The Fractured Mirror: A Magnificent Obsession — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

A little while back a Facebook friend said that she was thinking about writing a book and wanted to know if people thought that was a good idea.

It’s possible that she was fishing for compliments and wanted people to say “Of COURSE you should write a book. A book by you would be AMAZING. I would preorder it and STILL be first in line to buy a second copy the day it comes out” but I think she was genuinely curious as to whether her contemporaries thought that writing a book would be a good use of her time.

My immediate, knee jerk response was that she should DEFINITELY write a book. Books are great! They’re wonderful to read and immensely satisfying to write. A book can be your ticket to a new, more satisfying and glamorous life. A book can make your career. A book can make you famous. A book can make you rich. A book can be your contribution to the world. A book can outlive you and speak powerfully and eloquently to people long after you’ve died. Hell, a book (such as L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics) can change the world.

That was my first response. Then, after I had thought about the matter, my answer changed to, “No, you probably shouldn’t write a book. It’s a very risky, inefficient, time and labor-intensive way to make money. It’d be much easier to grind out freelance pieces for which you will definitely get paid than spend years writing something that might sell nothing and do nothing for your career beyond possibly harming it.”

I should know. I have spent much of the past two years researching and writing The Fractured Mirror, my upcoming reference book on the history of American films about movie-making.

My original conception of The Fractured Mirror was incredibly ambitious as well as time and work intensive. I set out to watch and write about three hundred American movies about movie-making.

I didn’t just set out to write up the movies everyone knows. I set out to write about everything over the course of an entire century. I wanted to write about every single narrative movie that fit my criteria and a generous sampling of documentaries on the subject as well.

I didn’t have a long list of movies to write up at the beginning. As far as I know, and I have done a LOT of research, there is no definitive list of movies on the juicy topic I was exploring. I haven’t encountered a single halfway definitive list in the years I’ve been working on the book. If there are no lists covering this subject in its entirety then you better believe that there aren’t any books covering it either.

I set out to write 300 movies. Then it became apparent that I couldn’t do justice to the subject with just 300 movies. So I moved the goalpost and a pathologically, almost masochistically ambitious project got even more ambitious when I decided to write up 365 movies for the book.

But even that somehow was not enough. So I changed my goal to covering 400 movies for the book.

I am 389 movies and 633 pages into The Fractured Mirror and while I am close to then end I still have a lot of work left to do and films left to write about.

This rather predictably went from being a solid, not particularly personal idea for a book I hoped would appeal to people beyond the 400 people who support all of my endeavors to being a mad obsession.

There is some part of me that thinks that the work and the research on The Fractured Mirror will never end, and at this point next year I’ll be writing a blog post about how I’ve written about 575 movies for the book and I feel like it’s almost complete but I still have a ways to go.

I am close enough to completion that the dread has started to sink in. My neurotic, deeply pessimistic brain has shifted from, “Oh my God, I love the book that I’m writing and can’t wait to share it with the world” to “What if nobody cares? What I spent hundreds, even thousands of hours working on The Fractured Mirror and the only people interested in it pre-ordered it two years ago? What if publishing the book puts me into an even deeper, even darker, even more terrifying hole monetarily than I am in now?

I take some comfort in the knowledge that things don’t seem like they could get worse, which is the universe’s signal to make things way worse.

So I am taking my time. Instead of trying to get The Fractured Mirror out during the Christmas season so it can get that big holiday bump, which was my initial plan, I’m looking to publish it in the middle of March of next year.

I’m going to give myself a two month window between the book’s completion and making it commercially available on Amazon. And I’ve got something big in the works that will hopefully promote the hell out of a labor of love that’s insanely labor-intensive.

I’m excited and terrified to actually put out the book. I’m taking a huge chance on myself with The Fractured Mirror and my self-esteem hasn’t been this low since I was a high school student who lived in a group home.

I’m going to need a lot of help to make The Fractured Mirror a success. I’ve got to get out there and sell the hell out of it so that sells thousands of copies and makes a genuine cultural impact like The Weird Accordion to Al instead of selling hundreds of copies and being culturally invisible like The Joy of Trash.

This, unfortunately is the only way I know how to do things.

I need y’all to be my unofficial street team because the world is tired of me promoting my various business endeavors. It would mean much more if other people said nice things about me and my books and my website and my newsletter and my podcasts and me as a person. Like I said, I’m not feeling terribly confident right now, which is not a great place to be when you want to convince the world that you’ve got something wonderful they need to be a part of.

I want to give The Fractured Mirror every chance to succeed. That means that I will have to move out of my comfort zone and engage with a world that terrifies me.

You can alleviate some of that concern by pledging my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace or pre-ordering the book at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

I want to create a sense of excitement and anticipation for the book and I’ll need your assistance to do so. If the past six years have taught me anything it’s that I can’t make it on my own. I’m not even sure I can make it with considerable help but I’m going to do everything I can to make this magnum opus a commercial success well as a creative one. The book Felipe and myself are finishing will be great. I don’t doubt that. It’ll be smart and funny and informative and entertaining. I just don’t know if that will be enough.

I want the ultimate answer to “Should I have written The Fractured Mirror?” to be, “Hell yes! Why would you even ask?”

Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, my next book, a massive, 650 page exploration of the long and distinguished history of American movies about the film industry at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Check out The Joy of Trash: Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free, signed "Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book for free! Just 18.75, shipping and taxes included! Or, for just 25 dollars, you can get a hardcover “Joy of Positivity 3: Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” edition signed (by Felipe and myself) and numbered (to 50) copy with a hand-written recommendation from me within its pages. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind collectible!

Or you can buy The Joy of Trash from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Trash-Nathan-Definitive-Everything/dp/B09NR9NTB4/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= but why would you want to do that?

Check out my new Substack at https://nathanrabin.substack.com/

And we would love it if you would pledge to the site’s Patreon as well. https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace