Well that was unpleasant

So much for tailwinds. Two bad writing days in a row. I’m writing, just not well, so there’s also a lot of paragraphic euthanasia going on. As a result, I’m now 2K off pace and grumpy.

I have to remember that I can’t write on the same topic, even a really good one, for five straight days. I use up that brain slice, and everything starts sounding Kardashian. So new topic tomorrow, dunno which one, and I’ll finish this long chapter later.

Oooh, is that a tailwind?

I’m three days into the chapter on what atheists tend to believe, and what they tend not to believe, and why.

I was worried about this one in deadline terms for three reasons:

• It’s not as cut and dried as the history and works section
• For reasons I won’t bore you with, I have just 3 weeks this finish this 25% of the book, not 5
• 3 < 5 But ooh! To my surprise, I've caught me a tailwind. This chapter is flying off the fingers, 2K a day without breaking a sweat, and I finish each day with enough energy to grouse about how hard my day was.

I think I know why it’s going well: I had to double-check every date and name and fact in the history section, while this part is basically blogging — expressing what are hopefully educated opinions on things I’ve thought about, read about, and written about for years.

It was also a challenge to make some parts of the history engaging, but this actually DING!

Writing the right book

One of the unique challenges of this book is the constant need to remind myself of the book’s mandate — to introduce atheism to a mostly non-atheist readership that’s unfamiliar but interested.

There are other audiences, including atheists who want to know more about their own worldview. But I can’t really write for them/you. The book will be a better contribution (and fulfill the contract) if I write for the interested layperson outsider and allow the secondary audiences to peek over their shoulders.

This was easy in the history section, but I’m running into sentence by sentence challenges in the current section — why atheists are atheists.

Though the book might convince someone to rethink their own perspective, it’s essential that I not write for that purpose. I’m describing a process others have been through without necessarily requiring the reader to (DING!) stare into the mirror.

But there’s the problem, you see. For many atheists, part of the process involves the growing realization that many religious beliefs are not only false but dishonest and harmful. If I pretend otherwise, I haven’t really described the reality of it. I need to capture that without making the reader feel besieged, to allow them to keep reading, keep reading.

I actually have a lot of practice at this, but it’s slow going, and the next quarter deadline (Sept 3) doesn’t seem to give a damn. And ignoring my timer while blogging doesn’t help one bit.

Q: Mad at God, are ya?

We all have reasons for coming to nontheistic conclusions. But there’s no shortage of theories from non-atheists about why we are really atheists.

Q: What are some of the myths you’ve heard about why atheists are atheists?

Short replies are smiled upon — only because of my current time crunch, not because you aren’t interesting. No no, really, you’re a great person. It’s not you, it’s me.

The end of history

Okay, I’m ready to be done with the historical bits. I love it, but I’m ready to get to the here and now, the big questions.

Had the pleasure of dancing with some of my faves here in the home stretch — Lucretius, Ingersoll, Russell. If you’ve read The Swerve, you know why I heart Lucretius. Unbelievable story of the rediscovery and dissemination of De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), one of the most influential books in history. I’ll tell you later.

Imagine living in a time when so much is yet to be learned that you can write a book that’s essentially titled What Stuff is Like.

Monday’s Deadline #1, the first 25% (38,000 words) due. Currently just over 35K. I hate writing by weight.

Ding!

Helpful believers

Two days working on a thread about unorthodox believers — Erasmus, Spinoza, Paine, Jefferson — whose work has been important in freethought history.

Gave me the opportunity to dig back into a book that simply drops my jaw every time — Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly. I’m convinced that nothing but friends in papal places, the fact that he lampoons everyone else before gutting the church, and hiding behind the skirts of satire kept him from execution. The book is now credited with sparking the Reformation eight years later. And Erasmus was a Catholic monk. (Well I guess Luther was too.)

Best of all, it’s damn funny and reads like it was written last month. If you haven’t read it, do.

Another great find: “Jefferson’s Bible” at Beliefnet, complete with icons to show where he cut out the miracles and other supernaturalisms. Pretty jarring to see John 3:16 lying on the Oval Office floor.

Questioning assumptions

Thanks again for all of your brilliant help with these questions! The book will be much richer for it.

A few commenters yesterday said they’ve never had to question religious assumptions because they were not raised religiously.

Remember the Ernestine Rose quote I wrote about in March — that all children are atheists and would remain so if religion weren’t inculcated into their minds? I address that again in the book. I was born an implicit atheist, but it’s a pretty meaningless label until I make an active decision. And part of that process involves questioning the religious assumptions around me.

Those assumptions didn’t just come from my parents — in fact, very few of them did. Even kids raised entirely without religion in the home are still confronted with religious assumptions in the culture. The process of actively choosing to call myself an atheist includes a process of questioning those assumptions, no matter what my upbringing.

(Ding.)

Q: AHA! moments

Two questions today — answer either or both. The temptation to write an essay will be strong. Resist. Just gimme a tasty tweet.

1. What was the first realization that got you questioning religious assumptions?

2. What was the biggest AHA! moment on your path to atheism?

(Please share this widely. The more input the better. Remember that religious assumptions can come from the culture as well, not just from your upbringing.)

Lost, secret, censored, forbidden

Spent the day in the chapter on lost, secret, censored, and forbidden atheist docs. Protagoras’s On the Gods, of which only two sentences survive. The lost sutras of Carvaka, which called Hindu rituals “ignorant and unmanly” — then disappeared from history. Fortunately critics quoted long passages in order to rail against them, thereby wrapping them in a pretty bow and delivering them safely to posterity. Much of atheist history comes in the very same wrapping paper.

Included a para or two on Abu Bakr al-Razi, a 10th century Persian physician who defined new disease treatments, isolated new compounds, showed endless compassion for the less fortunate, saved countless lives — and oh, called Muhammad a fraud and a liar. Kind of out loud. Lots of his books on medicine and chemistry are still around, but the ones with titles like The Prophet’s Fraudulent Tricks and On the Refutation of Revealed Religions have gone inexplicably missing.

Also covered the censoring of Darwin by his own family and the censoring of Twain by his own damn self.

In the other track, I’m deep into secular morality. Stand by for questions on that. (And please, try not to snuff anyone while you’re waiting. I know it’s hard.)

Step on it, man!

I’m not panicking — just aware that I’m slightly off pace. What with the reading and traveling and all this week, and a little fussy wordsmithing, I only pushed out about 5,000 words. That’s 3,400 behind the weekly average I need to hit the mark. And if there’s one thing the publisher has made clear, it’s that marks are meant to be hit.

The first quarter of the manuscript (about 36,000 words) is due on August 13, nine days away, and I’ve got maybe 22 grand in the hopper. So that’s…okay, not so bad. I just need to bump up from 1,200 a day to about 1,600. That’s not excessive.

This week I learned (by sending my editor a chapter with a $100 swear in it) that the book can’t include $100 swears. It was in a quote, from the 14th century no less, but also translated from Late Old French, so there’s some wiggle room there. I’ll paraphrase to “fornication.”

See how easy I am to work with? Oh and ding.