How to write a philosophy book - the monograph as laboratory

This is a guest post by Donovan Schaefer, University of Pennsylvania

I’ve always thought writing was strange, and writing a book is the strangest of all. A book project is like building a little planet of words from scratch. It’s disorienting and exhilarating at once.

Common sense says that writing is a transcription of what’s in our heads. But that’s wrong. We write to figure out what we think. It’s a laboratory, not data entry. The intuitions that we have in mind about how pieces of information fit together look different when they’ve taken form in a document. Or, put another way, when we write we realize that our watery sense of how an argument will play out has to be given more definition and structure once it actually hits the page. In this sense, writing is problem-solving.

This is strange enough with an article, but book-length writing takes the dizzying self-surveying of one’s own mind and draws it out in extremis. The book spools out, folds back in on itself, becomes a sort of organism, with the different parts and components demanding to be connected and synced up just so.

This is part of the reason why rewriting existing material (from articles or book chapters) can be a mixed bag. On the one hand, the work is there and done. On the other hand, the milieu of the book changes how the material needs to be oriented. This shift is likely to be subtle rather than major, with each paragraph needing to be brought into alignment with the project of the book (which can’t not be different from the project of the article). I find the re-alignment work of bringing an existing piece of writing into the system of the book is always more than I expect it to be. That isn’t to say it isn’t worth it, but it takes a certain kind of headspace that’s different from writing or even ordinary editing. And the further I am from that initial piece of writing, the more likely I find the reworking taking up a disproportionate amount of time and energy.

As Max Weber writes, “[i]deas occur to us when they please, not when it pleases us. The best ideas do indeed occur to one’s mind in the way in which Ihering describes it: when smoking a cigar on the sofa; or as Helmholtz states of himself with scientific exactitude: when taking a walk on a slowly ascending street; or in a similar way.”

This haunting by one’s own thoughts seems to be proportionate to one’s level of immersion in writing. You feel it with an article, but it goes overboard with a book. Coming up with a system for catching these ideas when they fly by is indispensable for me. I have notepads everywhere I go (including by my bedside). Even if it seems so obvious that I don’t see how I could possibly forget it, I force myself to write it down anyway.

One of the strangest parts of writing a book is that the concentrated writing changes you as a writer even as you’re writing. I find I get a stronger feel for my own style (in that moment), my own limitations, and my own methods as I work. Besides, so much of style is about systematization. A stylistic device used once is a tic, used twice is a motif, and used three times is a statement. Writing long-form lets you build that interior in a way that you can’t with an article.

So for all of those reasons, and all other things being equal, I think there’s a strong case to be made for waiting until late in the process before contacting a publisher. The project of a book takes on definition as you work—a lot of definition—and the best-developed version of my understanding of the book as a whole is going to be my best argument to a press for why it should be published. A big part of this argument, I’ve found, is how well the book interlaces with the publisher’s existing list. The stronger my sense of what the book is about, the better able I am to make the case.

Of course, we don’t often have the luxury of writing books how we want. We need to deal with external assessors like department chairs or REFs or job searches or tenure and promotion committees, all of which place a premium on book contracts. Even so, the process of writing the proposal and articulating what the book is about in précis form to publishers (not to mention partners, friends, colleagues) can be an excellent exercise for bringing the work into sharper definition. Besides, a book is never really finished. Sometimes the artifice of bringing the work forward—even before it feels ready—can be turned to your advantage.

Comments

[PhD candidate]

Thank you for this post, it is a lovely description of the writing process. I've been thinking lately about how I might turn my dissertation into a book, and this is really helpful.

[Michael Barkasi]

I agree. Thanks for the post. It's well put.

[Martin Lenz]

Wonderful piece - thank you!