I need a creative boost. I’ve been talking about finishing a book for, I don’t know, five years. What was supposed to be my second book, a quick and dirty book about writing, has become a third one. It was supposed to be done in 2019. I edited a different one. It’s taken forever. This happens to academics. We get busy in the middle of our careers. We say yes to many things. We get busy. My daughter was born. I got diagnosed with ADHD, recently. The pandemic. Buying a house. Teaching, too much. A sabbatical, with new projects, also unfinished . Recently, a side hustle programming with AI. But, the book. Written and rewritten, and revised and never finished.
So where is it at? The book is chaos. It was three books, then four, then one. It’s a pile of notes.
This morning, I decided to do a 31-day, pop-up newsletter, à la Craig Mod. I’m calling it 789 Serialized. Mod has done many pop-up newsletters. He’s also had a long-running book diary on making Things Become Other Things. It’s private. A diary on work for a newsletter. It’s called A Nighthingaleingale. A nightingale in a gale, I think. I’ve not asked Craig. It’s a working diary, a log, of the making of Things Become Other Things. I joined his Special Projects to get access. Why not help someone creative, make things.
For my first book, I did something similar. I called Dinorimo, Dissertation to Monograph Writing Month. Inspired by NaNoWriMo. I started January 2016, with a friend. I wrote for a year. I posted to twitter and Facebook. I felt like I was spamming other people. The book took eighteen months, but it started as a 30-day challenge.
Simple rules. 1,000 words a day. Written or revised. If I failed, $50 to Stephen Harper’s election campaign. It feels like a lifetime ago. I didn’t fail. Harper got no money. I finished the book. I was 33. I used it to get tenure, to become a Professor in a small town. I am now Chair. My work? Giving young people a chance to do other things.
Yet, then as now, I feel shy to be online, even though, I’ve had a website and this domain since the late 1990s.
When the book draft was sent off, I stopped the daily spreadsheet, and I stopped the logging. That was a mistake. I kept writing, but I didn’t finishing.
With this book diary newsletter, I’m going to document the book process. A book takes time. This is a diary. I’ll write it, to mark the end the day writing. I used to sometimes post to my DiMoWriMo at 9 am. It felt good.
Where does Mod start with his NighthingaleInGale It was September 10, 2021. High pandemic. He’s lost. He’s printed it all out. He’s made index cards. He’s trying to find structure. Is it a letter? Is it short, stories? It’s the same dark morass, I’ve been in at time. I’m not sure if he would call it a morass. I would. John McPhee had the same experience on a picnic table.
Mod cut up his popup newsletter draft into drafts. Got off the computer, with print outs and scissors. I’ve done that too, with a big table. I tried to do it all. That was the mistake. Too much.
But, I have been months now I’ve been coding. Organizing. Putting things in boxes. Bringing pieces of text together. Where it goes I don’t know. But, it’s been making sense of lots of unpublished writing. Finding themes. Putting them together.
Here’s my log on that:
Coded Notes
| Date | coded | filed | to_code | total_words | task |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-05-03 | 3770 | 4960 | 255191 | 263921 | coding |
| 2025-05-03 | 4279 | 4588 | 254962 | 263829 | coding |
| 2025-05-03 | 4590 | 4588 | 254571 | 263749 | coding |
| 2025-05-03 | 4699 | 4588 | 254463 | 263750 | coding |
| 2025-05-03 | 5609 | 4588 | 253472 | 263750 | coding |
| 2025-05-04 | 6861 | 4588 | 252301 | 263750 | coding |
| 2025-05-04 | 8211 | 4588 | 250951 | 263750 | coding |
| 2025-05-09 | 12253 | 4588 | 246788 | 263629 | coding |
| 2025-05-31 | 13788 | 0 | 396922 | 410710 | coding |
| 2025-06-01 | 123040 | 0 | 280708 | 403748 | coding |
| 2025-06-05 | 136760 | 0 | 261858 | 398618 | coding |
| 2025-06-08 | 206784 | 0 | 151596 | 358380 | coding |
| 2025-06-09 | 314729 | 0 | 0 | 314837 | coding |
| 2025-06-10 | 333403 | 0 | 218899 | 552302 | coding |
| 2025-06-11 | 377253 | 0 | 163775 | 541028 | coding |
| 2025-06-26 | 434884 | 0 | 113255 | 548139 | coding |
| 2025-06-27 | 474447 | 0 | 72555 | 547002 | coding |
| 2025-07-03 | 524497 | 0 | 69287 | 593784 | coding |
| 2025-07-04 | 592109 | 0 | 0 | 592109 | coding |
The form of the book I have in mind? I’m not sure. It was once many books, now its many bits of books coded into different sections. 900 codes. Too many. The last few days, I added ethnographic field notes, morning pages, and so on.
My notes are in text files. There are too many words to print out. Too many aborted projects. Too many moments I’ve never used. But, also so much good, useful, insightful, things to draw on. Notes from the field. From readings. From diaries. From notebooks. Things written down and never you used. Lots to draw on.
Where to go from here? I’m going to do a newsletter. Daily. For a month. Edits pieces into a draft. Today I wrote a description of that. 789 Serialized.The form I have in mind is in an atarraya. A castnet that is used by fishers in the Colombian Caribbean to fish the shallow wetlands. Fishing in my notes. I’m going to write about the atarraya and the fichero tomorrow for the 789 Serialized.
For now, I’m going to go for a swim.