Following the example of my colleague Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, who announced her pregnancy on her blog Tuesday before telling us at work about it, I’d like to share with Curious Capitalist readers the news that no, I’m still not done with my stinkin’ book manuscript!
There, that feels better. (A tiny bit better.) Now I can go tell my editor.
If it weren’t for the evidence I see every day on my bookshelves, I might start believing that finishing a book simply isn’t possible. My book, The Myth of the Rational Market, is a history of the rise and fall of the efficient market hypothesis (it hasn’t completely fallen, but it sure ain’t what it used to be). I had really thought I could really get it all done by Christmas (after previously having thought I could get it all done by the end of last January, the middle of 2006, Christmas 2005, etc.). But I’m stuck on the second-to-last and third-to-last chapters, where I try to explain the big developments in academic finance in the 1990s and early 2000s and weave them together with events on Wall Street. The basic story is that academic belief in the stock market’s rationality continued to ebb while public confidence in it seemed to grow until everything came crashing down in 2001 or so. But my account of it is both overly detailed and at the same time incomplete. And to be honest there are a couple of other chapters that need some major tweaks, too. How can this be? It’s been four years since I started seriously working on this thing. Why am I not done? What kind of loser am I? Aaaaaaaaargh!
There, I feel much better now. Happy New Year to all of you and I promise, no more posts about the progress of the book until it’s done.