I have to add to what I wrote in my post What I’m doing when I’m working on my book.
This week I woke up one morning before my alarm and started thinking about a snag that I kept struggling with. I had been writing about how we live in a culture that we didn’t choose to be born into that induces us to violate our values. Most of us can’t make it past breakfast without using some plastic and burning some fossil fuels that will hurt others.
I think people don’t like being confronted with violating their values, even when it’s obvious, everyone knows they’re doing it, and it’s the only path to stop themselves. I knew I could communicate this message in a way people would appreciate. I felt I had to build up to it.
Then that morning this week, I saw how to introduce the concept. Beyond how to, I saw that it’s closer to the core of the book. I could start with it. From this perspective, building up to it would seem like trying to soften the reader up. By starting with it, I show that it’s what the book is about, as well as the movement to follow. As clearly as it seems now that I should put this passage near the beginning, It’s not obvious that I could start with something so direct and hard to accept. I could only have concluded so after finding how to express it, which could only come by trying to express it other ways first and learning different approaches.
I had to do the reps.
I practice what I preach: Do the reps, get the results. Don’t do the reps, don’t get the results.
This week’s early-morning reflection wasn’t my first time finding a deeper layer inside, moving something from later in the book to the front. Much of writing the book is turning out to be reversing the order. Also figuring out what actually belongs in the front and what I can move backward or drop. At various times, every part feels like it should go first.
