#34: Starting Your Academic Book? Do This First

If you’re starting to write an academic book, you probably have a lot of questions. One of them might be, “how exactly do I get started?” You have a lot of options, but some paths are going to prove to be more productive than others. If you want to start in a way that sets you up for success throughout your writing journey, then this episode is for you.

In today’s episode, Jane is going to discuss three common approaches scholars take when starting to write their academic books, and the pitfalls of each approach. Then, she’ll show you a better way to start your book that will give you greater clarity and a sense of direction throughout the writing process. Even if you’ve already started your book but you feel like you’re writing in circles or having a lot of false starts, you can use this approach to get back on track. 

Further listening: Episode 24: Behind the Scenes: The Book Brilliance Walkthrough 

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Transcript

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If you're writing an academic book, you probably have a lot of questions. One of them might be: how exactly do I get started? You have a lot of options, but some paths are going to be more productive than others. If you want to start in a way that sets you up for success all along your writing journey, then this episode is for you. Let's get into it. Welcome to Academic Book Writing Simplified. I'm your host, Jane Joanne Jones, a writing coach and developmental editor who's here to give you some tough love about the way you write. This podcast is for women and non-binary scholars in academia who are writing academic books, but feel as if the process is a little or a lot like a mystery. If you're ready to trade your confusion and frustration for ease, clarity, and purpose, you're in the right place. Let's head into today's episode. Hello, hello. I hope you're all doing well today. Now, this episode is being released midsummer, so I'm guessing some listeners have successfully defended dissertations and might be starting new positions. So if that's you, congratulations. And this transition comes with new expectations. And if you're listening to a podcast called Academic Book Writing Simplified, then I bet one of those expectations is writing a book. But whether you're starting a book based on your dissertation or starting a book that has nothing to do with your dissertation, it's important to create a strong foundation. Yet, there's often an impulse among writers to fast forward to other parts of the book because they seem more productive or easier than what really works, which I'm going to tell you about in a bit. But first, I'm going to discuss some common ways that folks start their books and why I think these ways are actually unhelpful. So let's talk about them. There are three of them. The first one for you people who have finished a dissertation is rereading your dissertation, hoping that it's going to give you some insight into getting started with your book. It's not. It doesn't. Let's just be honest. You already know it's in it because you spent years writing it. There is nothing in it that's surprising to you. I think people go back to reread it because they have the hope that something is going to jump out of them and provide some clarity for how to get started with a book. Even if you're a person who believes you wrote your dissertation like a book, which if you've been listening to this podcast, you know I don't think that's a thing. But even if you're a person who believes you wrote your dissertation like a book, this isn't going to happen. Nothing's going to jump off the page at you. Okay. But a lot of people start by this because, you know, the dissertation's there. It feels comfortable. It feels familiar. And it is going to inform the book. And there is a way to reread it that I'm going to talk about. But just going back and looking at it over and over again, not helpful. So don't start there. Don't start by pulling up a dissertation file. Number two, writing an article. And a lot of people start their book journey with an article. And this can be a good way to test the waters for your idea, especially if it's a second book and you haven't had a lot of opportunities for mentors or colleagues to offer you their feedback. It can also be a strategic move if you're a junior scholar and you need a publication on your CB. And those are fine reasons to do it. But what I want to emphasize here is that this article is not going to provide the insight on your book that you're looking for. And here's why. The article is likely going to be a sub-argument of your book based on a narrow slice of your empirical data. It's not going to be a snapshot of the big picture of your book because it's it's an article, it's short. Nor should it be because that's your book. So this article, while professionally strategic, it could be useful for you in that regard. It's not going to give you this intellectual insight on your book that you're looking for, because it's not giving your peers what they need to offer you that feedback. Okay. So we've talked about rereading the dissertation and starting with an article. Next, starting to write where you feel the most confident. This can be good for your ego and your motivation, but there's a lot of risk here. Suppose, for instance, just for instance, that you start writing with what you envision to be the fourth chapter of the book and you make some good progress. Then you have a conversation with a mentor, a peer, developmental editor, whoever, and you decide, hey, I'm gonna reorganize this manuscript. Like I need to reconceptualize this book. Suddenly, that fourth chapter isn't looking as great as it did, right? It might only have a few sections relevant to your new organization, and you suddenly have a lot that you have to, but don't want to cut. And this is hard. Like cutting things that you spend time writing is sometimes it's it could be painful, right? But you wrote this chapter or started writing, drafting this chapter, without an idea of what the book was about. So now the chapter seems really unhelpful and not relevant. Now, sometimes, let's be clear, sometimes this is a necessary part of the revision process, right? Like there are going to be sections you have to trim or cut altogether. That happens. You don't want the reason for this cutting to be that you got ahead of yourself and started working without a plan. So in my book coaching and editing programs, many folks join and we always ask them, you know, how much do you have done on your book? Like what's the status of your book? And they'll say, I have a few chapters drafted. Great. But then when we ask, you know, like what is the argument of the book? Like, what is the overarching through line? There's there's no confidence, there's no certainty there. And that's okay because we help them find it. But they have no real sense of what the book is about. And I hear, you know, well, you know, I'm just I'm just writing the chapters. Okay, but how are you writing chapters if you don't have a satisfactory overarching argument? This is like getting in the car with someone and starting to drive and driving before you agree on where you want to go. You can only get so far, and you might even have to turn around. Now, I know that when you started drafting that chapter, it felt good. It was rewarding. You were watching that word count go up. You were excited. You're like, yeah, I know what I'm talking about. Like, I have this good evidence. I'm telling the story. But the usefulness of those words is just as important, if not more important, than the quantity of those words. Okay. So this approach of starting where you feel most confident, it can ultimately end up in a lot of work that has to be redone. So it's not, it's the third thing that I don't really suggest starting with. Now, because I don't suggest starting with these approaches, it does not mean you don't ever get to do them. But here's what I recommend, and here's what I teach in my programs. Start with an overview, a framework, and an outline. I've talked about each of these before on the podcast. Specifically, I think in episode 24. But I'll go through them briefly here. In a book overview, you focus on the argument. Well, let's start. Start with the research question, right? Like the puzzle that's motivating you, the argument, your approach. Some of us call it a methodology, and an answer to the so what question, your significance, right? You start with that, ideally written in one paragraph, similar to what you would see on the back of a book. Remember, on the back of a book, it's very developed, the book's done. So yours isn't going to look exactly like that, but it's something you can use that model. So you have your overview. You have a sense of what the puzzle is, how you're answering it, your argument, why it matters, how you got there. Okay? That's the overview. Framework is where you talk about the literatures and the disciplines you're engaging. Who are you talking to? Who are your conversation partners? Why are they your conversation partners? What are the important terms, concepts, and theories that you are mobilizing and using to explain what is going on in your book? That is a very short way of describing how I teach frameworks on my programs. And finally, an outline. We all know what an outline is. Preferably for the entire book, right? So you can see how the chapters fit together, how your story is unfolding, how the logic holds across the length of the manuscript. That's very important. You don't get into that scenario where you're in that chapter four that I mentioned, you're like, this doesn't fit anywhere. You have an outline, less likely to happen, or at least not to that degree. Now, the beauty of having these three assets is that you can then go back to one of the approaches that I told you not to start with, because now you're not starting with them. You started with the overview framework and outline. For instance, you can go back to your dissertation and strategically look for the parts that support your improved book argument because it is not going to be the same exactly as your dissertation argument. So you can go back to your dissertation and strategically look for the parts that support your improved book argument and framework. You can pick the article that you want to write based on a couple of questions, like I want to engage interest in the specific aspect of my book, or I really want early expert feedback on how I'm using this concept. And I want to seek that feedback through fleshing it out in an article. You can also start with one of those body chapters. We can go back to that magical chapter four that I keep talking about. Once you have your outline, because you'll know how it fits into the book as a whole. Okay. You won't just be starting out of nowhere. You'll be starting chapter four knowing what's happening in chapter three and what's happening in chapter five, and also how chapter four supports the larger argument of the book. Right. And then you can start there if that's where you feel most confident. For instance, if that's a chapter you want to put in your proposal packet. Or if you just feel, you know, I could probably get this chapter done in a good amount of time, and it'll be nice for me to have this drafted and done. I want to start with something more straightforward for me. Whatever your reason. You don't have to write your book in an order, in sequential order. All right. So now that we've talked about these, one of the objections I often hear is that people say, well, this is a lot of work, and it's not writing. You're like, I just want to get into the writing. This is writing. It's it's like it's literally writing because you're putting words on the page, but it's also writing in the sense that you are thinking through the most, the most important ideas and structure of your book. Okay? This is really important work, and it is tempting to rush, to put down like the quickest version you can, and then get into writing because you think that's where all the thinking is really going to happen, or where all the action is really going to happen. And this prep work is kind of just like perfunctory. And I would tell you it is not. It is the work that is going to make everything easier. Well, actually, simpler. It's still going to be hard. You know, no one's telling you writing a book is going to be easy. But it's going to be, you're going to have more clarity. You're going to have more of a direction in what to do. So, yes, it's still going to be a challenge in a good way, like it's going to be intellectually challenging, but you're not going to feel stuck in the mud or like you're going in circles. Because you're going to have this organizational apparatus, I like to think of it as, which is your argument framework and outline. It's going to keep you organized and keep you on track. So if you're starting a book, or honestly, even if you're midway through and you haven't done this and you're still feeling a little like, oh, I'm not sure what this book is about. I don't think I have a through line, or, you know, like I'm still not clear and like how these chapters fit together. Go back and do this.

