Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction and Get It Published, by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato
I just finished reading this book, which is already 10 years old, but still offers some excellent advice for writing dissertations and/or turning your dissertation into a book. Even for more advanced scholars who are trying to write for an audience outside of their core discipline for the first time, this book offer some great tips and thoughts about the writing process. I found the section on “using narrative tension” particularly useful.
NEW YORK—According to a growing consensus of U.S. poets, shadows—inky sharp as a raven’s beak—meet the sullen bloat of clouds, their hues a pallid loam, each a dancer, each alone, like dusty charcoal on an ashen brow.
This prestigious European institute in Halle, Germany produces some of the most cutting edge ethnographic scholarship. They also have a wonderful working paper series: http://www.eth.mpg.de/cms/en/publications/
So I’ve been trying to read my manuscript today, and I am depressed. It is awful. It is embarrassingly awful. There were at least three or four moments today when I decided that I should just scrap this whole project. There is another book project that I should be working on, one which is based on substantive ethnographic content. I know how to do substantive ethnographic content. I don’t know what the heck I am doing with this thing.
Thus the major drawback of the SFD is the insecurity that can overwhelm you upon reading it. The sinking feeling that you just suck, that you are wasting your time. I suppose a really bad SFD could paralyze you - prevent you from ever putting finger to keyboard again. You have to have a tough enough ego to withstand your own criticism. That is not always easy.
But I suppose the point of the SFD is that it is supposed to be a piece of crap. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be an SFD. The SFD is by definition awful. Instead of whingeing about what an awful writer I am, I should really get back to the tedious and time consuming process of creating the SSD (or “shitty second draft”).
Best piece of advice for trying to get a new book off the ground, courtesy of Anne Lamott.
Write a “shitty first draft” (hereafter SFD).
Lamott strongly recommends free writing the first draft of whatever project you are working on: dissertation, article, book, cover letter, etc. She thinks that allowing yourself to produce a really bad SFD is actually the critical first step in any project. I have to say that I agree with her. I have about 250 pages of crap that I am trying to edit, and that is going to be a ton of work. But 250 pages is 250 pages, and by allowing myself to write an SFD I was able to get a lot of ideas on paper in a relatively short period of time.
I think writing SFDs is essential for dissertations, since graduate students tend to get cerebrally constipated. Even more experienced academic writers need to find inspiration in their work (especially if it is going to be readable). The SFD allows the creative juices to flow because you are the only one who will ever see it.
