It turns out that there's actually a small clause in the standard publishing contract that requires any author with a blog to post periodic updates on the progress of the current writing project. Who knew?
Well, OK, there's no contractual obligation, but really, I have the blog, and I need to fill it with something, so why not the occasional progress report? I'm not going to commit to any particular schedule, but from time to time, I'll post updates on how things are going-- word counts, general impressions, out-of-context dialogue snippets.
So, how is it going?
The target here is around 40,000 words-- I'm not sure how tight a limit that is, but we'll call that the goal for now. The current plan is for that to be broken up into ten chapters, each consisting of a conversation with the dog followed by a more conventional explanation of some point of quantum physics. (One of those chapters may already have spawned a sub-chapter-- we'll see.)
It's a little hard to decide how to count words for this, because I have a bunch of dialogues written, and fairly complete drafts of two chapters that will come kind of late in the book, that I wrote when I was in the proposal stage. I'm not going to count those, though, because a while back I started systematically going through in order, and there will probably be massive revisions needed by the time I get to that material again.
So, I've gone through two chapters on the in-order draft:
Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality
Current Revision: 5a
Total Words: 5,279
Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle
Current Revision: 5
Total Words: 3,978
"Current Revision" is because I'm renaming the file after every complete chapter draft. The "5a" for Chapter 1 reflects the fact that there are two slightly different ways I might present things, and I'm still not 100% sure that the "a" variant works. Chapter 2 is entirely in the "a" variant style, though it incorporates some earlier material, but it didn't end up with a letter.
I'm calling these complete at the moment, though they may require rewriting to get the tone more consistent later on. I'm pushing on to Chapter 3 next, though, which will be written from scratch in the "a" variant style, which will probably go a long way toward determining whether I keep that. (I expect that I will, as it's growing on me a bit.)
You may notice that 10-11 chapters at this pace will be well over 40,000 words. This is why editors get paid the big bucks.
And that's where things stand at the moment.
Bonus Out-of-Context Dog Dialogue: "So, basically, nothing is defined in an absolute sense? Isn't that kind of... postmodern?"
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I have a pretty good intuitive feel for what a thousand words is, based on my own professional writing and some side private projects.
I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that you can bang out 40k words. Deadlines might be a bitch and you'll agonize over quality, but I gaurantee you can do it.
(And if you need a pre-professional-proofreader, let me know.)
Also:
Bonus Out-of-Context Dog Dialogue: "So, basically, nothing is defined in an absolute sense? Isn't that kind of... postmodern?"
Grr. Don't get me started. I'm grinding slowly through a book on existentialist philosophy and I keep having to put it down every few paragraphs because the philosopher (writing in the 50s or 60s, I think, even though this book is a new edition) insists on talking about relativity and the incompleteness theorem, despite having admitted that, at the time of his writing, only a few dozen people in the world really understood them. He's touched on Heisenberg, as well, and just insists on portraying the great limiting results of the 20th century as human failings rather than the fundamental way things are.
I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that you can bang out 40k words. Deadlines might be a bitch and you'll agonize over quality, but I gaurantee you can do it.
Oh, I have absolutely no doubt about my ability to write the quantity necessary-- for a while there, I was averaging about 2000 words/day on the blog.
Quality is the problem. Given what they're paying me to do this, I feel like it really needs to be good...
I'm grinding slowly through a book on existentialist philosophy and I keep having to put it down every few paragraphs because the philosopher (writing in the 50s or 60s, I think, even though this book is a new edition) insists on talking about relativity and the incompleteness theorem, despite having admitted that, at the time of his writing, only a few dozen people in the world really understood them.
David Lindley's Uncertainty, which I reveiwed here a while back, has some nicely caustic things to say about the tendency of literary theorists to invoke Heisenberg without understanding him.
Count me in as someone who would be happy to read sections too, if you ever have a need for such a person.
So, dogs: snarky proto-philosophers, but not physicists. Take note.
I myself have been (painfully) making my way through "Irrational Man" by William Barrett, which is an actual book about existentialism by an actual professor of philosophy for smart lay people, in the late 50s.
It's really tough to get a handle on precisely what he's saying, in part because I think he's not nearly as technically proficient a writer as he's been made out to be. I can't tell if he's saying, "This is how the various limiting results (as well as the sweep of European history from 1850 to 1950) were perceived by Europeans," which is a reasonable set of statements to be making; or, "This is objectively what the previous hundred years of history mean," which is a far more dubious proposition, especially if your understanding of the limiting results is mathematically and physically naive.
I think this is because he's trying to write passionately and even poetically, and is in fact just being sloppy and bouncing between those two modes of expression.
(I also have a predisposition to slap anyone who equates atheism or agnosticism with meaninglessness-- For Chrissakes, quit bitching and exult in the opportunity to define your own meaning for change. Grow up, already.)