Meghan Daum

Writing a Book About the Trump Era Devoured My Life

You try writing a current affairs book in our bonkers news environment without tossing out hundreds of pages

Illustration: Leonardo Santamaria

I spent the last three years writing a 221-page book. That comes out to roughly one page every five days, something around 300 words a week. Impressive!

Actually, it doesn’t include the hundreds of other pages that, bit by bit, ended up in the wastebasket, often just days after being completed. Nor does it include the hundreds of Post-its and pieces of scrap paper on which I scribbled random notes to myself at all hours of the day, or the countless memos I typed to myself on my iPhone because it was the only writing implement within reach when I lay in bed at night obsessing about my book.

Often I’d wake up to memos like this.

Has intersetionalty been turnd into fashion statment? If so, whats harm?

Is eveyone this rageful or just people on soc media? Is causation or correlcation?

Find Chekov quote (Tolstoy?) about writer solve problem

Buy toilet paper

When I teach writing, one of the rules I emphasize most strenuously to my students is “never try to write…