A couple of years ago, I decided to write a book. I figured that I had read just about every book about autism and had tons of personal stories about it, so I should I write a book. Piece of cake. I wrote a dissertation after all and had years of blogs posts that could be stitched together. In a month, I would have a best seller! Guest spot on Letterman! A country house by the beach! That how I roll. It's only a matter of seconds between the idea and the country house and Letterman.
I actually hammered away at the project for about six months. I have files of documents in Dropbox. Chapters are organized in Scrivener. Because electronically organizing words is much better than writing words.
I retired this project back in 2011. Writing little articles was much more fun and provided immediate gratification. Also, the book-writing process was becoming more and more painful. It was probably painful, because the whole thing sucked.
I opened the files this weekend for the first time in two years. Boy, was it awful! I was unable to commit to one type of book, so I tried to do everything at the same time. It was part memoir, part academic, and part tips and tricks/humor. The memoir was overwritten and melodramatic. Nothing salvageable there. The academic stuff was ok, but could be boiled down to an article about how kids with special needs received no public education until the 1970s, and now special education takes up about 25 percent of all education money. The tips and tricks stuff could be brushed off. Maybe I'll do that.
You know, it's really hard to write a book. Hats off to all my friends who have done it. It's more than just stringing together some words. Spewing out words is not a problem for me. I think that to write a book, one needs a commitment to tell one story. That's not a easy task.
Apt. 11d 
“I was unable to commit to one type of book, so I tried to do everything at the same time. It was part memoir, part academic, and part tips and tricks/humor. The memoir was overwritten and melodramatic. Nothing salvageable there. The academic stuff was ok, but could be boiled down to an article about how kids with special needs received no public education until the 1970s, and now special education takes up about 25 percent of all education money. The tips and tricks stuff could be brushed off. Maybe I’ll do that.”
Maybe what you’ve got is several different books, or several long Atlantic-ish articles.
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Note that, occasionally, someone writes a very successful, extremely idiosyncratic book which combines (or transcends) several genres. Two examples that come to mind are “The Black Swan” and “Godel, Escher, Bach.” But no doubt, there are a thousand unread and unpublished scribblers for every Taleb or Hofstadter.
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All books start from complete rubbish. Just don’t delete it.
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One of the all time great columnists ever, ever, ever was Herb Caen in the SF Chronicle. So, somebody was on his case, once, why didn’t he write a book?
He said, “This is like asking somebody who shaves every day why he doesn’t grow a beard!”
Just saying…
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Laura,
It might be that writing-wise, you’re a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. There’s actually a lot to be said for the short-form–it’s a lot likelier that your stuff will actually be read.
If you do stick to the book idea, there are formatting tricks that can allow you to combine genres. For instance, the main body of the text could be memoirish, while the just-the-fact-ma’am statistical stuff can go into long sidebars.
I think Jessica Kingsley would be a very good publishing house to go with. They have a really amazing lineup of titles.
http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/aspergerautism
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From time to time, I wonder how the practice of daily blogging has changed me. Has it made my writing better or worse? Has it made me too ADD? Has it skewed my view of the world, since bloggers and blog commenters aren’t like other people? No answers there.
I think I’m going to take the day off from blogging. The day is really about Boston anyway and I won’t have anything new to say about it. I started making an new outline for a book yesterday and I’m fairly obsessed with it. I want to keep working on it.
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Best wishes!
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Laura, I ponder how blogging has changed many of us as readers and writers. I think it’s worthy of its own post sometime.
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I write a lot of op-eds and they’re actually very formulaic:
Pithy observation or quote
Leads in to:
empirical data
quick switch to opposing view
shoot down opposing view
(optional: Comment on what this means to society, the future, etc.)
circle on back to pithy quote
A faculty mentor gave me this formula and it’s helped me to get a lot more stuff published — but, yeah, I can now break down practically any issue into this handy little formula in the space of an hour or two. You do, however, wonder what else you’re missing out on when you think through (if you can even call it that) issues in that way.
I’ve written two novels just for the heck of it over the years, and went as far with the first one as to have serious talks with a serious agent, though it was not, alas, actually published. (We could have used the money.) I read a lot of stuff on how to write — specific how-to books on how to write dialogue, how to plot a novel, etc. learned a lot, had fun educating myself — and I can’t say it’s been a waste of time. Strangely enough, I often have people tell me that my academic prose is much better than the other stuff they usually encounter and they ask me for my secret. I’m pretty sure it was spending a lot of time writing a novel, where you think about your audience and picture them reacting to the writing, and think carefully about each word.
I agree about hanging onto the drafts. You might find yourself coming back to them at a later date.
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Louisa, have you tried self-publishing your novels?
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