This is in an area where I’ve picked up quite a few tips over the years. As always with such things your mileage may vary and there is no right way to go about writing a manuscript. Getting advice from a publisher about writing is rather like getting advice from a Catholic priest about sustaining a happy marriage: we’ve never done it ourselves and yet we spend our professional lives trying to help other people do it. With those caveats out of the way, I hope you’ll find at least some of these useful…
1) Work out where and when you can write
This is a question of both time and space, which are interrelated – where do you need to be in order to write, and when can you be there?
Scholarly writing often requires a more dedicated space than fiction writing, because there is a much more frequent need to check sources and refer to other documents. Still, it’s worth recognising what kind of space you find most conducive to writing. This might be the same space where you write shorter pieces, or you might find that your book manuscript requires greater concentration and thus more isolation.
As with several of these tips, it’s about knowing yourself and how you work best. The joy of writing can be that it is a kind of work that you can do almost anywhere, but be realistic about where will work for you. If you can do odd bits while on trains, planes or (as I often do) while supervising your children in the park, then great. But if you need silence, a specific familiar space, or a desk laid out with all of your supporting materials in reach, then make sure you set aside time where you can have those things.
2) Make a plan, and amend it when you divert from it
To some extent, you probably laid out a schedule with your publisher when you proposed your book, and may have amended it as you agreed your contract and delivery deadline. It’s important to have a plan, and it’s also important to recognise that if – as is very likely – you end up not following it to the letter, you adjust your plan to fit the facts.
There are a couple of reasons why this is important. First, it helps you feel in control of your own work, even as you recognise that you have to adapt to inevitably changing circumstances. Second, it keeps the overall picture of your manuscript in your view, even while you’re having to focus day to day on whichever part you are working on at the time. Third, it helps you to give clear and realistic answers to your publisher when they ask you how the manuscript is coming along.
On this last point, I don’t need to labour here too much on how important this is to publishers. Suffice to say that a manuscript arriving represents both quite a significant glut of work for them, and that it is the major precursor to fixing the publication date for your book. It’s very much in your own interests for your publisher to have a realistic idea of when your manuscript will arrive.
3) Start with the easiest bits first
This is a piece of advice that I know many authors I’ve worked with over the years have found helpful. “Bits” here might be chapters, but they might be smaller portions even than that.
If you’re adapting existing material then often starting with the parts that need the fewest changes will be simplest. Alternatively, you might want to leave those to one side for a bit while you get going with the new material that you’re writing from scratch and where you have more freedom to just write.
If you’re essentially writing everything fresh then you might want to dive into your core arguments in detail. Then you can zoom out and write your introductory and concluding sections once you have the perspective of having written these meatier parts. Conversely, you might prefer to draft an introduction (nothing stops you rewriting it later) so that you’ve established your stakes clearly in your own head before getting to the detail.
The most important thing is to get writing. To find whichever angle of approach world for you so that you get something down on paper (or on screen) sooner rather than later. If one approach is difficult, try another. It is almost always better to think about writing as you write, than to try and get all the thinking done before you start.
4) Keep the stakes clear
This is one of those writing tips that applies equally to almost any kind of writing. You want it to be as clear to your reader as possible what is at stake in your text, whether it is a technical manual, a philosophical treatise, a murder mystery, or a bodice-ripping romance.
When it comes to scholarly writing this often means you need to ensure your readers understand why your experiment matters – what are the implications of rejecting your alternative hypothesis? Or if you’re writing a more discursive argument, what difference does it make whether you are right or wrong? Scholarly writing can sometimes tend to get stuck in the weeds, or to mix metaphors, to become fixated on the bark of the trees and forget about the forest.
This is all the more important when you’re trying to write for a less specialised readership. To other specialists on your particular research path the significance of your outcomes may seem self-evident, but for even other scholarly readers with adjacent specialisms, it may not be obvious why this matters.
Incidentally, this is where editors can be really valuable. It’s often our job to be the person asking the dumb questions, saying “yes, but so what?” or “sorry what exactly does this mean?” It’s where our relative ignorance can be an asset.
5) Don’t be afraid to ask for help
It’s wise never to underestimate how much help it can be to talk through an obstacle you’re facing with somebody else. That applies to all sorts of things far more important than finishing your manuscript on time, but it certainly does apply.
There are a number of options you may have here, partners and friends are often really helpful if you mainly just need to verbalise something and feel like someone is listening. They may not need to have any real – or at least not in detail – understanding of the issue in question, but the act of trying to explain the difficulty to them will often help you to untangle it.
Clearly where you really do need highly informed feedback, what you need is to find a colleague who knows your field reasonably well, with whom you can either talk the problem through in detail, or perhaps get them to read part of your manuscript and give you feedback. If you don’t have a suitable colleague you can approach, it’s worth asking your publisher if they can engage someone.
For other issues, perhaps relating to choices in style, or changes in your direction, or simply getting some reassurance that your manuscript so far is as readable as you want it to be, your editor may be able to help. Editors are usually not subject specialists, and very rarely will your editor be an expert in your particular topic. What they are usually good at is reading quickly, analysing the style and structure of a text, and providing feedback on these matters. Not all publishers will allow their editors the time to work on these things with you in detail, but many do. Certainly here at Tithebarn Press it is a priority to provide this kind of support to authors who want it. We editors won’t be able to fix everything for you, but often we will be able to help you get back on track through the forest if you have become lost among the trees.
That’s it from us for this week, hopefully if you’ve read this far you’ve found at least some of these tips helpful. If this update has made you feel ready to take on a new book project and you’d like to discuss it with us, do get in touch at simon.bates@tbarnpress.com .
