When I finally got my PhD, I thought I could relax and rest on my laurels for a moment. My grandfather thought otherwise. The first thing he said after congratulating me was: when are you going to publish the book? Sad to say, twenty years later, I never quite got round to turning that monograph into a gripping nonfiction narrative. Or even a serious tome. Other books, yes, but not that one. Even for sixteenth-century history, perspectives have shifted, and I feel it might be too late.
A regular on my writing retreats has not left it that long, but a few years later, she is far more critical of her own PhD and wants to rewrite the lot. Laura Portwood-Stacer does a free webinar on publishing a book from your dissertation, so I pointed her there first. But I have no doubt this writer’s dissertation book will happen.
Will yours?
Maybe what you need to get started is the Dissertation-to-Book Workbook. This is all about the writing, not reading. It’s full of exercises for developing your book manuscript. Besides offering their own workshops, the authors have printable worksheets on their website. As I get in to another round of writing our articles in 12 weeks, I am reminded how useful worksheets like this can be. They break a huge task down into questions that might not be easy to answer, but are at least manageable in scope.
Katelyn E. Knox and Allison Van Deventer do exactly that. Their workbook makes the mammoth task manageable. They help you to stop thinking about it and start doing it. To aim for progress not perfection. To notice your doubts and get more confident by asking the right questions. To get the most out of the exercises, they suggest you take a quarter of a year – 13 weeks – and put 50 to 75 hours in. As they say in the appendix, you can use the model to shape other books. If you have a lot of material that’s not a PhD, you can use their checklist to see if this book will still work for you, and try their strategies for drafting new work.
This book is one of the excellent Chicago Guides to Writing Editing and Publishing. That includes classics such as Write No Matter What, so my expectations were high. Knox and Van Deventer offer excellent advice, including not to spend too long writing too much. As they say, now is not the time to do extra research and reading, until the structure is clear. They give clear examples for you to practice with. They are also honest about what difficulties you might face. You might not want to pick a classic format because you’re worried publishers will think it’s too “thesis-like.” You might think your key question is too simple. Each chapter ends with troubleshooting tips. Sometimes a problem can be a solution, for instance if one chapter feels like it doesn’t fit, you might find it easier to stick to the word limit.
The exercises made me think in new ways about how a book is structured, for example homing in on the variables that change from chapter to chapter. These can strengthen or weaken your overall argument. Turning your chapter questions into one-line answers can feel reductive, but distilling is part of the process. You can expand later. Reverse outlining is a great way to check how the narrative arc or story is shaping up, and I was glad to see a whole chapter on that.
After Chapter 13, you should have a coherent two-page narrative of what your book is about, and solid first drafts of core sections of the chapters. You might not be ready to send a proposal off, but you are ready to start talking to editors. And Chapter 14 helps you get a chapter in shape, so you’re ready to turn that dissertation into a book. As the authors say at this point, if your old writing feels terrible here, it shows how far you’ve come as a writer.
If you fancy working through the exercises together, let me know and I’ll see what I can do!
new retreat dates – seuraavat retriitit
Ridge Writing Retreats 