Wednesday, January 13, 2021

grappling with a chapter

I don't want to go into detail but I have been wrestling (or, OK, grappling) with a sample chapter for a book proposal for some weeks (if not longer) now and finding it atypically difficult to manage, engaging on a conceptual level but rather hard to see the big picture, and now, too close to the whole to really be certain whether it's any good. As I explained to my father today (he's in hospital, forced to listen to my cogitating) the challenge is to be broad, yet to have the requisite content, to avoid anything culturally specific, and to explore/evoke some challenging themes. In short, to be all things to all people.

In a way, it is coming together, but in another way, I feel like the more I knead and tweak it the more slippery it becomes. I don't know, maybe that's a good thing. You tell me.

I have already exceeded the very tight word count, and I have to write a conclusion, which is possibly the hardest bit of all. That's tonight's task, along with two thousand more steps. 

Meanwhile the box of crap languishes. 

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