Okay, so it might not be three pages for everyone. For some, it’s five pages or seven pages. But, regardless, every academic book has them: the opening pages upon which so much depends. As part of my InDWriMo labor, I have been trying to revise the introduction to my book. This has involved rewriting the opening pages. I labored endlessly over these pages months ago, the first time around. Now, confronting them again, trying once again to hit the mark, I am even more profoundly struck by how much weight they have to bear.
The opening pages of an academic book do so much: There is usually the Opening Anecdote.* You know what I mean: the perfect little story that somehow sets the stage for everything that follows, somehow manages to capture the entire essence of the project in an easily digestible and engaging way. I have encountered opening anecdotes that were the like spun gold, so perfectly balanced and sparkling with wit and insight. Unfortunately, mine is a bit more leaden. It might come with a fabulous illustration (that remains to be seen). With the illustration, I think it’ll be pretty enchanting. Without it, the flaws of my opening anecdote come to the surface.
Once you get past the O.A. stage, you arrive at the: Brief but Compelling Description of the Project. Could there be anything more arduous? You’ve got to describe the project — but not in too much detail because you are about to go into great detail and redundancy is lame. You’ve got to hit all the major points — but not become so bogged down by specifics that you start making your argument then and there. The hardest part: you’ve got to somehow capture a tone of confidence that says, “hey, I’ve just written an entire book on this subject, don’t start second guessing me now! You’re in good hands so just come along with me on this lovely trip.” That breezy, charming, and knowledgeable tone — that’s what I’m having difficulty conveying.
I think of all the advice I give my students about introductory paragraphs and thesis statements. The whole “tell them what you’re going to tell them” mantra. But, boy it is hard to put into effect under these circumstances: a long, multi-faceted project that came together in a haphazard way over many years — so many years that the author (that’s me) can’t even remember certain parts of the book that were written while there was still a Clinton in the White House. How the hell am I supposed to make that sound like a coherent and interesting book?
It’s times like these that I really despair over the possiblity of finishing these revisions.
* I tried to not open with an Opening Anecdote and was told by 100% of my readers that I needed one. So much for innovation.
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November 18, 2008 at 4:09 pm
squadratomagico
Yup: writing the first few pages sucks. There’s so much riding on them ~ you have to draw in the reader and make them want to read a few hundred more pages on the subject. I don’t go for the breezy tone, though; I aim for the vaguely mysterious. (In fact, I probably write exactly the way Flavia complained about in a recent post, but I like carefully-composed, slightly ornamental writing, as opposed to the purely expository.)
I didn’t start with an anecdote, but with a sentence that had occurred to me soon after I defended my dissertation. It had a good sound to it (even though books usually are read silently, I always think about the way the language would sound if read aloud), and it set the tone I wanted. It would be years before that diss. evolved into a book, and I tried all sort of different ways of getting into the material…. but ended up coming back to that sentence in the end. I’m still very pleased with it.
November 19, 2008 at 12:37 am
Sisyphus
What you’re describing reminds me of the pressures placed on the dissertation prospectus, with the added difficulty of not having actually written the project (or even, perhaps, researched it) yet. Perhaps changing up the location or medium would help —- I had to email long rambling emails to friends to get around writer’s block type stuff, or call my sister and explain something out loud. Sometimes that helped clarify things. But really, my whole process was a slog and my advisor made me re-write it like 7 times. So, yeah. I hear ya. Good luck!