As I tweeted last week, I've just started working on a book project. The book is simply titled 'Nonrepresentational Theory' and has been contracted to appear in Routledge's 'Key Ideas in Geography series'. I really like this series - it sits somewhere between research monograph and textbook, and I think that suites writing and NRT. I decided I wanted to do it after writing a couple of reference-type works on it (for the recent AAG encyclopaedia and for 'Oxford Bibliographies').
[Well, technically it is *another* book project - I've got another one that's on the go / has rumbling away in the background as time and motivation allows, but without any really target deadline. But this NRT one is different in that it's a self contained project, isn't emerging directly from papers etc, and is going to be my main focus for the foreseeable / until it's done...]
In an attempt to blog a bit again, I'm going to keep a bit of a running commentary on the writing of the book. In particular, I'm going to try to flag things that I'm trying to do in terms of writing process, if that's working or not, and anything really that comes up along the way. I'm not really going to say much about the content of the book (I think) though that'll depend on what I'm thinking as things unfold (the book isn't due until December 2018, after all...). Also, I've not idea how often I'll post anything....
At present I'm trying to do a few things a bit differently compared with my usual writing practice (and how the other book has slowly emerged)...
1) I've started by writing the Introduction. For my PhD thesis, that came joint last (along with the conclusion). In most cases (papers, chapters etc) I'll have sketches of this / will do some work to make sure I'm clear on what it is I'm trying to do, but mostly it won't be properly done until the end. For some reason, though, starting at the very start felt right here. I expect, though, that there'll be a fair bit of editing with that around a year from now... In general, the plan is to work through the book in a linear way. So, next will be a chapter on the history of the emergence of NRT. Then one of practice, then affect, then materiality, then landscape, then performance, then technology, the methods.
2) I'm trying very hard not to edit and tinker as I go. Again, my normal practice is to go over and over things along the way. I don't tend to work to a full draft then edit. Writing tends to come in fits and starts, and when it isn't coming I re-work stuff. Also, I'll often leave gaps of 'say something about x here' highlighted in square brackets to avoid getting bogged down on something. And then when I come back to it, I'll do some reworking of what's around it also. And then when I finally have a full draft, that gets re-drafted too. Here I'm trying to be more strict in writing something, leaving the odd square-bracket gap if I absolutely have to, but then move on until the draft is complete (and any gaps being filled without the concern for the rest around it). Thus far, it feels much more efficient and I've produced a fair bit in a small time. But I guess we'll see how that keeps up.
3) As part of 2) I've set my self a weekly word aim of 1,500 words. That's not very much given I'm basically on sabbatical now until February - I'd hope to be able to write 300 serviceable words a day without too much worry. And I don't generally struggle to write / worry too much about productivity on that front. However, I am also going to have some other stuff on in that time (including a trip to Perth, Australia) and I do intend to dip back into the other book project at times in the coming year. There's also one or two other paper project that are likely to require revision. So, to keep this book in focus, and to try to sustain that, I've produced a spreadsheet that counts up through those 1,500 word weeks until the total limit is hit. So, for example, I'll be able to look 15 weeks in to see that I should be at 22,500 words and gauge how things are from that. I'm adding the week-by-week tally as I go to show where I am / remind myself. The plus/minus thing, I hope, will help me push through. And I'm aiming to have a full draft ready well in advance of the publisher deadline (i.e. 6 months) to allow from a proper re-draft at that stage.
4) I'm finally trying to push towards digitising my print outs of journal articles. Now I don't print anything - its all PDFs that I read and annotate on my iPad using Goodreader, sync'd with Dropbox. However, I only started doing that maybe 5 or 6 years ago. So, I've still got tattered, heavily annotated papers from my MSc that I read as part of JD Dewsbury's "performative spaces" module relevant to the book. I've even got an original 'off print' (when authors got those...) of Hayden Lorimer's 2005 'more-than representational' Progress Report. He gave it to me after he mentioned it in one of his 'Celtic Geographies' lecturers at Glasgow. I was really interested but the library didn't yet have that issue of Progress on the shelf when I went immediately after that lecture (this was when e-journals were only just appearing, I think). And there's also a bunch from during my PhD / the NRT reading group at Bristol / my first couple of years lecturing. Given I'm largely working at home (or in Oz) over the coming 5 months, I want access to all of the relevant stuff within that without a) carrying it all home, b) realising I haven't carried something home when I'm in the midst of writing / making trips into my work office, or c) needing to download things without my annotations and so more fully re-reading where I might not have to. It'll also mean I can have a massive re-cycling fest and clear out a lot of space in my work office as I go...
