Took Sunday off. So much for posting every day.
In any case, today I sat down with a yellow legal pad, a newfangled old-fashioned typewriter, and thought about the form of this book. What exactly do I mean by a castnet, an atarraya?
The form? A book of essays, that re woven together. Each is about 20 pages long. Give or take. No more or less than 17 and 25.
Doing that, forcing my self to slow down, was enough to let us sketch out the “spokes” or “radial threads” of a castnet. There are eight. These are probably going to feel very much like chapters. In the centre, there’s the Reader’s Guide. Outside that, on the first rung, we have the crisis on the linoleum, that will fead into the 8 chapters. It will be an interlude between each chapter. Then we have the threads: First and Second Fieldwork, Time and Money, Tools, Rules, Fichero, Bricolage, Makeshift, and Ambulatory Anthropology. Each thread has related scenes and arguments. Acknowledgements will come at the end.
Perhaps length and argument something like:
- Reader’s Guide (atarraya as social conversation) (2,000)
- Crisis on the Floor (writing is the hardest part of the deal) (7,000)
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- First and Second Fieldwork (cane toad) (7,000)
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- Time and Money (room of one’s own) (7,000)
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- Tools (panning into various tools for writing) (7,000)
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- Rules (mad rules (e.g. 789 serialized and don’t break the chain ) for writing) (7,000)
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- Fichero (mining into zettklekasten) (7,000)
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- Bricolage (workshop and improvise) (7,000)
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- Makeshift (workshop, and good enough mastery of non-mastery) (7,000)
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- Ambulatory Anthropology (embodied writing) (7,000)
- Acknowledgements (2,000)
Say, (2000×2)+7,000+(7,000×8 chapters) + 2,000 notes + 2,000 citations = 72,000 words.
I spent the first 2 hours doing that, and then 2 hours putting it into Tinderbox.
Structure is the hardest part of the deal. I was inspired with writers method of working long hand, with a pencil, and retyping.