Falling in love (or at least like) with my book again (and an announcement!)
Dispatches from the AcWriMo field
Hi everyone,
November has been amazing so far, working with writers from all over the world who are rocking AcWriMo! We’re a third of the way through, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts about what the process has been like for me, and then check in again with an update at the end. If you’re writing, I’d love to hear how it’s going for you as well—in the comments, tell us what you’re working on and how it’s going!
First, an announcement!
I’m hosting a revision winter workshop the first two weeks in January! In my experience, people write a whole bunch of words in the lead up to the end of the year, turn their brains off for the holidays, get ready to teach in January, and then…nothing. The words they wrote just sit there as zombie projects on their computer, and never get revised or submitted.
If this sounds like you, start the new year off by talking revision strategies and making a plan to get things revised and out the door. I promise, it’ll be fun and useful. There’s even an option for to include discounted editing services in the package! I’ll send out an email with more details in the next week or so, but if this sounds like it might be up your ally, let’s work together!
AcWriMo Part One
The background
After the Women’s March in 2017, I was shocked when progressive protestors didn’t fade away, and instead made themselves part of the political landscape in every city in the country. Even as the New York Times was determined to visit every diner in America with an Obama-Trump voter at the table, I wanted to talk to different people – those who had made a four-year commitment to resisting Trump. So, I attended dozens of protests all over the country. I conducted hundreds of hours of interviews, including with 44 protestors I interviewed every year.
For the past five years, I’ve been writing this book as a love letter to the messy, complicated business of resisting Trumpism. I’ve interviewed Black Lives Matter organizers accusing old white women of coming out of retirement to suck all of the air out of the room, and immigration rights activists who struggled over the Families Belong Together protests. I interviewed activists who decided to focus on clean needle exchanges in their communities, and very moderate white women who joined Indivisible and make thousands of phone calls to get out the vote. And documenting these stories gave me something rare—actual hope in the future of progressive organizing in this country.
The dark times
In 2021, I sent my book proposal to a handful of academic publishers, and I don’t mind telling you I got a puzzled, if positive/lukewarm reception, but no contracts. A lot of “this is great, but…not for us. Try a popular press?” So I met with some agents, who were like “you’re an academic – why are you talking to us?”
“No one wants to read about Trump-anti-Trump isn’t selling,” I was told more than once (I’m not writing about Trump! I’m writing about hope in democracy!) And then I was depressed for a long time.
Along the way, I began compulsively reorganizing my book. I knew that the organization was the heart, the ethos of the book. I have had all the content for years, but without the spine, I didn’t have a book – I had a collection of anecdotes and rants, held together by theory. The publishers and agents were right – my little book didn’t know who it wanted to be.
The epiphany
About a month ago, as I was walking through my neighborhood, I realized I didn’t need the book for tenure or promotion anymore (the freedom I got from earning them and then deciding to walk away to try my hand at this editing thing). Armed with the knowledge that this book wasn’t for academic advancement, I started picturing who I did want to read it. What did I want the cover to be? Who did I imagine talking about it?
And friends, it all fell into place. A new title. A new thesis. A new vision for the book. (Want to know more details? Wait two weeks and I’ll fill you in!) But I needed to implement it.
The work - AcWriMo
Then came the hard part. I spent the first week of AcWriMo doing what essentially amounted to an autopsy of the old version of the book, creating a paragraph-by-paragraph reverse outline of the entire thing. It was, in a word, a terrible process.
Armed with my reverse outline, I then was able to spend Friday’s writing retreat delicately transplanting my old work into the new structure. The whole time, I kept my fingers crossed that this new version would meet the “balance test.” I needed the content chapters to be about the same length, within 5 or 10 percent or so. I had one chapter that didn’t make that cut, so I redistributed it, and now all of my chapters are within two pages of each other.
Over the past few days, I’ve rewritten drafts of three chapters…I’ve cut about 7000 words along the way, and now I have only one empirical chapter, the introduction, and the conclusion to go before I have what will resemble a real draft of this book.
The afterglow
Why am I telling you all of this? Because the other thing I realized on that walk is that I could just abandon the book at this point. I don’t need it professionally (in fact, the time I spend on it is time I’m not growing my editing business, a risky endeavor for freelancers like me). I almost certainly make more money editing than I ever will from this book.
But a funny thing has happened, this AcWriMo. I’ve realized I like this book again. I want to write it. I find myself puzzling over how to write different scenes in the car, smiling at the memory of different people I interviewed. Wanting to hear their opinion about the book. I haven’t felt like this in a long time about my project, which has felt more like my laundry situation—always around, but never done. It’s an optimism I usually associate with springtime, and not with election season, but here we are.
Now, it’ll get hard again. I know what steps are next, and there are a bunch of things I haven’t thought about that will start popping their heads up too. And I still need a book contract, so there’s that (My book is great! Someone should publish it!)
That’s all for right now - keep writing, and I’ll be back in your inboxes again soon!
Kelly
PS - My spring is starting to fill up with editing and coaching clients. If you want to work together in 2023, let’s set up a time to talk before the end of the year about your project!