A Story About The Making Of My Book ‘I Hate Running and You Can Too’

This book turns three years old this week: [Photo of I Hate Running and You Can Too book] a quick story about how I made it: I wanted to make a concise, fun, illustrated book about running. But how “concise” could a book really be? (Typically books are between 50,000 and 110,000 words) I needed a model. I grabbed Austin Kleon’s book, Steal Like An Artist, off my shelf. [PHOTO OF STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST] It’s 152 pages, with illustrations. But how many words were in those 152 pages? How many illustrations did it have? How many quotes from other people? I called Austin Kleon. Just kidding. I don’t know Austin Kleon. But I know he has better things to do than answer ridiculous questions about the word count of his book(s). I bought a Kindle copy of Steal Like an Artist. And then I typed the entire book into a Word document, with screenshots of the drawings, I highlighted all the quotes in one color and all the anecdotes in another color. (I’m sure there’s an easier way to do this, but I couldn’t figure it out—plus I think I at least subconsciously wanted a little bit of Steal Like an Artist’s DNA to end up in my book) It was 9,514 words, in 10 chapters, with 61 quotes and 35 illustrations. It’s one of the shortest books I’ve ever read—but also one of the most impactful. (in fewer that 10,000 words!) So I loosely modeled the structure of I Hate Running and You Can Too on that. It ended up being closer to 14,000 words, has 60+ illustrations, and a bunch of quotes, from Haruki Murakami, Cardi B, Seth Godin, Bernie Mac, and … Austin Kleon. Also, at least three people have gotten a version of the illustration from page 138 permanently tattooed on their bodies.