On writing a book

Hi everyone,

Before life moves on and I forget these days of writing the book about Participatory action research, I thought I should take a moment to reflect on the rythm writing sets up in life. I can write this today because I had a good push at the beginning and succesfully organized what I have just been working on and what will come next. Some days perhaps my story would be different (smile).

I use the wisdom of one of the many authors I have read on writing (can't remember which one) who said to write first thing in the morning and that he had learned that from a woman who, when at a writers retreat got up, got coffee and hit the keyboard. I find that, in general, not everyday, that I am best if I do the same thing - there seems to be an almost magical period of time when my mind is relaxed and the things I write make sense - this is when writing is fun.

When writing is not fun is when I am slogging through the references that Margie has marked for me - reading, reflecting and then coalescing the thoughts of others (with appropriate citations of course) to transfer them to the new context of the type of research methodology about which we are writing. This work may be fun, as when I muse over some new idea and find that I can make connections I have not made before, or it can be extremely painful, as when I type things into a rough draft wondering if they make any sense at all.

Have I had times when my writing did not make any sense? Absolutely, in fact whole sections of the first draft were pretty senseless, especially compared to where we are now. Where we are, by the way is with Chapters 1-6 at the reviewers and 7 and 8 in final draft and 9 in rough draft. Mostly done???!!! I don't know what the reviewers will do to us, but I can't imagine it will be as substantive a change as we saw the first time.

I also have to say something here about the great team effort this book is. There are three of us whose name will be on the cover and one who will have the majority of the acknowledgements. I write the rough draft and figure out the basic content, Margie edits that draft and, at the other end of the process, labels the figures and tables, takes care of permissions, works on the glossary of terms and looks after the fine details. Alan Bucknam does the graphics (the one above is my favorite), reads the draft just before the reviewers and brings the eye of someone totally outside of this work to the product. His objectivity and support are refreshing. Tracesea Slater edits the draft in the middle, after I've had a go twice with Margies edits in the middle.

After two and a half months of writing six days a week I broke down on Chapter 10. I expected it to be a walk in the park and instead it was a black hole. I understand the term writers block and have moved on to work on conference presentations and I'll come back to Chapter 10 after a break.

All for now,
Alana