I'll leave it there for now and see what strikes me next...
[Well, technically it is *another* book project - I've got another one that's on the go / has rumbling away in the background as time and motivation allows, but without any really target deadline. But this NRT one is different in that it's a self contained project, isn't emerging directly from papers etc, and is going to be my main focus for the foreseeable / until it's done...]
In an attempt to blog a bit again, I'm going to keep a bit of a running commentary on the writing of the book. In particular, I'm going to try to flag things that I'm trying to do in terms of writing process, if that's working or not, and anything really that comes up along the way. I'm not really going to say much about the content of the book (I think) though that'll depend on what I'm thinking as things unfold (the book isn't due until December 2018, after all...). Also, I've not idea how often I'll post anything....
At present I'm trying to do a few things a bit differently compared with my usual writing practice (and how the other book has slowly emerged)...
1) I've started by writing the Introduction. For my PhD thesis, that came joint last (along with the conclusion). In most cases (papers, chapters etc) I'll have sketches of this / will do some work to make sure I'm clear on what it is I'm trying to do, but mostly it won't be properly done until the end. For some reason, though, starting at the very start felt right here. I expect, though, that there'll be a fair bit of editing with that around a year from now... In general, the plan is to work through the book in a linear way. So, next will be a chapter on the history of the emergence of NRT. Then one of practice, then affect, then materiality, then landscape, then performance, then technology, the methods.
2) I'm trying very hard not to edit and tinker as I go. Again, my normal practice is to go over and over things along the way. I don't tend to work to a full draft then edit. Writing tends to come in fits and starts, and when it isn't coming I re-work stuff. Also, I'll often leave gaps of 'say something about x here' highlighted in square brackets to avoid getting bogged down on something. And then when I come back to it, I'll do some reworking of what's around it also. And then when I finally have a full draft, that gets re-drafted too. Here I'm trying to be more strict in writing something, leaving the odd square-bracket gap if I absolutely have to, but then move on until the draft is complete (and any gaps being filled without the concern for the rest around it). Thus far, it feels much more efficient and I've produced a fair bit in a small time. But I guess we'll see how that keeps up.
3) As part of 2) I've set my self a weekly word aim of 1,500 words. That's not very much given I'm basically on sabbatical now until February - I'd hope to be able to write 300 serviceable words a day without too much worry. And I don't generally struggle to write / worry too much about productivity on that front. However, I am also going to have some other stuff on in that time (including a trip to Perth, Australia) and I do intend to dip back into the other book project at times in the coming year. There's also one or two other paper project that are likely to require revision. So, to keep this book in focus, and to try to sustain that, I've produced a spreadsheet that counts up through those 1,500 word weeks until the total limit is hit. So, for example, I'll be able to look 15 weeks in to see that I should be at 22,500 words and gauge how things are from that. I'm adding the week-by-week tally as I go to show where I am / remind myself. The plus/minus thing, I hope, will help me push through. And I'm aiming to have a full draft ready well in advance of the publisher deadline (i.e. 6 months) to allow from a proper re-draft at that stage.
4) I'm finally trying to push towards digitising my print outs of journal articles. Now I don't print anything - its all PDFs that I read and annotate on my iPad using Goodreader, sync'd with Dropbox. However, I only started doing that maybe 5 or 6 years ago. So, I've still got tattered, heavily annotated papers from my MSc that I read as part of JD Dewsbury's "performative spaces" module relevant to the book. I've even got an original 'off print' (when authors got those...) of Hayden Lorimer's 2005 'more-than representational' Progress Report. He gave it to me after he mentioned it in one of his 'Celtic Geographies' lecturers at Glasgow. I was really interested but the library didn't yet have that issue of Progress on the shelf when I went immediately after that lecture (this was when e-journals were only just appearing, I think). And there's also a bunch from during my PhD / the NRT reading group at Bristol / my first couple of years lecturing. Given I'm largely working at home (or in Oz) over the coming 5 months, I want access to all of the relevant stuff within that without a) carrying it all home, b) realising I haven't carried something home when I'm in the midst of writing / making trips into my work office, or c) needing to download things without my annotations and so more fully re-reading where I might not have to. It'll also mean I can have a massive re-cycling fest and clear out a lot of space in my work office as I go...
I'll leave it there for now and see what strikes me next...
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