book about Jiu-Jitsu 2 years ago (when I started writing) almost didn’t make sense.
I was “the Jiu-Jitsu writing guy” yes, but my audience was tiny.
My following online was much smaller. I would have sold way fewer books because my writing was in front of way fewer people.
I also had a skill gap to cover. I didn’t know how to publish a book. The formatting on Amazon scared me so much that I almost gave up just because of that.
I had a lot of anxiety about releasing my first book. Imposter syndrome.
Who was I to write a BOOK about how people should do the Jiu-Jitsu experience?
Here’s a weird thing I did that helped me actually finish the book:
I didn’t tell anyone about it (except my girlfriend) until it was completely done.
I shut the hell up. I didn’t tell my friends, I didn’t tell my family, and I definitely didn’t post about it online. I may have mentioned it in a newsletter once or twice, but I tend to just tell myself that people are skimming most articles anyway.
Either way, I didn’t give myself the convenience of a dopamine hit from my friends telling me that it’s awesome that I finished a draft book. I didn’t allow myself to feel like the book was done until it was ready to be published.
I didn’t want to give up on another book in the editing phase.
I just kept working at it.
It took a while, but there were also factors outside of my control.
It was a crazy year in my life. I worked up and off 10k in credit card debt. I competed in ADCC, the biggest BJJ tournament of my life. In January, I was almost ready to give up on my Jiu-Jitsu and writing dream and move back to my parent’s basement in Chicago.
Doing that would have been terrible for a book about how to have a great Jiu-Jitsu experience.
Life was insane and editing a book took a back burner to many other projects, like training, releasing merch, writing my newsletter, doing an instructional, writing for an agency, and more.
We didn’t finish the content of the book until December 8, 2024.
There was also the learning curve of putting the book in print.
I was getting tired at this point.
I was ready to release the book.
I spent nearly a year writing it and nearly another year running from it while telling myself it needed to be “perfect”.
I was breaking all of my digital writing rules with this book and I was sick of it.
I hit a point in late November and early December where I said “screw it” and decided that the book needed to be done before I left for Cancun to compete in EBI. My girlfriend did the final edits ourselves over a 12-hour period on a Sunday.
It was a final read-through. I realized on this day that the book was about as good as it could get and then I was being a tortured artist over nothing.
I needed to just let go.
The book had been to an editor and back, there’d been tons of writing and rewriting, and I just wanted it to be done.
We set everything up on Amazon and I chose January 13 (2 days ago) as the release date. We ordered the first “author’s proof” copy to make sure everything was okay.
It was okay, but it wasn’t good.
The first copy of the book was ginormous, and I wanted a small book that you could fit in your backpack. The first copy of the book I received was big enough to be a graphic novel.
Thus began a painful several-week process of ordering new books, having them be slightly off, having to buy new ISBN numbers, and just praying for one of the editions that I ordered to be perfect.
I may have killed a few trees in the process of perfecting the print edition of the book and I am terribly sorry.
I’m probably a brown or high-level purple belt in writing, but in book creation, I was a brand-new white belt. I learned a lot about formatting, structure, how to create a table of contents, how to use Amazon KDP, and of course, how the royalties work.
I realized that we were going to need to sell a lot of books to make money. Thankfully, I made back all I spent on creation and then some during the launch day.
That’s because I created a good marketing plan.
Then, we started marketing.
This is the fun part but also the hard part.
I like posting about the book.
It’s way easier to tell someone why they should read it than it is to sit down, write a good book, create a good reader experience, design a cover that people will like, and do it all without compromising yourself as an artist in the process.
It’s A Grappler’s Diary — it had to be personal. “Diary” is the keyword.
I wrote out a 2-week marketing plan for the book. We sold a good amount of Kindle pre-orders and I plugged the hell out of it on my newsletters and on social media. It was uncomfortable and I was very anxious during the process but I would be more anxious if I released a book and no one knew about it.
By the time launch day came, I wasn’t nervous anymore. I was just ready to be done, honestly.
Launch day.
Writing a book is not like writing an article.
After I write an article, I close the computer, take a few hours or the night off, and then head back to the keyboard and edit it. When it’s done, I schedule it to go out and you all get it. That’s it. I move on very easily, even if the article performs badly.
Books are different.
With books, it’s not just that you put time into it, it’s that people notice it more. Anyone can write an article — but nearly everyone who tries to write a book doesn’t finish it.
Writing is hard but writing books is harder. Writing a book was the single most humbling thing I have done as a writer.
There’s pressure, nerves, fear, and excitement.
Launch day was weird too.
First of all, it kind of sucked because my dog had 2 seizures. We had to go to the doggy ER. We spent hours trying to reassemble our apartment after the chaos. I was literally scrubbing shit off the floor and then taking breaks to check my book sales.
I also had to teach a Jiu-Jitsu class, train for my upcoming match, write emails about the book, and do social media. I also got the idea to write this article right here so I outlined it.
I was exhausted by the end of the day, physically and emotionally. I checked the sales on Amazon and I refreshed it a bajillion times. I got worried because the paperbacks apparently take longer to show up than Kindle purchases so I was scared people weren’t buying it even though they were posting and sending me pictures of their orders.
Good Lord.
Now, 2 days after the launch, here we are.
I am officially an author.
Closing Thoughts
Now that the book is officially out, I have many thoughts and ideas circulating in my head.
The main one is that I am ready to move on. It’s kind of like a breakup. My book is out of my control and she’s on to better things. She outgrew me.
People are buying her. She doesn’t care about the dorky guy who wrote her. She has an audience now. She had a glow-up. She’s an independent book and she don’t need an author.
It’s time for me to move on as a creator.
I am a writer and always will be and I will write another book soon. There will be a Modern Writer ebook soon too — that’s the next big writing project on the horizon that needs to be created.
I will write more books.
I will self-publish more books. I hope one day to publish a book with a publisher as well. I want to learn everything about this new industry.
I am an author, but this was only my first book.
I still have so much to learn.
I still have things that I’m nervous about.
So far the reviews have been excellent but what if someone hates the book? What if there’s a spelling error that slipped by me, my girlfriend, and the editor? What if the book just stops selling? What if it’s good but it doesn’t find its way to the right readers?
I’ve realized that the anxiety will just keep going if I allow it. I’m trying to enjoy the excitement without letting the anxiety bring me down.
And that, I guess, is the real truth about writing my first book.
Here’s the book one final time if you’d like to pick up a copy.
If you want to work with me 1-1, my writing coaching and education program will be live in just a few more weeks.
I wouldn’t have been able to write a book if I hadn’t iterated on my craft thousands of times in newsletters and articles, and I can show you how to do that too.
This program will help you build an audience, find your first writing clients, and establish credibility so that you can begin your journey toward making a full-time living with your words on the internet.
Stay tuned :)
Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!
If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)