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Okay.

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Go back and work on thinking through like what is the argument? What is the so what? And am I kind of illustrating that so what throughout the text? Right? Just because you didn't start from here in the beginning doesn't mean you can't go back and do it now. Okay. So if you're first getting started, do this. If you're midway through and you feel a little, you know, in the woods, do it. And even if you're almost done, having this one paragraph can be really helpful for pitching the book, for telling people your book is coming out, and they ask you, well, what's it about? You can give them like this quick summary, right? When that back matter of the book, I don't know if it's called backmatter, but you know, like the back of the book when that when you have to write that, it could help you with that. So it's even worth doing the overview, at least, even if you're in the final stages. Okay. So, like I said, if you want to hear more about overview framework and outline, go to episode 24, I believe. I will put the episode number in the show notes and get started on this process. And if you need some help with this process, I'm going to have something for you in the next podcast episode. And you can also, of course, subscribe to the newsletter where you'll learn about it first. All right. I hope this episode, as always, was helpful for you. And in the meantime, be well, and I will see you in the next episode. Take care. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Remember, writing an academic book is challenging, but that doesn't mean you have to overcomplicate it. If you liked what you heard in today's episode, please leave a review. This helps get the word out about the podcast so more people will listen and we can continue the conversation. Take care and tune in for our next episode.