As any regular reader of this blog will know, I’ve been working on The Distracted People of Digital Capitalism for over three years. I’ve made little progress in that time and my reliable line “I’m working on a book about distraction but I keep getting distracted” has begun to be depressing. But for the last year, the argument of the book has seemed fully worked out to me.
I’ve written about 20,000 words of long form writing for the book and I’ve posted 1721 blog posts in the various categories associated with the project. Even allowing for a high rate of cross-categorisation, suggesting 500 blog posts across the multiple categories, it’s still 250,000 words at an estimated average of 500 words per posts. Obviously there are some large block quotes amongst that but it still means I’ve written upwards of 150,000 words for a book which by this point I expect will only be 150-200 pages.
Finishing it will be as much condensing what I have written as writing new material. Perhaps this is the problem. I am literally carrying this book around inside my mind and at this point I’m desperate to get it out.
Mark,
This sounds like the first year of doctoral studies when a decent and supportive supervisor would say, “Stop carrying it around in your head – you must start writing.” But you have. Perhaps talking about it with others is draining the impulse to pull together what you have written into a cohesive whole that ‘looks’ more like a tangible book.
Good luck!
Thanks, I think it’s definitely not helping but I think the main problem is lack of time coupled with agreeing to do papers and chapters which I’m really not committed to. I’ve finally realised I need to stop doing these things if I’m ever going to get the book finished