The Baby and the Bathwater
August 09, 2019

I've been working on a non-fiction book project for almost a year now--making
outlines, focusing my thoughts on the topic by working on the introduction,
reading books and research papers and drawing up lists of potential
interviewees. And now I think I'm going to have to scrap much of it and start
over again from the beginning.

As horrible as that sounds, I'm not sure it's a bad thing. The research had
mushroomed exponentially, with over thirty books (and counting) to read and
annotate, and several hundred bookmarks of background research and other
articles, all stored in my browser in little file folders. In addition, the
project had stalled at least twice.

The stalls should have warned me that I was doing something wrong. But I've
never written a non-fiction book and I wasn't sure of my method--this despite
reading books about writing non-fiction--so I tried to convince myself that
perhaps I just needed to work harder and put in more hours. Yet I still felt
like something wasn't quite right with the project.

Then I received several great pieces of advice at the Kenyon Review Workshops.
Our instructor, Rebecca McClanahan[1], told us that it was best to not research 
first, but to write out your questions:  What do you want to find? What don't 
you want to find? What do you hope to answer?  On another day, she said that 
when writing, it was good to start with the following questions: What do you know? 
What do you expect? What do you need to learn? She also suggested we write our 
way into research--to write first, then plug the holes in our knowledge.

Right there, in class, I realized I'd been going about my book project the wrong
way. I'd been focusing on research rather than writing. Or rather, I'd been
researching to clarify what it was I wanted to write about. So after I got back,
I sat down and over a couple of days wrote a short essay in which I asked myself
questions and stated my opinions and discovered where I needed to do more
research. The essay as it currently exists is a hot mess--I will have to go
through and edit it several times to refine the questions and clarify points.
However, for the first time in almost a year, I feel as if I have a "through
line" that connects the entire book project. I've come to realize many of the
books I'd collected for research will probably never now be used, and that
there's an entirely different set of books I'll now have to find and read.

It's hard to admit--even to yourself--that you've been mistaken, and every
writer has to find their own way of writing and research. I feel a bit chagrined
I've spent several months at what will probably end up being fruitless work, yet
I'm glad I've learned a better way of working that I think will allow me to move
ahead on this daunting project.

[1] http://www.rebeccamcclanahanwriter.com

(c) 2019 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com