Three years in the making, as they used to say in movie advertising—and still counting. At one point this summer, I passed unofficially from the first draft to the second
draft stage of the book I’ve been working on. In fact, the first draft is not
100% done, call it 98%. There’s at least one more chapter to write and an
introduction.
Now I’m dealing with
several issues. One of them is no doubt similar to that of a novel writer,
whose project has evolved since the initial conception. A few parts were
written simply as blog posts, before there was even the idea of a book. Quite a few more date
from when that idea was only coming into focus.
So revision has been
producing its surprises. For one thing, I now see how I kept raising my own
standards as I took what I was doing more seriously. Write-ups of research I
did at the start are sometimes awkwardly organized, with off-topic digressions.
Sometimes there’s a breeziness that is OK for blog writing but sounds
amateurish now. For at least one chapter I’ve had to go back and redo all the
research from scratch. There will no doubt be more.
Audience. I remember taking a while to figure out the
readers I’m writing for. Early on, I knew that I wasn’t writing for academics
or scholars. They’re welcome to read the book and may get something from it.
But academic writing means that you are taking part in a discourse among
experts in a particular field of research.
The discourse on my
book’s subject—early frontier fiction—has been going on for a while, and to
join that conversation, I’d have to find and read what scholars have already
said about it. Fine for a graduate student working on a master’s thesis and with easy access to a university research library. But
that made the project too much like work, and a whole lot less fun.
Since I’m an old-school
literary historian by training, the current practice of theory-driven cultural
studies isn’t so interesting to me either. I’ve heard papers read at conferences so
dryly analytical and full of jargon an ordinary person walking in off the
street would think they were hearing a foreign language. I’d be obliged to
learn that language if I were to write to that audience.
So I decided instead
to write for what I think are readers of this blog. That is, book readers
and writers who enjoy westerns and frontier fiction and who share my curiosity
about the origins of the genre. That audience may include academic folks, but I wanted
what I wrote to be clear and interesting for the person who was simply a fan of
the genre.
That meant writing
plain English, informally, with some humor if I could manage it. The idea was
to both illuminate and entertain—not an easy task, and one that I’ve only been
able to approximate at times. But clarifying that target audience was an
essential part of the book’s evolution—and now the revision process.
Whether that
audience is actually out there is a question that enters my mind as I do this.
But as long as I’m clear that I’m not doing it for fame or fortune, the
number of readers the book finds isn't my main concern right now.
To be continued. . .
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
Coming up: Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Last Crossing
I think you are pursuing the right course. For some reason academic historians have moved into realms that could barely be described as history. These papers are largely written for other academic historians, and usually exclude the reading public. The best history these days is being written by popular historians, gifted people writing for broad readerships. That is also true to some extent in the world of academic literature. For years I looked over the conference schedules of the Western Literature Association, wondering whether to attend, and I noted that the material was so esoteric--some of it seemed purposefully designed to exclude anyone interested in western literature--that I gave up any thought of attending. And more of it was simply diversity politics, social science, not literature in any traditional sense of the word.
ReplyDeleteI believe the shift to cultural studies in English departments is partly to blame. The rest is the tendency of academic writing to make itself difficult to understand by even normally intelligent readers. Difficulty is supposed to indicate analytical rigor. It is often the dressing up of a simple idea with jargon and abstraction.
Deletewell I know I will be an audience for this.
ReplyDeleteWell, when I think of the readers I'm writing for, I think of you and others here in the blogs.
DeleteNot only have I enjoyed the variety of books you've written about, but the sheer number of them. What once seemed to me a dusty card catalog with Owen Wister and O. Henry's HEART OF THE WEST has grown into a living, moving, jam-packed frontier book fair under your tutelage. My hat's off to you, sir!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words. That has been the experience for me, too.
DeleteClear thinking. You are on the right trail.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jim. Appreciated.
DeleteMy husband is wrestling with these issues as he writes a book meant more for a general audience than a purely academic one. Years of training are hard to put aside.
ReplyDeleteYears working in marketing communications, where you're made super-aware of audience, helps me make the shift.
DeleteDammit! Charles always steals my comments.
ReplyDeleteHe does that to me, too.
DeleteRon, I share your curiosity about the origins of early frontier fiction and I look forward to reading your book and learning more about an epochal period in American history. I wonder if you might not consider writing about your overall experience in this project from the time the idea came to you, the reading of many early westerns and their reviews, the drafts and revisions, to the culmination of the project; perhaps, as a sort of an epilogue.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading your book because I know it will be well-written and intersting.
ReplyDelete