I have written a dozen or two introductions to my book. Never do I consider any of them practice. Each feels perfect as I conceive of it before writing. I take care to write each one as best I can. As I write, I think it will draw the reader in, engage them, and inspire.
Then as I write more, I realize there’s more to it. I have to explain. Try as I might to avoid including anything unnecessary, I find it doesn’t work. I keep trying to see if I can through editing it improve it. I work with it for days, weeks, even a month.
Next thing I know, I’m lying awake in bed, a new approach coming to me. I know that soon enough I’ll rename the file, move it in the old drafts directory, and start the new version. The new version always starts with pen to paper. I feel less between me and the written word when I write by hand. I start writing on a page leaving big spaces between lines. As I refine, I fill in the gaps. Eventually the page is dense with words.
Next, I start entering the words into the mindmapping software (freeplane, which I highly recommend). It may take days or weeks to transfer the words of three or four sides of pages. In the mindmapping software I can work at the paragraph level, moving parts around easily, seeing how things flow.
Next, I transfer from the mindmapping software to a word processor (libreoffice, which I highly recommend, along with deleting MS office and stopping using online word processors). Now I can work at the sentence level. This stage can take weeks. Those three or four sides of pages of handwritten words may become twenty or forty pages in the word processor.
I’m not complaining. Each version brings me closer. Each version reveals what I’m trying to write. I’ve learned that I’m not an environmentalist, that I’m following as much in the footsteps of Darwin and Galileo as of Lincoln and Washington and as of Mandela and Gandhi and of Robert Carter III and Thomas Clarkson. I have to combine science, leadership, history, politics, economics, current events, and more in a document that engages and inspires to audiences whose desire to act on their values they’ve squashed and shoved out of their conscious awareness, or tried to, all day every day possibly every day of their lives.
Every topic depends on every other topic. None stands out as the place to start. Do I start with the readers’ likely questions? Their fears? My story? Statistics? An inspiring story? Every choice has its advantages, but its flaws too. Every choice has some part that won’t make sense without some other choice first. Every choice will make some reader feel like putting the book away.
If I do my job well, after years of effort, it will read like I just sat and wrote it in a few days. Those who know what it takes will know what it took.
Anyway, today went well. I started a new opening. So far it feels like my strongest yet. It seems to create a structure for the rest of the book, which in my mind is what suggested the opening. I feel like I’m going to end up trying every possible opening on the way to one that works.
Some of the other chapters I’ve written, rewritten, and edited dozens of times. I can write some parts almost in my sleep, except that they change slightly each time. Each revision reveals more meaning, what I’m trying to say and what I’m trying to avoid the reader misinterpreting.
I could go on, but I’ll save more process for future posts.