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Take a Tour of the Book-Writing Process

By Roy Peter Clark

I wrote an essay when I turned 30 about all the things I realized I would never accomplish in my life, things I had once daydreamed about, such as playing center field for the Yankees or starring in a movie with Ann-Margret. I also described a few things that I would like to accomplish, and one of them was to write a book.

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When I tried to write my first book, Free to Write: A Journalist Teaches Young Writers, in 1984, I realized I did not know how to write one. I had no process, no toolbox, no set of steps. So I borrowed one.

An early collection of works by John McPhee, The John McPhee Reader, contained an introductory essay by Bill Howarth on McPhee's method. I followed it to the letter: gather your reporting, copy all your raw material, put one copy away, take the other copy and cut it up into the obvious content chapters, file the bits according to topic, create an index card file that corresponds to the elements in the content files, play with the order of the cards to find an architecture for the book, sit down and write an opening without reference to any of your materials, place the first index card on your wall near your workspace, open the corresponding file, begin to draft chapter one.

All the books I have authored or edited -- now up to 15 -- have been produced from some variation of McPhee's method, one that he has taught to a generation of talented young writers at Princeton University, including journalist and novelist Jennifer Weiner, who also happens to be a Poynter grad.

I have just completed the 11th revision of a 350-page manuscript for a book titled "The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English," scheduled for publication in August 2010. The 50-chapter book is now with a copy editor, so I have several months of additional work to do in response to editors and test readers.

I am at the point where I feel a sense of relief: the heavy lifting is over, the advance is in the bank, the proposed cover design is beautiful. But I am also itchy to get on to the next project, ready to tie a big bow on this one and send it out into the world. I am about to deconstruct my office to create room for a new body of work, to "strike the set," as my theater friends say; but before I hide the old files and take down the index cards from the bulletin board, I would like to share with you what my working office looks like. As I examine it, each space represents an important part of my book writing process. Here are the parts, more or less in chronological order:

1. Hunting and Gathering
2. Building a Foundation
3. Gaining Control
4. Finding the Chapters
5. Creating an Architecture
6. Drafting and Revision

The process begins with a slow and then accelerated process of hunting and gathering, all forms of early reporting, research and string saving designed to build a heap of knowledge, described in early, tentative, bits of writing. Some of this material will exist in Word files on my computer, but others will be tangible -- notes and clippings stuffed into file boxes that stack like milk crates.

I build a foundation with books devoted to the topic I am exploring. So if you had entered my office in 1995, you would have seen stacks of books on AIDS; in 1997 on the Holocaust; in 1999 on the Millennium; now on language and grammar. I gather this formative library over time, rarely stopping to read an entire book, but constantly browsing through the key volumes that will help me shape my own thoughts. To do this right requires moving things around. Taking off-topic books and restacking them in other shelves or in cardboard boxes. So when I now turn to face my two dedicated bookshelves, I can feel the confidence washing over me that only comes from a connection with the intellectual traditions I have inherited.

The next stage, gaining control, always is a response to procrastination. My inability to "get my arms around my material" wasted weeks of time on the grammar book. It resulted in one missed deadline and a new one negotiated with my publisher. Once I got the new deadline, I built up speed, but only after taking a few practical steps: I stacked my working material in some rough order, just so I could find stuff; I bought a small metal rolling file rack for about $30, just big enough to hold about 100 hanging files.

To find my chapters I took a fresh stack of index cards and wrote down on each an important topic that I imagined would wind up in the book: the serial comma, slang, alliteration, reading the dictionary for fun, etc. A corresponding label was placed on one of the hanging files, which were now ready to receive the appropriate materials dished out from my research stack.

I spent lots of time with my index cards, writing notes on the back so I would not forget a key example, trying to organize them into logical sections, spreading them on my mother-in-law's rug to begin to imagine an order, creating an architecture for what I had to say.

Then, like McPhee, I sat down without notes and wrote a rough draft of my introduction, a bit of writing that helped me find both the book's focus and the authorial voice I would use to express it. Then I tacked the first index card onto an empty board that covered a full wall of my office. (I had to take down artwork and other memorabilia to clear the landscape.) Then I sat down to draft the first chapter. That one card looked awfully lonely up on that wall. But before you knew it the Adam card found an Eve card and they had lots of little baby cards. What was once a brown/grey wall became a snowy mosaic.

So I'm at my desk, with the appropriate index card nearby and the corresponding file folder. Then I write, write, write until I hit about 1,000 words. I try not to stop until I have completed a full draft, no matter how clumsy the prose or superficial the content. The hardest part about writing a book is, you guessed it, writing the book. So I love to see my electronic files filling up with chapters, as well as a stack of white paper with preliminary drafts.

It's at this point that I look for a test reader, someone who will offer encouragement but also highlight some questions to consider down the road. Not now, when they will slow me down, but down that road yonder. Often I turn to Don Fry, my dear friend and teacher, who was willing to read what turned out to be about 100 chapters, comprising 555 manuscript pages and about 135,000 words. Such was my momentum that I could not stop, so that the total copy was twice the length of what my contract required and what the editor could publish.

What came next, a process that continues, was revision. I tried to follow my own advice: I was not going to cut this down to size by word editing. I had to prune as many big limbs as I could and, in the course of several drafts, the chapter numbers went from 100 to 75 to 60 and all the way to 50. I backed up each version of the manuscript with a CD (thanks to the help of my friend Jeff) and paid $25 to have Sir Speedy create a paper version. The paper versions, about 11 of them now, are in manuscript boxes (dated) with the older ones on the bottom and the newer ones on top.

Full post as published by Writing Tools on January 06, 2010 (boomark / email).