New interview with Institute for Humane Studies

Writing a book is a messy, emergent process

The Institute for Humane Studies has just published an interview they did with me on the process of writing my book and the themes within it. Mike Tolhurst (@miketolhurst) asked great questions, including about the book writing process. One of my favorite moments was when Mike asked me about the key takeaways from the workshop that IHS hosted for my book:

[The workshop] made me wish I had engaged with a bunch of [the workshop participants] earlier in writing the book… The most valuable stuff that I got out of the workshop was … the framing of the themes that I was trying to cover in the book. And some of that would have been awesome to have heard earlier.

Now, having said that, I realize that’s such a ‘control’ mentality. I would not have been ready to grapple with what people were telling me if I had not already been struggling with it for months and months probably, or if I had had the IHS workshop, you know, three months earlier when I was still drafting most of the chapters. It would have been probably less productive in many ways, just because I wouldn’t have had stuff down on paper, and it would have been very vague.

It turns out writing a book is itself an emergent process. In retrospect, the process looks messy, but the book learning journey. As I say in the conclusion of the book:

I quickly learned that writing a book is, itself, an emergent process. I suppose this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Every detailed plan I made about how the book would be developed was quickly mangled by reality. I would spend hours researching and writing a portion of the book only to replace it with a much better source I accidentally came across later when I was writing another part of the book. The structure evolved in response to feedback from editors and friends and from myself, when some time away from the document had given me a new perspective.

IHS played a key role in the emergent development of the book. It was great to talk to Mike about the book and the process. (Plus they made the very nice below graphic of my Six Principles of the Emergent Mindset.)

If you’re writing a book and want to explore how IHS might bring experts together to give feedback on your ideas, 1) read the interview and 2) let me know - I can help connect you!