peacefare.net

Writing Righting the Balance

I’ve never been number 744,961 in anything before, that I knew of.  But that was my book’s rank on Amazon yesterday.  Today it’s number 51, 547.  That’s up from 2.5 million or so a few weeks ago.  In other words, bouncing around, but generally in the right direction.  This morning it was number 11 in the “war and peace” category, which gave some satisfaction.

I have to admit to a significant feeling of relief that it is anywhere.  I lived with this book–in my head, on my computer, on the desk in the office at SAIS, at home–for three years.  That’s a long gestation period.  You start to dream about it.  Sometimes nightmares.  Of course there are people who take much longer to produce even a thin volume like mine.  But I’d been used to mostly quick turnaround times.  Writing reports and op/eds produces smaller but still precious offspring in a matter of weeks, not years.

What I found really tough in writing a book is maintaining the arc of the narrative.  Each chapter has to tell a story.  Then somehow the chapters together have to tell a consistent, but not identical, story, one with a broader and deeper message.   My doctoral thesis on the history of radiation protection before World War II was easier from the narrative perspective.  Those chronological building blocks provide a natural order, even if there was still the problem of making them add up to something larger than the sum of the parts. Read more