The Political Devil Book Progress (almost done)

There is a lot that grad school doesn't teach you. Some programs don't teach you how to teach. Some don't teach you how to publish. How to present. How to write a book proposal. How to turn your dissertation into a book. How to create an index, get image permissions. There are a couple of books that offer some advice, but it's often a gap.

I defended my dissertation in October 2017.
In November I had a book contract.
I graduated in December.

Once I had the book contract I started a notebook for the book project. I divided it into chapters with tabs. For the next several months as I thought of things, revisions, additions, ideas, I would jot them down in the chapter they belonged in.
I did no writing other than this.

The whiteboard was again my guide. I jotted the main ideas for the chapter, then updated with Post-Its about word counts and pages. I knew the manuscript had to be longer than the diss, and while I thought the extra chapter would get me there, I was still a little nervous.

In May once school was out for the summer, I printed out the dissertation, and read through it all. I made copious notes. Which ended up being sort of a useless exercise. Kind of.

I read the whole thing. I did make notes, but this exercise proved to me, exposed to me, how the book would not be the diss. The dissertation also revealed that I knew what was at the heart of my argument all along. The subtitle was: Devilish Leaders, Demonic Parliament, and Diabolical Rebellion. The dissertation worked through chronology but my subtitle made me realize that the trends should go thematically. And that reoriented my entire thinking. I also knew that I was going to explicitly put back the folkloric work the English political devil does even though I'd been told to take it out from the diss.

In June I started with the new chapter I knew I needed to write, on the devil in English pamphlets, that would be the ending, culminating, chapter. I wanted to have as much time as possible to do this new work. The first version of the diss had a different version of a chapter about pamphlets.

In July I rewrote Chapter 1: Devilish Leaders. In August Chapter 2: Demonic Parliament which I changed to Fiendish Constructions. In September Chapter 3: Satanic Speech. In October Chapter 4: Diabolical Rebellion. This chapter took longer than I expected, but because I knew I only had the intro and conclusion to revisit in November I knew I had some leeway. Also, my contract said the manuscript was due 31 January, but I really wanted to get it to my editor before I went back to school, 3 January. But if I needed it, I knew I had a cushion.

The first thing I did was outline the whole book. At the beginning of each month I would revisit the outline for the chapter, adding, going through. Then I would draft the chapter. Then add scholarship. Then print out, read through, with the outline to track organization. Then final draft.

When I started drafting I knew I'd be reorganizing the material but still thought I'd be keeping a lot of what I had. I ended up throwing out most of it. Or rewriting so much as to be unrecognizable. I boiled things down to their most important aspect. I cut a lot of the dependence on other scholars' voices. I wrote clearly.

In many ways it was similar to when I wrote the second version of the dissertation. I know this material back and forth. I knew where things needed to go, how it needed to flow, what to cut, what wasn't needed. I knew what pages of what research filled which gaps.

I kept the bibliography at the end of each chapter at first. Once everything was done I transferred the chapters and bibliography to single documents.

I ripped out all the pages in my notebook that were addressed. Instead, I redid chapter tabs and wrote down throughlines, things to connect, include, based on the other chapters.

I took the beginning of December off for a couple of reasons. The first is I knew the last couple of weeks of school were going to be hectic- grades to post, exams to grade, the teacher's classes I was lesson planning and grading for. I also thought that taking a couple of weeks off from the book before reading the whole thing through for last looks would be good distance.

I have two weeks off for break, and I mapped out one chapter per day to read through, reading through all at once, with the table of contents, and throughline notes in front of me. I also have my notebook to make sure I add the notes I had. Once I've read through it all I'll then type up the notes. It was important for me to get into a flow and stay there.

As I read, the Post-Its on my monitor are consistency notes I need to double check with the whole manuscript.

I printed out the bibliography so I can check/add sources if I needed to.

Going through the Introduction took all day Saturday. It took me a while to get back into the groove of the book and frankly fighting the voices in my head that tell me I'm rubbish for thinking I could write a book. I procrasti-cleaned, rearranged furniture. It took all day.
Sunday Chapter One went well. So either it's really good, or I'm delusional. The work went better, and I was done by lunch.

Today Chapter Two is on deck. The chapters get progressively bigger, so the work day may get longer. But I don't have anything to do. I may go see a movie or read a book, but my time is mine, with just this to do.

It seems really weird that something that has taken up so much of my life is coming to an end. I know that once the manuscript is submitted there's still a lot of work to do, I'll start work on the index, start working on image permissions. It'll go out to peer reviewers, then I'll have those notes. Copyediting. But despite all that work, none of that will be equal to writing the book while teaching high school full time.

So I'm excited. This is big. And this book is good. And it does important work.